Advocacy is at the heart of what we do
Our practice wisdom frames how we advocate for people in need and guides our social change priorities.
We have a long and proud history of innovation to support social change including initiating many significant initiatives such as:
- Free legal aid
- Age pensions
- Specialist maternity care and the Royal Hospital for Women
- An end to child labour
- The Goodstart Early Learning syndicate
- Early social enterprise entrepreneurship through setting up Social Ventures Australia
- Australia’s first social benefit bond supporting The Benevolent Society Resilient Families
We continue to advocate for the interests of children, young people, and their families, First Nations Australians, older people, carers and people with disability every day. Our services speak to and inform our social change work, and our social change activities shape and respond to the wider world in which we operate.
Submissions to Inquiries
The Benevolent Society regularly contributes to government consultations and inquiries through written submissions – below are a selection of our formal responses from the last year.
Alliance20
The Benevolent Society is proud to be part of Alliance20 that brings together Australia’s most influential disability service providers to shape the NDIS for a future that enables choice; ensures value; minimises complexity and delivers better outcomes. Collectively Alliance20 supports around 75,000 people with a disability in every state and territory, has over 30,000 staff working directly in disability services and represents around $2 billion in funding for disability services.
Click here to find out more about Alliance20
Systems Leadership for Child and Youth Wellbeing
In 2020/21 Every Child and the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) partnered on an innovative project to explore how a systems approach could improve outcomes for children and young people. Centred on the lived expertise of senior leaders across the public and community sectors, with First Nations leaders, and representatives from the tertiary, philanthropic and corporate sectors – the project sought to map, learn and strategise how to address systems level opportunities and barriers to every child reaching their potential.
Read the Full Stage 1 Report here