Doveton College

Doveton College is an Australian first in the provision of FULLY integrated community services.

The college offers an educational program from birth to year nine, and a full suite of community services including child care, Maternal health, paediatric and speech therapy services, Family and financial counselling and parental coaching all on the one site. External organisations such as Centrelink, Medicare local and Victoria Police also visit the college which aims to be a “one stop shop” capable of dealing with any issue that arises in its community.

The underpinning strategy is to nurture and develop the child while addressing wider social issues that affect the child’s family. This is best accomplished under the single site, single management model approach as it allows the college to directly monitor each child and their family through constant engagement. The building design contributes to this by configuring the key engagement spaces directly adjacent to where most families will enter the site, maximising opportunities to target families for intervention. Shared community spaces are distributed around the complex. In making these spaces available, the college aims to become the social centre of the community, further enhancing its position in the community.

Education practice is based on individual learning plans and maximising student engagement. Much of the curriculum is enquiry based and students are encouraged to develop their verbal and interpersonal skills via a range of highly innovative educational programs such as DovetonTV and Doveton Live Minecraft.

Developing the Doveton initiative has required the sustained commitment of all stakeholders. The college has worked with the City of Casey, DEECD, other community support services and governmental bodies. While service “integration” is a bit of a buzz word in community services, and there are other “co-located” facilities around, to actually get the financial model right and to get all of these organisations to adapt or change their management or delivery practices to work together in a single governance and delivery model has been no mean feat.

The overall result is a dynamic hub of learning activity that has brought renewed confidence to a community in crisis.