This is VACCHO’s Strategic Plan for 2026–2031, setting our direction for the next five years. Guided by our overarching Guiding Outcomes, it outlines the priorities, and commitments that will shape our work as we continue to strengthen Aboriginal Community-control across Victoria.
The plan reflects the aspirations of our sector and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. It is grounded in the belief that Aboriginal Community-controlled organisations deliver the best outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and that lasting change must be led by Community. It also responds to a dynamic social and political climate.
Over the next five years, VACCHO will continue to advocate, lead, and work alongside Members to create a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Victoria are healthy, strong, thriving, and connected to Culture, Community, and Country.
Our Guiding Outcomes describe our vision for the long-term changes we are working towards for Community.
Enduring and intergenerational, they are our guiding stars.
Every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person asserts their right to Country, Culture, Kinship and Community.
Our connections to our Ancestors, our Country and each other always have and always will sustain us. We work to restore the connections that colonisation fractured but never broke.
Whether we live in a town or a city, or on Country, and at every stage of life – from before birth, through our journey, and back to the Dreaming – we all have the right to find or return to connection, to heal, to thrive and to carry identity with pride.
Our people and families are thriving, healthy and well.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always known what it means to be healthy and well. We were strong in mind, body and spirit before colonisation, so that’s not something new we are chasing – it’s something we are returning to.
We don’t just want to ‘close the gap’. We want our people and families to thrive in the world we inhabit now, grounded in our Culture and in our own ways of knowing what it means to be well.
We live free from racism.
The right to health can only be realised when our people are free from racism and discrimination. When our ways of knowing, being and doing are ignored or devalued, systems intended to support us will continue to fail us.
Racism has caused deep harm and is built into structures, policies and services that were never designed for us, and that too often punish instead of support. We work to reform and rebuild systems, so they work with us – with culture at the centre.
Living free from racism means our people are free to thrive and able to shape our futures without limitation.
Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations are independent and self-determined.
Self-determination means having the freedom and agency to make our own decisions. We reclaim this independence because it was taken from us. It is the foundation of our strength today.
As ACCOs, we act from the strengths, needs and aspirations of our Communities, our way. Keeping our ACCOs strong, independent, respected and resourced keeps us all independent and strong.
Everyone is proud to live on lands with the oldest living and evolving culture in the world.
We want all Australians to embrace Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture as central to the fabric of the lands we live on. Our culture must be seen, heard and felt in everyday life — in our schools, workplaces, public spaces and institutions.
When culture is strong, visible and understood, our societies become culturally safe, everyone can experience a deeper sense of belonging, and all people carry the responsibility and the gift of honouring the world’s oldest living culture together.
Our Priorities
Self-determined Members
By 2031 VACCHO’s Members have the capability and freedom to exercise self-determination. ACCO services reach the communities that need them most and provide locally determined, family-centred, culturally rich care.
Collective Voice
By 2031 our collective voice is united, trusted, influential and respected.
Governments and others come to us for genuine, sustained partnership.
Asserting Our Cultural Rights
By 2031, we have challenged and guided the transformation of mainstream systems to fully recognise and uphold the cultural rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Thriving Communities
By 2031, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Victoria experience positive social, emotional, physical and cultural wellbeing.
By 2031, VACCHO has the capability and freedom to exercise self-determination.
The Need for Change
Keeping the Fires Strong was developed after a six-month consultation process involving our Board, our Members, our staff and other stakeholders. This helped us to identify, name and describe the complex range of factors and pressures we face, which in turn helped us to determine our Priorities with full awareness.
The document below outlines these factors and pressures to provide context to the decisions we made about where to focus our efforts over the next five years.
“The artwork represents the guiding stars and Ancestral presence in the Dreamtime. This represents the past, where our ancestors passed on the healing and medical treatment of the mind, the body and the spiritual nutriment needed to sustain our natural belonging to the grounded earth, our kinship and cultural practices.
Here in the present, the large fire surrounded by a gathering of collective voices, from the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation Members. It draws Community to its place of warmth and light. As the respected diverse communities gathering network, speak on health issues and social and emotional wellbeing of Community members, families and generations to emerge.
Inspired by Aunty Jill Gallagher’s insight and words.”
Embracing diversity
VACCHO’s vision of vibrant, healthy, self-determining Aboriginal communities proudly includes all LGBTQIASB+ members.
We celebrate the diversity of our Rainbow Mob and are committed to creating a culturally safe, inclusive and accessible environment where everyone feels seen, respected and valued.
We also work to advance the rights of people with disability, guided by the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
This month, the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) launched The Biggest Relief campaign to coincide with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.
