Victoria Police Diversity Recruitment Program

In 2016 the Premier of Victoria, Danial Andrews announced a plan to hire an additional 3,000 police. Given the lack of African Australian representation among Victoria Police ranks Africause saw this as an opportunity to do something proactive to address this imbalance and to, at the same time create some positive flow on effects through the community in general.

The starting point for addressing the issue was to engage with Victoria Police and, with them, uncover why this under-representation occurs and to build a pathway that would enable members of the African Australian community to successfully navigate the (very challenging) process of joining Victoria Police. We have throughout this journey been overcome with how open and committed to this cause the Victoria Police have been and special mention needs to be made for the efforts in the initial stages of this process by then Deputy Commissioner Andrew Crisp and our own board member Superintendent Adrian Healy.  

This program is one that has required the input of a large array of skillsets and as a result Africause approached and then brought into the working group the combined talents of;

1. Victoria University who have constructed and run a new course specifically designed with the needs of the African applicant in mind. We need to say a big thankyou to Kerry O’Neil, Jennifer Lees & Karen Fitzimmons for their ongoing efforts here as we now have commenced our 3^rd course and started recruiting for our fourth.
2. Jesuit Social Services have acted as the lead applicant and managing organisation (thanks to Stephen Ward, Kate Wadsworth, Bianca Barbarisi & Luciana Signorette for keeping the program on track) 
3. Matchworks (Isabel Pavez who has provided us with the job active expertise we needed), 
4. AMES who have kindly provided their boardroom for all monthly Steering Committee meetings as well as contributing their expertise in refugee and migrant experience to these meetings and of course
5. Victoria Police who have pro-actively contributed to all aspects of the program, including the recruitment process, providing speakers for the course and individual mentors for each of the participants as well as the ongoing design and improvement of the program as a whole. There have been too many police officers who have contributed to name them all however of special note we do need to recognise the ongoing efforts of Stephen Mutton (who continues to contribute even while on long service leave), Fiona Bocksette, Karen House and Mark Porter

I also need to highlight the efforts of our Chairperson, Mr Phil Brooker provided leadership with Dr. Berhan Ahmed, who did the vast majority of the original legwork to get all these people and organisations in the same room and on the same page. He has continued, on behalf of Africause, to work tirelessly with the various African communities to promote the program and to identify those who have successfully applied to join the program.