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Maryborough has been identified as being among the six most disadvantaged postcodes in Victoria.

The Dropping off the edge 2015 report produced on behalf of Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia scored the region 11^th lowest in the state for internet connection, 13^th lowest for disability support and 15^th highest for long-term unemployment.

Jesuit Social Services spokesman Andrew Yule said the region’s designation as one of the worst off was based on a “web of disadvantage.”

“You can’t necessarily treat juvenile convictions without looking at long-term unemployment and unemployment can’t be fixed without better internet access and housing affordability and security,” he said.

“You can see from that web of challenges that it’s very difficult to unpick those, all of them are quite interrelated.”

St Luke’s Anglicare regional director Carolyn Wallace said the low scores were a result of the long-term impacts of disadvantage.

“It takes a long time to turn around a situation where many, many generations have been impacted on by poor health, education an employment outcomes,” she said.

The report noted little had changed for the region since the previous study in 2007 – which placed Maryborough in the top 5 per cent for levels of disadvantage – but Ms Wallace said things had begun to turn around in recent times.

“Back in 2007 service response was still fairly fragmented so what’s changed is increased co-ordination, strong community leadership and I would say strong leadership from local government as well,” she said.

“I think being able to rank and identify disadvantage is important so we can respond to it but I also think we need to keep having messages of hope, transformation and change because that’s what really motivates people.”

On the measure of “housing stress” Maryborough scored much higher than on all other metrics but Mr Yule explained this may not necessarily indicate affluence.

“Housing stress measures when someone has to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing alone, that includes government payments and rent assistance,” he said.

“Sometimes if the housing is not too expensive to start with and if you’re a recipient of rent assistance it can mean you aren’t in housing stress.”

Ms Wallace said it was important to look at the bigger picture, rather than focusing on the shortcomings of one particular community.

“It just points out that we can’t just blame or stigmatise certain communities, we actually have to look at the macro level which is our tax system,” she said.

“Do we invest enough in state education, do we invest enough in free accessible health services, they’re the big things that we have got to focus on as a society.”

The Central Goldfields Shire council was contacted for comment.