As per our Strategic Plan, the Society is working to better measure the results of our good works to enhance our decision-making in the future. This will allow us to improve the impact we have on the communities we serve and better meet emerging needs. This also helps us continuously evolve, so that we can always be here for those who need us.

Our work can be broadly considered under three umbrellas: Conference work, services, and advocacy. Find out below how we measure our impact in each of these areas.

CONFERENCE WORK

Our members are the face of the Society in communities across NSW and work in Conferences, which are mostly connected to Catholic parishes.

The core work of the Society is visitation – the act of members visiting people in their homes, nursing homes and hospitals. Members connect with people where they live, providing practical assistance such as food and electricity vouchers, furniture and clothing, and helping with other living costs such as medical bills or back to school costs.  Importantly they accompany people through their times of hardship.

SERVICES

We define our services as those professional programs delivered by trained staff and volunteers. These include support services across homelessness and housing, disability, social inclusion, health and drought relief portfolios.
Our services are designed and developed with the following impact vision statement in mind:

People have improved wellbeing, social and economic participation and acceptance as a result of interacting
with our services, through:

• Having access to, or remaining in long-term, stable & safe accommodation that meets individual needs;
• Ability to maintain or improve health and wellbeing relevant to personal situations;
• People and communities being more accepting, inclusive and knowledgeable of each other;
• Capability of making informed choices, supported by knowledge of, and an ability to access supports that meet
  individual needs;
• Motivation to address concerns and be assisted to develop or strengthen skills and increase resilience.
  We monitor this impact through the following outcome domains:
  • Stability (personal finances and accommodation): people have stability to enable them to stay in long-term,
    stable & safe accommodation;
  • Wellbeing and health: people have stable mental and physical health;
  • Social inclusion: people feel connected to others;
  • Resilience: people are able to deal with challenges in an effective way and recover quickly.

ADVOCACY

This third category refers to those efforts that improve lives in a less direct, though immensely powerful way: by building understanding between people from different walks of life, and promoting policies that lift people out of disadvantage and poverty.

The impact of our advocacy work is evidenced in the way we encourage the building of a more just and compassionate society – leveraging the strength of our reputation and brand to work with parties of influence and improve social policy.