Rural and regional Victoria has received 13%-15% of people arriving in Victoria via the Australian Government’s Humanitarian Settlement Program over the past twelve months. Rural and regional settlement of people from refugee backgrounds continues to be a significant trend, encompassing both direct settlement and secondary movement from metropolitan and other areas. A core part of the work of the Victorian Refugee Health Network is to continue to support rural and regional health service providers.
Top 7 regional and rural settlement areas:
- Greater Geelong
- Greater Shepparton
- Mildura
- Wodonga
- Greater Bendigo
- Swan Hill
- Ballarat
Other important areas of refugee settlement are: the La Trobe Valley (Moe, Morwell, Traralgon), the Colac-Otway LGA, Nhil and Horsham. For data on the number of people of refugee background living in your LGA, please use the Settlement Reporting Facility where you can generate reports based on immigration statistics.
Many rural and regional practitioners and services are active participants in Victorian Refugee Health Network working groups, forums and other activities.
The Victorian Refugee Health Network assists existing services to appropriately respond to the needs of the refugee background populations in rural and regional areas. The Network has links with regional Refugee Health Working
Groups. Contact details for conveners of these working groups are available here.
The Network has hosted a number of forums and roundtables including:
- A Statewide Forum in 2008. The forum report can be downloaded HERE.
- A Statewide Forum in 2010. The forum report can be downloaded HERE.
- An online survey in 2011 targeted at rural and regional services and workers, the finding of which were review by a small number of rural and regional health providers. The report can be downloaded HERE.
- A statewide roundtable in 2012 which brought together government, settlement and rural and regional health services to discuss “Refugee and asylum seeker health in rural and regional areas”. The final report can be downloaded HERE.
Search the Library for a comprehensive list of resources.
