New facility to help families
tial for their emotional and psychological wellbeing." The facility also offers supervised “changeover” services, where parents can exchange their children in a safe and neutral environment without contact with the other parent. Up until now solutions for parents in these situations was to go to Relationships Australia in Cairns or meet at a parking lot or another public meeting place to exchange kids. Ms Niyokwizera said this could be daunting for some parents facing domestic violence, but also very anxiety provoking for children. The other function of the centre is to provide a friendly environment for parents to have supervised visits that include rooms with toys and a small garden with a sand pit. The Children's Contact Centre is now open and accepting clients, a “changeover” costs about $5 and a supervised visit is $20. The fees are kept low and no one will be turned away if they are facing financial hardship and cannot pay. For more information contact Better Together on 4091 3850 or visit the website at bettertogether.com.au
FAMILIES navigating the challenges of separation and divorce on the Tablelands now have access to a safe space and comfortable space for children to maintain contact with parents they no longer live with and other family members in a safe environment. Community social services group, Better Together, officially opened their Children’s Contact Centre recently at their Mabel Street centre. The centre will provide a neutral and secure environment for children to have contact with family members, while ensuring the safety and well-being of the children. Children’s Contact Centre coordinator Claire Niyokwizera said she was excited to announce the opening of the facility and hoped it would benefit the many young people and their families currently facing hardship. "We are excited to launch this new service the first on the Atherton Tablelands, which is a vital resource for families in our community," she said. "The Children's Contact Centre will provide a safe and secure environment for children to maintain relationships with non-custodial parents and other family members, which is essen-
Better Together Children’s Contact Centre coordinator Claire Niyokwizera welcomes families navigating separation and divorce to their new centre.
Strategy to inform TRC budget process A BUDGET strategy has been developed to assist Tableland Regional Councillors as they begin deliberations for the 2023-24 financial year in a bid to keep rates as low as possible while coping with rising costs. Council is under pressure to keep rate rises to a minimum given new land valuations will emerge in March which are likely to reflect a rise in the value of land in parts of the local government area. The budget strategy includes a number of considerations such as the current cost of living, operating requirements of council, asset requirements, decreasing grant funding, and increasing expenses such as electricity and construction materials. Officers are already flagging that the new budget will have a deficit operating position if general
rate increases “are limited”, taking into account that grant funds are likely to be reduced and costs will continue to climb. “Grant funds to support operational activities are expected to continually decrease over the coming years placing additional pressure on revenue recovery activities such as rates, utilities, fees and charges,” a report to council stated. “It is understood that due to largely to inflation (CPI to the September 2022 quarter being 7.3 per cent), council costs to deliver the same services / service levels are expected to increase by a similar percentage.” But at last week's meeting, Cr Dave Bilney took exception to officers assumptions, saying that until the process had been worked through, there
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was no firm position that the operating budget would be at a deficit. Currently, the organisation is undertaking a service review that will feed into the operational budget and future budget planning. The Capital Works budget is also expected to be bigger than previous years due to the need to deliver essential water and sewerage infrastructure. As part of the budget deliberation process, preliminary capital workshops have already been conducted, with a focus on essential infrastructure. “Capital project wish lists will be deferred to allow focus on strategic initiatives and major projects,” the report stated. “Prioritised capital deliverables will be smoothed over the next four years instead of three
years, to ensure deliverability. An amount in the order of $15 million will be preserved in the capital budget each year for asset renewal.” But financial officers have already flagged the council may need to borrow to deliver what is required. “Depending on the adopted capital budget additional loans are likely required,” the report stated. Currently, the council has loans of $5.1 million which equates to approximately $393 per rateable property. Final capital and operational budget development workshops will take place in the last week of March, with the 2023/24 Budget and Operational Plan expected to be adopted by 30 June.
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The Express, Wednesday, February 1, 2023 PAGE 9