Catholic Social Services Victoria recently announced the appointment of Cathy Humphrey as the new Chair of its Council. Cathy has been working in the areas of community housing and homelessness since 1993 and was Chief Executive Officer of Sacred Heart Mission from 2011 to 2022, leading the organisation through the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, Cathy shares what lies at the heart of her desire to serve those on the margins.
Cathy Humphrey was born and bred in Melbourne and spent her earlier years in the western suburbs. One of six children and the only girl to Harriett and Arthur, she attended the local Catholic primary and secondary schools in Maidstone and Braybrook and was ‘raised Catholic’, giving her the foundational values that would contribute to her professional life in the social services sector.
Enjoying drama during her secondary years, Cathy initially thought she’d like to be an actor. Her focus and desire to study drama at university changed once she’d finished HSC. Rather than attend university after high school, she decided to enter the workforce and was employed at the Department of Education in administration and payroll. During the ‘Kennett years’ when the public service was being downsized, Cathy took a redundancy and then enrolled in disability studies at the School of Mines and Industries in Ballarat. Following this, she worked with people with intellectual disabilities for several years, and then went back to complete a qualification in social science. Following her studies, since 1996, she has taken on roles specifically focused on people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
I really came to like that opportunity to be involved in someone’s life, that privileged position we end up being in, helping them to do what they want to do in terms of their goals and aspirations. That’s what really drove my passion to stay working in the sector.
‘I started working with Bethany Family Services in Geelong and became a team leader of their case management services,’ she says. ‘We were mostly working with families experiencing homelessness and most of those were female headed households. So, lots of family violence issues, lots of intergenerational poverty, and unemployment.
‘I really liked working with people,’ she says, ‘and that’s what I really wanted to do. I really came to like that opportunity to be involved in someone’s life, that privileged position we end up being in, helping them to do what they want to do in terms of their goals and aspirations. That’s what really drove my passion to stay working in the sector.’
Leaving Geelong, Cathy moved back to Melbourne to work in various roles in the Department of Human Services, where she discovered Sacred Heart Mission. She was working in the Department’s Dandenong regional office overseeing the contracts of homelessness-funded services, with Sacred Heart Mission being one of the organisations providing homelessness services. ‘I’d gone out for an agency visit,’ she says, ‘and I was sparked by the work that Sacred Heart Mission was doing. They had a really grassroots approach to their work.
‘So, when a job came up at Sacred Heart Mission, I thought, it’s time to go back to the sector and it felt like a good fit.’ Cathy joined the Sacred Heart Mission team in 2001 as Manager of Community Programs. Ten years later, in 2011, she was appointed its CEO.
As CEO of Sacred Heart Mission (2011-2022), Cathy focussed on seeing through the strategies that were established by the previous CEO and developing new strategies for the organisation with its Board. ‘That was quite exciting,’ she says, ‘having that opportunity to lay the groundwork for what the future would look like for Sacred Heart Mission. I had a great executive team around me, so it enabled us to be a little bit braver and bolder to take on challenges that were important for the organisation.’
During her tenure, Cathy managed a 10-year strategy which included major building works to develop a new residential aged care facility and to improve the facilities at Sacred Heart Mission’s site in St Kilda, as well as the expansion of the Journey to Social Inclusion (J2SI) program, as Victoria’s first Social Impact Bond. J2SI is now known to be one of the most effective programs to end chronic homelessness in Australia.
‘The Journey to Social Inclusion program continues today with the State Government announcing another investment into delivering more services in this year’s budget. So, that’s testament to the success of that program in terms of the outcomes that it’s achieving for people. It’s really pleasing to see those results,’ she says. ‘The completion and official opening of the buildings last year is another significant achievement and highlight.’
Cathy was also responsible for establishing one of the first trauma-informed care practices in the sector, which focusses on implementing policies and practices that keep both staff and clients safe, when clients present with complex and challenging behaviours. ‘When you’re operating a drop-in service and you have 200-plus people turning up every day, you can be face-to-face with quite a lot of challenging and complex behaviours,’ she says. ‘And so, we needed to build skills and implement policies and practices to ensure people were safe at work and clients were safe, too.
‘That became something that flowed through my whole time at Sacred Heart Mission because those complex, challenging behaviours don’t go away but you still need to provide the necessary services to people. So, that’s what led us down that process of trauma-informed care. That deep understanding of what people bring – what kind of history and context they bring with them to their engagement with services and what that means for the way that they present and behave – really led to a focus on giving more skills and practice approaches to staff so that they can bring this to their work.’
Cathy also led the organisation through the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of great challenge and uncertainty, particularly in the provision of services for those living in residential aged care. ‘We just didn’t know what we were dealing with,’ she says, ‘and we were learning along the way.’ Cathy attended all briefings with the Department of Health to keep them informed of how Sacred Heart Mission was managing their residential aged care site, plus all internal meetings with staff. When additional staff were needed ‘on the ground’ to help provide meals in resident’s homes, she donned personal protective gear to do this. ‘Within that challenge, knowing how everyone felt, it was important to be all-hands-on-deck,’ she says. ‘It was important for me, too, in my leadership role, to be among the staff in serving those people.’
Reflecting on why she decided to work among some of the most vulnerable people in our community, Cathy says it’s about affecting change, whether at an individual or a systemic level. ‘It’s about that ability to contribute with purpose. I’m not just doing it for the sake of “churning out work” and getting paid,’ she says. ‘It’s about being able to contribute to change. So, as a CEO, it was about how I create opportunities to deliver better outcomes for people.’
Cathy’s faith upbringing laid the foundation for grounding her in the values of Catholic Social Teaching. ‘Being brought up in a Catholic family has really grounded me in that sense of “community and others” and not just being all about yourself,’ she says. ‘And how that translates to my work with Catholic Social Services is about giving back. Even now, having semi-retired from the social services sector, it’s not all about me and how I embrace and enjoy my time. Rather, I think, how can I be of value to others? And I think that having purpose and contributing are the values embedded in me in terms of Catholic Social Teaching.’
Being brought up in a Catholic family has really grounded me in that sense of “community and others” and not just being all about yourself.
As the newly appointed Chair of the Council of Catholic Social Services Victoria, Cathy is ‘really excited’, and is looking forward to being an ‘enabler’ to support the CSSV Executive Director and the team that’s delivering the work, to ‘do their job well and not get in the way’, and to support the governance operations of the Council.
‘My role is to make sure that everyone’s contributing and doing what we need to do to make sure CCSV can operate and function. And I’ll also help the Council in setting the strategy, to put forward some of the parameters and ideas to engage the Council and its members.
‘My hope is that CSSV will continue to influence government policy and that government continues to embrace the expertise held by the Catholic social services.’
She also looks forward to engaging with the Archdiocese and the Bishops, to ensure the continued collaboration with Church to advocate justice for the marginalised and disadvantaged.
‘In terms of the Catholic Social Services sector, we can no longer be just about doing good works. I think the future is about evidence-based, outcomes-focussed services, where we can demonstrate the impact services are making in their community.’
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