WHY VOLUNTARILY AMALGAMATE?
We deliver similar and often interconnected services with a shared goal of providing better health, wellbeing, and support outcomes for people within the inner south, and southeast suburbs of Melbourne. This is a credit to the vision created by each of our organisations respectively.
We acknowledge that clients are increasingly experiencing replication in the services offered across the organisations and a voluntary amalgamation would help to reduce service silos and help to improve client access to services.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our community health services and if there is anything we have learned, it is that we are better together than apart.
Our three organisations have collaborated and partnered during the pandemic, and we are delighted with the outcomes this alliance has yielded.
Together we can advocate for our communities, including leading up to State and Federal elections in 2022.
Combined we represent more clients and a larger geographic area, making our voice stronger and louder.
We are confident that our values, objectives, and visions for the future align with each other.
History of voluntary amalgamation
Bringing aligned organisations together to deliver better and more services to its local communities has been a key part of the history of Star Health, Central Bayside Community Health Services and Connect Health & Community. When Central Bayside Community Health Services (CBCHS) celebrated its 30 years of service to its local community in 2019, it reflected on its early beginnings. In April 1989, the Mordialloc Cheltenham Community Health Centre commenced business. The very next year, in 1990 it merged with Mordialloc Aged Services and
in 1997 Chelsea Community Health Centre merged with CBCHS to become larger and stronger.
It’s the same story for Star Health. In 1993, three Community Health Services in Prahran, St Kilda and South Melbourne merged to form Inner South Community Health Service (ISCHS). ISCHS became Star Health in 2019 and continues to stand on the traditions of these smaller organisations by addressing health inequity for its local community. Connect Health & Community has also continued to evolve over the past 40 years to better serve its
community. More recently in 2017 it entered a joint venture with Link Health and Community to expand its primary health offering to the community of Sandringham and beyond by opening the Sandringham Ambulatory Care Centre at the Sandringham Hospital in partnership with Alfred Health.
The commitment of our three organisations to adapt, grow and strengthen our service offering to our communities has never wavered. We believe the voluntary amalgamation of our services during one of the biggest challenges to our health system is a natural evolution which will ensure that we can continue to be even more effective for the next 40 years.
LEARNING FROM OUR PEERS
We recognise that a voluntary amalgamation, though very new to our three organisations, is not new to community health services. Amongst the in-depth conversations we are having with our stakeholders, we are also looking to other community health organisations that have successfully voluntarily amalgamated or merged with other like-minded organisations.
As the name of the entity will be decided after the AGM vote, the voluntary amalgamation will be referred to as NewCo throughout this document.