For Greater Geelong to be a thriving and sustainable region, Council needs to address the existing barriers facing groups who are underrepresented and those experiencing vulnerability or disadvantage.

The Social Equity Framework provides Council with the principles to address such barriers and to ensure every member of our community is supported to participate fully, to be included and to have the opportunity to live a healthy and fulfilling life.

Equity is about making the changes needed, so that everyone can access programs and services; take part in work, education, and other activities; share their opinions; and enjoy living in this great community.

When we think about equity, we can see that people have different needs, life experiences, levels of power, and impact on decisions. We need to look at these things and find ways to make our community fairer.

In 2017 Council adopted Social Equity Principles to help Council provide fair and equitable access to all of our services and facilities regardless of people's gender, age, background, and abilities.

The Social Equity Framework incorporates these principles and further identifies the:

• supporting Social Equity Enablers which we need to adhere to;
• need to promote social equity to our partners and stakeholders;
• community outcomes this framework aims to achieve;
• means to track our performance in an ongoing way;
• opportunities for our partners and agencies to better understand our community profile, apply these principles in their own work, and assist the broader commitment of Equity for All; and
• priority actions to take as next steps.

In 2017 Council adopted its Social Equity Principles to help us ensure that fair and equitable access to all of our services and facilities was a key focus of our work.

This draft Social Equity Framework has built upon those principles with the input from our Advisory Committees and key stakeholders in 2021. Our Councillors too have provided their input and now we seek further feedback from the community to ensure the framework meets all aspirations and expectations.

We ran a series of workshops in 2021 with our Advisory Committees and key stakeholders. Their feedback has shaped the draft Social Equity Framework ensuring it can inform and strengthen our planning, resource allocation and delivery of services to all our community members.

To stay up to date with the project please click on the blue +Follow button at the top of the Have Your Say page.

Following community engagement, we will consolidate the feedback and make it available on the Have Your Say Page.

The feedback will be used to make changes to the draft Social Equity Framework as required.

Absolutely! You can call us on 5272 5272 to give your feedback and we will put it on the online system for you. Alternatively, we can mail you out a hard copy survey.