Community schooled in all-round learning

ENDING intergenerational welfare dependence is a bold aim.

191112 pre natal not for profit

ENDING intergenerational welfare dependence is a bold aim.

But in one of Melbourne's most disadvantaged areas, where many of the young are unemployed and disengaged, a new model of community college has been set up with the ambition of dealing with long-term disadvantage.

Doveton College, near Dandenong in Melbourne's outer southeast, is servicing an area where only 14 per cent of residents are in full-time employment.

More than 90 per cent of college families are on healthcare cards and more than half speak languages other than English.

There are large numbers of recent refugees and indigenous students and many people have been involved with child protection.

The college is the first state school to offer a wide range of health, education and social services to children and their families from infancy through to Year Nine. As well as primary and early secondary school programs, it offers playgroups and all-day early childhood education.

It has a full-time chef and maternal and child-health nurses on site and a wide range of health and social service professionals visit regularly.

A long list of government and not-for-profit agencies run after-school programs from sewing classes to the development of rugby skills.

"We look at this very much as a community hub, and one of the things that happens is that between 7am and 7pm we have an early learning centre, and between 9am and 3.30pm we have a school.

"But we want this place to be used by the community 24/7," said Doveton College executive principal Bretton New.

Of the $32 million in funding the college has so far been allocated, $6.8m over eight years has been pledged by the Colman foundation, set up by former property developer and philanthropist Julius Colman and his wife Pamela to help provide education for disadvantaged children from birth to age eight.

The remainder of the funding will come from state and federal grants. As the college's family and children's services director Judy McLoughlin explained, the model was about getting the balance right. "It's about demonstrating what you can do when you pool together the range of programs and services different levels of government already fund," she said. "In the tight fiscal environment that we've got, (it) lets us look at the ways we can intervene early in disadvantaged communities, and stop problems getting to a point where they're in crisis."