Too Critical to Fail: The Precarity of Emergency Relief Services

Uniting Vic.Tas (Uniting) is a community service organisation which provides emergency relief services throughout Victoria and Tasmania. Each year, Uniting delivers emergency relief support to more than 10,000 people from more than 20 locations across Victoria and Tasmania, with service providers reporting a significant increase and unmet demand for emergency relief services. But the continued provision of these critical services is precarious due to a range of challenges. To better understand the precarity of emergency relief and the factors underpinning it, Uniting partnered with the Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University. Research was conducted through a study into eight Uniting emergency relief services (both metro and regional).