At the heart of this year’s State of the Family report, Who is being left behind, is a set of stories on some of the people with whom we work with across the Anglicare network. These are people whom Australians overall, through their economic and political decisions, appear comfortable about leaving behind.They are all stories that cast a light on the work that we do.
Sometimes,through the right combination of our care, government support and the right opportunity, we can provide the scaffold that helps people keep connect to the buoyant and affluent society that is evident around us. At other times the services, housing or educational investment just isn’t there, and more or less the same people find themselves excluded from mainstream society, living in
continuing hardship and deprivation.
This report was framed by a research paper Anglicare Australia commissioned from the University of Canberra’s National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM). Left Behind: living standard trends (2015) looked at the relative living standards of different household types over the last few years in Australia and where they are heading in the next ten. The findings of that paper confirm the growing inequality and inequity that Anglicare services confront every day