History of Mission Australia
Benjamin Short brought a pioneering initiative, the mission to help the homelessness, disabled and the poor community members in Australia to the forefront in 1862, which until today is unstoppable non-denominational Christian charity with enough muscles to influence the governmental decisions related to the welfare of the Australians (Willacy, 2000). Benjamin Short founded Mission Australia based on the inspiration from the London City Mission established by David Nasmith. It first used to be called Sydney Mission, then it adopted another name, Town and County Mission and in 1869 created a branch called Brisbane City Mission. The growth of this non-profit organization leads to creation of several other branches such as Hunter Mission, Mission Australia Southern NSW, Mission SA, Perth City Mission, Mission Australia Group Training and Mission Employment and Wollongong City Mission. By 1999, all these branches were unified as Mission Australia. Mission Australia mission is to help vulnerable Australians move towards independence through addressing homelessness, aiding disadvantaged families and children, solving mental health issues, developing measures and programs to fight substance dependencies, and much more. The Mission Australia’s purpose is inspired by Jesus Christ. Consequently, like Jesus Christ, the Mission Australia is there to ensure that human being get their needs and know more about God. That is why it is classified as a non-denominational Christian charity.
Mission Australia is an umbrella non-denominational Christian charity organization of Hunter Mission, Mission Australia Southern NSW, Mission SA, Perth City Mission, Mission Australia Group Training and Mission Employment and Wollongong City Mission. These charities are found in different states in Australia. They all have one mission of helping vulnerable Australians move towards independence through addressing homelessness, aiding disadvantaged families and children, solving mental health issues, developing measures and programs to fight substance dependencies.
Mission Australia’s purpose is to ensure that needy Australians are assisted to get out of their problems. To achieve this broad and complex mission, Mission Australia has created a number of portfolios. The first portfolio concerns research and advocacy on social policy. Under this section, the Mission Australia collect information about the inequalities and use it to advocate for social policy change. A good example is the welfare reform that was adopted in 2000 by the Howard government. The form is called “Participation Support for a More Equitable Society.” It should be noted that Mission Australia has conducted several other researches focusing on people experiencing marginalization in Australia and using such reports, they have been able to advocate for welfare reforms (Metherell, 2013).
The second portfolio concerns employment agency and job support. In line with its mission of ensuring that the needy Australians are supported accordingly, Mission Australia created employment service arm in 1998. This arm is designed to help the jobless get jobs. Mission Australia work hand in hand with Australian Government’s privatization of employment services in ensuring that needy and jobless Australians get a good network where they can apply for jobs. In fact, the Mission Australia employment agency and job support is considered the second-largest job agency in Australia behind the Salvation Army.
Mission and Purpose
The third portfolio making up the Mission Australia is community services (Mission Australia 2017). Under this arm, Mission Australia offers services to those Australians who are willing to participate and contribute in community development but does not have means to exercise and exploit their potentials. For example, Mission Australia has services designed to assist children with learning disabilities get adequate education that is tailored to their needs. Mission Australia also have childcare services designed to help those families that have problems in raising their children. Additionally, under this portfolio, Mission Australia has services designed to prevent and overcome homelessness. They also offer education and skill-based training. The Mission Australia believes that many people have potentials but lack means and that is why they have created a variety of community services designed to give means to the needy members of community so that they can exploit their potentials and talents. Through community services mission, Mission Australia has managed to create a Reconciliation Action plan, which is one of the first Australian welfare organization. As the name suggest, the plan is designed to contribute to reducing the gap in living standards between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians based on respect and partnership. It has managed to form partnership with different Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organization with a goal of fostering community services, employment, training, early learning and solving the issue of homelessness.
Mission Australia also have a portfolio of families and children (Mission Australia 2018). This portfolio is almost similar to community service. The only difference is that it is designed to evaluate family needs rather than community needs. Mission Australia identify disadvantaged families and then intervene by applying variety of strategies such as counselling, residential programs, and admitting some families in early learning centres.
Mission Australia also have a portfolio specifically designed for homelessness (Mission Australia 2018). Under this portfolio, the goal of Mission Australia is to prevent or intervene on matters related to homelessness. It has more than 100 services designed to stop vulnerable Australians from becoming homeless. For those who are already homeless, Mission Australia can offer short to long term accommodation. Some of the specialist services under this category include Missionbeat, Annie Green Court, Mission Australia Centre in Surry Hills, Chigwell House Tasmania and in Kingswood. In Bribane, Mission Australia has Roma House as a facility to offer short to long term accommodation to the homeless.
