CEO Report- Sione Crawford
" This is part of a long-term plan to bring our diverse communities together to work on our shared priorities, and to strengthen us as an organisation that is responsive to community and that remains led and staffed by and for peers."
The last year of work for Harm Reduction Victoria has been intensive and impactful, which new projects, impactful policy work and collaborations with a range of established and new partners.
In pursuit of our organisation’s goals we work across a wide range of initiatives. We undertake harm reduction and peer-led services that work one – on – one with our communities, with whom we also undertake peer education and health promotion and we are often in involved in or deliver projects at a state-wide level and in coordination with peak bodies or government.
With this range of work and ever-increasing demand on our programs, services and on our advisory and representative capacity we have undertaken some strategic work to set us up for the future. We worked with Collabforge to develop a new Strategic Plan, which we are launching at our AGM this year.
This is part of a long-term plan to bring our diverse communities together to work on our shared priorities, and to strengthen us as an organisation that is responsive to community and that remains led and staffed by and for peers.
You may have seen a short video on our website homepage, where different staff members enter the frame individually, and which ends with (nearly) all of us together in a photo, holding our fists aloft. This show of strength and solidarity is fun and is a great photo, but to me it also serves to remind me that we have grown in size and ambition over the past few years and that our team is authentic and committed to the work we do on a daily basis.
Alongside the Strategic Planning, we have made some changes to the management structure to set us up for the future. We undertook a process with all the Team Coordinators and Geoff and Jody from Camalige consulting to rework the management structure and add a layer of management. This Executive Group is designed to take on a number of roles that have previously sat with the CEO, and to offer a leadership stepping stone between team coordination and organisational management. The main driver for this was to embed a new position – Programs and Services Manager.
This senior leadership role was first offered internally, as a leadership growth strategy for the organisation and the process resulted in Nadia Gavin being appointed into this role. Many of you will know that Nadia has been with Harm Reduction Victoria for a number of years as Coordinator of the fuse initiatives peer workforce program and prior to that in a number of roles. Nadia moved back down from the beautiful far north Queensland rainforest to take this role up!
As the team and programs have grown it is increasingly difficult to know what to include and leave out in this report. Please read it in full, to get a sense of our work.
Some of the highlights this year have included the beginning of our Community Dinners events; the convening of an Advisory Committee co-chaired by Harm Reduction Victoria, which has delivered a report to the Department of Health on the Opioid Pharmacotherapy program in Victoria and a collaboration with VAADA on two reports – Drug Checking Principles of Practice for Victoria, authored by Kate Seear, and Keeping Victorians Safe – We need a Potent Synthetic Opioids Plan. As you may have noticed the Victorian Government has also seen the need for work in this space and the Premier of Victoria and the Minister for Mental Health have announced Drug Checking for Victoria.
Finally, although this technically occurred outside the timeframe of this report I am so pleased to say that Sarah Lord, PAMS Program Coordinator, received the APSAD Award for Advocacy this year, 2024, for her more than two decades of work to improve the pharmacotherapy system in Victoria – always with consumers and peers at the front of her work.
