Family and parenting
Parentline Victoria: 13 22 89 (7 days a week, 8am to midnight).
BetterHealth has information about having a baby in Victoria.
Dad ‘n’ Kids program is for fathers and male carers, and their children who are 4 years old or younger. The program is based at centres in Craigieburn and Mernda in Melbourne’s outer north, and at Fitzroy near Melbourne’s CBD.
Caring Dads is a 17-week family violence group-work intervention program in Victoria for fathers who have struggled with their behaviour towards their children and family.
Health and mental health
Counselling services for survivors of torture and trauma: Foundation House – The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture.
Accommodation
If you are homeless or at risk of homelessness, find crisis and emergency accommodation services. For state-wide after-hours Service call 1800 825 955 or 03 9536 7777.
For information on finding accommodation in Victoria for people from refugee backgrounds, available in English, Arabic and Dari: https://www.ceh.org.au/finding-a-home-in-victoria/
Legal
Victoria Legal Aid provides a number of free legal services to people in the community, such as legal information, referral services and minor assistance.
To find the nearest community legal centre, providing free and accessible legal and related services, see National Association of Community Legal Centres.
Police
To contact police for matters that are not emergencies, you should contact your local police station.
Services for refugees and asylum seekers
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) supports people seeking asylum who live in or around Melbourne and who are in the process of, or waiting to apply for a protection visa in Australia. Services include an employment support program, an English program, healthcare, and legal assistance.
Monash Health Refugee Health provides comprehensive primary care services together with tertiary services including infectious diseases, paediatrics and psychiatry.
Cabrini Asylum Seeker and Refugee Health Hub provides comprehensive primary health care and specialist mental health services to people seeking asylum who are Medicare-ineligible or who have Medicare but no income. The Hub primary health care clinic is nurse-led, works in partnership with other asylum seeker agencies, and coordinates care and referrals to community health and specialist services (e.g. dental, optometry, allied health, infectious diseases & paediatrics).
Co-Health provide health and support services in Melbourne's CBD, and northern and western suburbs.
Youth and LGBTQI+ services
The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne has health services available for children of refugee backgrounds. You can find more information available here or contact here.
Immigrant Health Service – This service is free of charge for all refugee and asylum seeker children and has onsite interpreting services are available. This service includes a weekly outpatient clinic on Mondays from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm at desk A5. This includes a mental health/psychiatry assessment provided by male and female clinicians. Secondary mental health consultations are available and all children within a family can be seen at the same visit. You can contact refugee.fellow@rch.org.au or 9345 5522 for advice or coordination.
Foundation House – Ucan2 – a free education and settlement program to support the social inclusion of recently arrived young people of refugee background aged 16-25. It has a duration of 16 weeks. It also offers mental health and wellbeing support.
For queries you can contact: (03) 9389 8993 or (03) 9389 8933
Queerspace – offers low cost or no cost counselling services for all sections of the LGBTI+ communities. Queerspace counsellors work with children, young people, adults and older people. To access counselling click here.
Queerspace youth – monthly support groups and events for Queer, Trans, non binary, Intersex, Gender Diverse or questioning people aged 18-25 years old. Each event has mental health support workers available that can also assist with referrals to Queerspace services. You can find more information here or contact queerspaceyouth@ds.org.au.
(in)visible – is a community driven program that connects queer and trans people from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds aged 18 -25 through workshops and events. You can find more information here or contact invisible@ds.org.au.