Pivot Community Hub receives $100,000 Lotterywest grant to assist disadvantaged people get back on their feet

Further funding is rushing in to a community hub that provides flexible emergency relief to people doing it tough in the Great Southern, three months after it narrowly avoided closure altogether. Pivot Community Hub received a $100,000 Lotterywest grant on Monday, providing it with reserves to assist clients with anything from car registration fees to a hot meal to help getting back on their feet. Run by Pivot Support Services, the hub can now perform the full range of its operations for at least another three years with the Lotterywest money and the funding from the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation that saved it in September last year. Chair Marcelle Cannon said the “agile” funding helps the hub deliver what each individual needs on a case-by-case basis, assisting people before they reach homelessness. “It may be like food, it may be some initial helping to pay bills until the person can get their financial plan in place, a short-term help to buy them time to do that work,” she said. “Sometimes it’s short-term accommodation, sometimes it’s been used to pay people’s car registration, because that’s where they’re living. “It does allow us to respond to what is going to be the most meaningful thing for that person.” Pivot interim chief executive Aaron Olszewski said it was “difficult to imagine a better return on investment” for Lotterywest, with the hub’s work aiming to prevent disadvantaged people’s circumstances from worsening. “With that immediate relief you’re able to take your time, address those immediate needs that you have,” he said. “Then you get that diagnostic, that assessment capacity that happens secondarily, so that people are given a view to how they’re going to get back on the right track and what the way is forward and have some positivity in terms of moving forward with their lives.”