She identified mental health support, youth unemployment, healthcare funding, child protection, and a rural workforce strategy as clear needs that weren’t being met satisfactorily for ‘a lot’ of people the organisation serves.

“There's a need to see that mental health is a chronic disease, and it needs the same sort of support that we would give to cancer,” Ms Sykes said.

“We would not tell somebody with cancer, ‘You've had your 10 sessions, thanks very much, now you're on your own.’ So we shouldn't do it with somebody who is suffering from schizophrenia, or bipolar. 

“We shouldn't rely on their family, and very often their children, to be the primary caregiver for those people. 

“We need to get proper support for those people in the community and let them have a real life and let them be able to participate.”

Ms Sykes said flaws in the systems were being felt most keenly in pockets of the community that were listed among the areas experiencing the most socio-economic disadvantage in Australia.

Her comments came as the Victorian Council of Social Service consulted the region’s community service organisations on priorities for local social policy, ahead of the state election.

VCOSS chief executive Emma King said mental health was among the key issues raised during listening posts throughout the state.

The temperature outside Emma King’s car was freezing as she drove from Melbourne to Bendigo this morning.

The Victorian Council of Social Services chief executive’s thoughts turned to the people who were camping out overnight because they couldn’t afford a house.

A few hours later, during a two-hour consultation with community services organisations in central Victoria, Ms King learned of an elderly couple that was living out of a car.

She said the couple had moved to the region from Melbourne because they could not afford housing.

“They’ve come to Bendigo thinking they’d be able to get housing here, and at the moment they can’t, they’re sleeping in their car,” Ms King said.

“You hear stories like that and I guess they never fail to surprise you. 

“We live in a prosperous state, in a prosperous country. Why is it that people are missing out to the degree that they’re sleeping in tents... in cars?”

Housing and homelessness were among a number of issues Ms King said had been raised in every part of the state, which VCOSS has been canvassing as it seeks local solutions to complex socio-economic issues.

Others included community mental health, transport and access to transport, and the cost of living.

“I would think they are four hot issues, going into the [state] election, that are going to be picked up no matter what,” Ms King said.

“The key part here is that we point out why they matter in rural and regional Victoria.”

The knowledge VCOSS has acquired during its consultations throughout the state – 10 in regional centres including Bendigo, and about 150 individual community visits – will inform policy papers highlighting the issues that matter to each community.

“Our politicians in Spring Street can't be making policies that matter to people in CBD areas only, and at VCOSS we can't afford to be sitting in Exhibition Street, which is where we're based, and making policies there,” Ms King said.

Victorians go to the polls on November 24.

Kim Sykes, on disadvantage affecting children:

“If we want to stop the crisis that we hear [about] in things like our child protection services, we need to not only support them properly, but we need to look at the role that our systems can play in preventing those issues and identifying them early and getting in and helping earlier.

We need to use the platforms of universal services to do that, as well as look at what we can do for those people who are in crisis.

We need to recognise that the lack of services such as good mental health support will impact on our children.

If they're looking after a mum or dad with mental health issues... they're not going to turn up at school as regularly as they should, they're not going to have a proper education, they're not going to have the same opportunities for a good life.”

Emma King, on the NDIS:

“In Bendigo today we heard very much about what a thin market it is, in terms of having services that are there for people to be able to access when they need them, and for people who might have had their plans approved, but an example today was a young boy who had his NDIS plan approved but six months later still can't find a speech pathologist who he's been approved to use.

“So, really thin markets where there's simply not providers on the ground.

“It's one thing to have choice and control, but that's very hard if there's actually no choice.”

Kim Sykes, on youth unemployment:

“We have high levels of youth unemployment across the region, so we need to start at the beginning in trying to work properly with that.

We have seen success of some small programs, such as an individual placement support program where three quarters of the young people attending that leave the program with study or work.

Those sorts of things make a lifelong difference in an areas where we have high youth unemployment, so we need more of that kind of support to really get in and make a difference.”

Emma King, on Newstart:

“The fact is, if you're getting $38 a day and you're in Bendigo, there's nowhere to live. There's nowhere that's affordable for you to live if you're on your own.

“When you're on $38 a day, you're living in abject poverty, and... as a consequence for many people, they're living in a tent and they can’t even get access to a caravan park.”

Kim Sykes, on a rural workforce strategy:

“Whilst the demand grows, our access to qualified people to respond to it is not growing at the same rate, and that is true on a range of fronts.

“That's right through from paediatric services to make sure that young people, especially with disadvantage, get early intervention; to mental health workers; to disability support workers – right across the board.

“We need a proper rural workforce strategy that brings people to the region, keeps people in the region and identifies the different ways in which people need to work, especially in rural Victoria, where it's really hard to attract staff.”

Emma King, on place-based solutions:

“People are saying to us there's a divide between even the regional centres in Victoria and, for example, when you’re in Bendigo if you go out almost 30 or 40 kilometres there's a real sense of hidden disadvantage and the issue around people being able to have access to the services they need because they're living a bit further out. So they may not have transport because they’ve moved further out to get cheaper housing, but actually that cheaper housing comes at a real cost.

“What it means for people in those areas is they can’t afford to put the heater on if they’re going to travel to a medical appointment, they cant afford to eat their meals if they’re going to try to get their kids to school that day. They’ve got to try to make a choice between things they simply shouldn’t have to make a choice about.

When it comes to essential services like electricity, gas, access to food... you shouldn’t be making a choice between each of those. Everyone should be able to afford them. But we know that for people in rural areas near Bendigo, people are making that choice.”

Kim Sykes, on children’s medical services:

“The only funding we get to run our children's services is $70,000 per annum to support a paediatric registrar. Now that's fantastic, but the rest is Medicare dependant.

“We're not running a private practice that is seeing the children of people with high levels of resource and single issues. We are seeing children who've been sexually assaulted, or they have autism, or they come from families of family violence, and they come from people with very high levels of disadvantage. They've got very complex needs.

“We often need more than one visit to that paediatrician just to make an assessment. Medicare does not sufficiently fund that. Medicare works for single-issue clients. It does not work for those with complex needs.

“If we [as a nation] really want to invest in making sure every young person has the same opportunity, then looking at how we make services such as general practice and paediatric services available to everybody who needs it, no matter what your parent earns, is a necessity. I think it's a moral obligation.”

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