Eden is one of the most disadvantaged regions in NSW according to a new report.
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Dropping off the Edge, published by the Catholic Social Services and Jesuit Social Services, ranked 621 postcodes in NSW on 21 different indicators of disadvantage.
The indicators were based on statistics from government agencies and covered areas such as social wellbeing, health, community safety, access to housing, education and employment.
One of the report’s authors, University of Sydney Professor Tony Vinson, said Eden ranked somewhere between 25 and 30 out of the most disadvantaged areas in NSW.
The top 40 most disadvantaged towns were divided into six bands, and Eden came in at band five.
Professor Vinson said the biggest problems in Eden were unskilled workers, long-term unemployment, low levels of Year 3 numeracy skills, criminal convictions and psychiatric and prison admissions.
According to the study, Eden is in the top five percent for, highest number of criminal convictions, number of unskilled workers and number of prison admissions.
Eden also scored in the top 10 per cent of postcodes for the proportion of people receiving disability support and suffering long-term unemployment as well as the rate of unemployment, the number of psychiatric hospital admissions and the percentage of year three students below the national minimum standard of numeracy skills.
Eden also had particularly high rates of domestic violence (top 15 per cent), juvenile convictions (top 15 per cent), percentage of year three students below the national minimum standard of reading skills (top 15 per cent) and proportion of households considered to be on a low family income (top 22 per cent).
The report divided the postcodes into four different categories, most disadvantaged, disadvantaged, avantaged and most advantaged.
The Eden and Bega postcodes both fell into the most disadvantaged category, with Eden listed as much worse than Bega. The Merimbula postcode was found to be around average for the state but ended up drifting into the disadvantaged category and the Pambula postcode is considered to be advantaged.
In Bega the indicators that had the highest level of disadvantage were unskilled workers, low levels of Year 9 reading skills and psychiatric admissions. In Merimbula the indicators were unskilled workers, low levels of year 3 reading skills and percentage of people on rent assistance.
Pambula reported low levels of domestic violence, juvenile convictions and psychiatric admissions. Pambula was also found to be in the best 20 per cent of postcodes for year three literacy and numeracy skills.
While the professor was cautious about stigmatising areas with the release of his report, he thought “the community deserves to know where additional effort can be made”.
Tonya Hughes, the operations manager for Illawarra and South Coast at Mission Providence, an organisation that has been operating in Eden since early July, agreed there was disadvantage in Eden.
However, she said the town’s unemployment level was about the national average and programs carried out by Mission Providence had seen a decrease in that unemployment.
MBC Employment Services area manager for ACT, Bega and Cooma Andrew D’Arnay had a more positive outlook.
“We have a lot of people in the Bega Valley with skills, it’s just whether they are transferable or not to the industries we have in the local area,” he said.
Mr D’Arnay said from his perspective most people are “not too bad” at literacy and numeracy in the Valley and there were services for people looking to improve these skills if they wanted to.
“It’s not even a situation where we don’t have access to these services – there are plenty there if people want to look,” he said.
Empathising with the results from the report, The Greens’ Member of the NSW Legislative Council Mehreen Faruqi said one of the big problems in regional NSW was lack of public transport, and more money needed to be spent on improving the issue.
“We can’t just sit here and take things for granted,” Dr Faruqi said.
“We’ve got to demand what we deserve.”
Disadvantage persists for decade and a half
DROPPING off the Edge found disadvantage can remain persistent throughout the years, as 24 of the 40 most disadvantaged postcodes in the report were also in the most disadvantaged categories in similar studies conducted in 2004 and 1999.
“It’s a sad reflection on society that this can be done for 15 years,” one of the authors of the report, Professor Tony Vinson, said.
“You think we would be making every effort to improve the outcomes for these areas.”
A major finding of the report was that only 11 postcodes, or 1.8 per cent of the total number, accounted for 139 top rankings, or 21.4 per cent – an eleven-fold overrepresentation.
Also, 37 postcodes, or six per cent of the total, had just under half of the most disadvantaged rank positions and 70 per cent of the postcodes were not in the top ranks at all.
The report found the main characteristics of the most disadvantaged areas were criminal convictions of the populace, access to the internet, unemployment, domestic violence, lack of qualifications, young adults not being engaged in work or study, and limited education.