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CommunityNews
15 April 2020
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COVID-19 Protections for residential tenants and owners

The Queensland Government has unveiled a package of measures to implement the freeze on evictions.

The new protections ensure property owners cannot evict a tenant if their lease expires during the COVID-19 crisis.

Rental grants of up to $2000 are available to Queenslanders experiencing hardship who are unable to access or wait for any other financial supports to become available.

In addition, domestic and family violence provisions allow at-risk tenants to lawfully leave a rental property in a hurry, and access bonds to separate from co-tenancy.

Free Queensland Human Rights Commission webinars

Queensland Human Rights Commission (QHRC) is offering introductory training on discrimination and human rights law. With the response to the COVID-19 pandemic it has suspended its face-to-face training program.

Its practical online training is designed to help everyone understand their rights and responsibilities under Queensland's Human Rights Act. Topics discussed include compliance, complaints handling, reducing risk, and contributing to creating fair and productive workplaces, and many other areas.

The one-hour webinars are free to attend.

Funding: Mercy Foundation's Social Justice Small Grants

The Mercy Foundation’s Social Justice Small Grants Program provides seed funding to assist communities and organisations to build capacity that will help create structural change and bring about greater social justice in Australia.

Funding under this program ranges between $1,000 to $10,000 per organisation.

The program looks for projects that provide access to the digital world for people who are currently excluded, protect vulnerable groups from being exploited online, address social exclusion issues, and cyberbullying.

HSQF: Workplace guidelines for COVID-19 response

QCOSS has developed a template for Workplace guidelines for COVID-19 response for staff. The template is based on the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) template for resilient community organisations.

The guidelines include information about working from home arrangements, ways of working, travel, meetings, and events.

There is also a home office self-assessment checklist for employees to review their arrangements and identify any issues for further discussion with their managers.

$5.5m to boost domestic violence services during COVID-19

The Queensland Government is taking urgent action to support domestic and family violence victims with the immediate injection of almost $5.5 million to help manage an anticipated increase in demand for services arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The funding includes a boost to capacity of the statewide crisis service DVConnect, as well as $1.7 million to address crisis accomodation needs. Specialist domestic, family and sexual violence services will receive $1.8 million.

DV Summit will also be brought forward and held in May during Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month.

Blog: Looking out for your neighbours during COVID-19

We need to work together to build positive and sustainable connections, so all Australians feel supported during this pandemic.

We all need to make it our responsibility to check in on each other for our mental wellbeing. Now more than ever, it is important for us to check on our neighbours and people in our communities, particularly those that are more vulnerable.

Your neighbour living alone, elderly friends, people with disability, someone new to the area, or someone from another country are identified as high risk.

NDIS: Priority home delivery services for groceries

As part of an ongoing commitment to supporting NDIS participants during this time, the NDIA has worked with supermarket retailers to make sure NDIS participants wanting support to grocery shop, have priority access to home delivery services.

Priority home delivery services provide an option for participants who are unable to continue shopping in their usual way to purchase grocery items online and have them delivered to their home.

Upcoming Grants

An up-to-date list of relevant current and future grants is hosted on the

QCOSS website

Upcoming Events

See a list of upcoming events on the QCOSS website. However please note, this listing contains events run by other organisations.

Please confirm with individual event organisers whether their listed events will proceed as planned.

Find a new job on the QCOSS website

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