Mission Australia also have portfolio called life and work ready skill (Mission Australia 2018). This portfolio is designed to equip people with skills to use in the workplace so that they can afford to get a house to live. To achieve this, Mission Australia has created registered training organizations that offers vocational courses at certificate level, diploma levels and advanced diploma levels. The courses covers areas such as aged care, automotive, construction, youth work, English language and adult literacy, retail, children’s services and business.
Another portfolio making up the Mission Australia is youth services (Mission Australia 2018). Mission Australia has initiated a number of services designed to offer support to youth facing issues with drug abuse, dysfunctional families, unemployment and mental illness. Example of these services include the Triple Care Farm, which is designed to rehabilitate youths experiencing drug abuse or mental problem. There is also Creative Youth Initiative, which focuses on mental health, substance abuse and homelessness. Lastly, Mission Australia have U-Turn services, which is actually a course that last for 10 weeks designed to help youth that have become involved in vehicle theft.
Portfolios of Mission Australia
Mission Australia stands out as one of the most influential and vocal charity group in Australia. This is evidence by the ability of this charity to influence the social policies under Howard government and recently, it is believed that in 2013, Mission Australia, through Toby Hall, Chief Executive Officer of Mission Australia spoke on the need to reform welfare. The underlying force that enables the Mission Australia to exert a lot of power influence is the fact that the organization engages in research and then present the findings to the political parties (Mission Australia 2018).
The first stakeholders making up the Mission Australia represents the executive committee. Since the charity deals with different portfolio, the executive committee is made up of one overall CEO, James Toomey and several departmental executives for different areas such as Service Delivery, Finance and Group Shared Services, as well as our National Chaplain and General Counsel (Mission Australia 2018). Sally Ascroft, for example, is the head of General Counsel & Company Secretary. Iain Keddie is the chief financial officer. Paul Molyneux is the head of Executive, Chaplaincy, Fundraising and Marketing. Chris Bratchford is in charge of Mission Australia Housing (Mission Australia 2018). Other stakeholders include the employees, researchers, the community, families, individuals with problems, aboriginal organizations and even the governmental organizations (Mission Australia 2018).
It can be said that the model used by Mission Australia is very effective in ensuring that it meets her objective. Mission Australia fits well in such capitalist economy by applying the concept of professional monopoly, which was suggested by Germov (2014) in the book entitled An Introduction to Health Sociology. What Mission Australia do is that they identify a need in community, do research on the causes and magnitude of the need, and then used the finding to advocate for the social policy adjustments (Tingle, 2000 p.13). Since politicians are looking for policies to use to create their manifestos, the reports created by the Mission Australia stands out to be the most attractive tools for politicians. That is why the former CEO was able to influence the passage of welfare reform. Consequently, it can be concluded that through research and advocacy, Mission Australia fits well in current capitalist economy.
References
Beilharz, P, Considine, M & Watts, R (1992) Arguing about the Welfare State: The Australian Experience. Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Germov, J. (2014) An Introduction to Health Sociology, Oxford University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cdu/detail.action?docID=1986008.
McCormack, T (2008). “Sydney City Mission”. Dictionary of Sydney. Dictionary of Sydney Trust. [Online] Available from: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/organisation/sydney_city_mission [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Metherell, L (2013), ‘Charity calls for welfare re-think’, AM, Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Online] Available from: https://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3731702.htm [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2017) Home. [Online] Available from: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/ [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2017) Mission Australia releases Annual Report 2017. [Online] Available from: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/news-blog/news-media/mission-australia-releases-annual-report-2017 [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2018) About Mission Australia. [Online] Available from: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/about-us [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2018) Executive Committee. [Online] Available from: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/about-us/our-people/executive-committee [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2018) Innovate Reconciliation Action plan. [Online] Available from: file:///C:/Users/User1/Downloads/6741_innovate-rap-august-2017.pdf [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Mission Australia (2018). What we Do. [Online] Available from: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/what-we-do [Accessed on 9/16/18]
Tingle, L (2000) Church and State: making a job of it. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax. p. 13
Willacy, M (2000) McClure speaks about welfare reform blueprint’, World Today, Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [Online] Available from: https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s164227.htm [Accessed on 9/16/18]
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