New Beginnings:

A New Agency Commences Community Services

On Monday 2nd July, 2001 staff of the new organisation assembled for the first time in its leased offices on the 2nd floor of the City of Joondalup Administration Building (90 Boas Ave) to find desks, phones and PC's in the final stages of being connected ready for work to begin. However, the genesis of the new organisation dates back to the 8th August, 2000 when the City of Joondalup's Council was asked by the it's Community Services Directorate to consider a proposal to change the City's human service delivery model.

City of Joondalup Creates New Community Services Agency

The City's involvement in the delivery of community services arose from the absence of non-government service providers in the northern suburbs during the City's rapid development in the 1990s. It was argued that the City's future role was better suited to community development and that significant benefits for service recipients would arise from a transfer of service provision to a not-for-profit, community-based agency.

The City Council endorsed a consultation process on the proposal and the community’s view on the change in role was subsequently sought. The views of most people, including those staff already working in the City's human services teams, were that there were significant benefits to establishing a community-based non-government organization to deliver these services. The benefits included:

• A small, servicefocused agency;
• Community ownership and participation;
• Opportunities for entrepreneurship;
• Greater capacity for growth and development as an incorporated not-for-profit agency;
• Flexibility in service provision and staffing arrangements; and
• Less resources needed to meet government process requirements and therefore more efficient use of dollars to meet community service needs.

Both State and Commonwealth Government bodies also indicated their eagerness to see a new community-based organisation located in the northern suburbs which would be small enough to be responsive to service users’ needs but large enough to attract additional services to the area.

On 19th December 2000 the Council approved the establishment of a new community-based service delivery organisation and the transfer of a number of the community services, that at that time were provided by the City, to the new organisation to be called Community Vision, effective from July 1st 2001.