Tasmanian Association of Community Houses

TACH Executive Officer, John Hooper with the current TACH Board at the 2010 Board Retreat.

TACH is the peak body for Neighbourhood and Community Houses and Centres across Tasmania. 

TACH was formed by a group of volunteers in 1985 to collectively represent and support the work of Houses within their communities and across the state.  For fifteen years, TACH was governed and run by a volunteer management committee with no recurrent funding.  In 2000, the State Government acknowledged the importance of Neighbourhood Houses by providing funding for an Executive Officer.  This funding has increased in recent years and now provides the equivalent of two full time positions to work in support of the 33 DHHS funded Houses & Centres and also the Defence funded community centre at Dowsing Point. 

TACH Inc is governed by a Board made up of ten members elected by the three Regional Neighbourhood House Networks (South, North, and North-West). These representatives on the TACH Board must be staff, committee members or volunteers from their local House. Each House can nominate one of their financial members for the annual election to one of these regional representative positions. This ensures that TACH continues working on issues that are important to our members and that our services stay relevant.   

Some of the services TACH provides are: 

• An annual Conference which we highly subsidise for House delegates
• An AtTACH newsletter published up to four times a year
• A regular e-NEWS providing information on funding opportunities, award changes, training opportunities (let us know if you‘d like to be included on our email list)
• Confidential assistance and information on House management issues
• A Management Committee Handbook available to Members on our website, which is currently being updated
• TACH, through one-off funding from DPAC, has recently offered all committees across Tasmania free training at your House through Malcolm MacDonald. This has been well received by the committees that took part, and now that the grant is finished we‘d like to talk to committees about how we might try and fund this training in an ongoing way
• We coordinate joint marketing and promotion of the work of Neighbourhood Houses across the State, eg TACH last year and this year are running an advertisement about the work of Neighbourhood Houses on Southern Cross during Neighbourhood House Week
• Provide regular updates on changes to Awards, Government policy and legislative requirements
• Take the social issues common across most communities and lobby collectively as a united voice to State and Federal politicians and Departments – for instance, TACH recently made a submission to Treasury for more funding for Neighbourhood Houses in the next Budget; and in January we lodged a submission in response to the Government‘s release of their draft Agenda for Children and Young People
• Liaison with the Department of Health and Human Services, particularly the Community Partnership Teams and other Government agencies on issues affecting Houses and your communities
• Provide state-wide representation on committees and councils – e.g. the TasCOSS Social Policy Council; No Interest Loans Scheme Board (NILS)
• A website that contains great information, resources, policies and procedures and many other tools which are of value to our Members
• Regional networking and training opportunities eg TACH invited Jobs Australia to host Modern Award workshops just for our Members to assist you to transition your workers to the new award
• Auspicing projects like Eating with Friends to support Houses to start their own social healthy eating groups for people who are socially isolated
• Source funds as a state-wide network and then broker those funds to Houses to deliver projects at a local level, as in our ten year $1.5 million grant for Everyday Literacy, and our current Get Healthy Project

The TACH team is made up of a full time Executive Officer, John Hooper and part time staff including a Development Officer – Kim Lethbridge, Finances Officer – Pam Bridgen, Project and Development Assistant – Leah Brightman and Project Officers Karen Austen (Eating With Friends), Ron Sutton (Get Healthy Service, Everyday Literacy) and Malcolm McDonald (Governance Project).