2025 Year in Review
2025 has been a year of meaningful growth, strong partnerships, practical support, and significant milestones. Discover more about CatholicCare’s vital work and achievements throughout the year.
Guided by compassion, dignity and respect, CatholicCare has continued its vital mission throughout 2025, supporting vulnerable individuals, families and communities across the Hunter-Manning regions. This year has been one of meaningful growth, strengthened partnerships, and practical support for thousands of people facing hardship.
Across our Community Programs, the need for assistance has continued to rise. Despite funding challenges, our Community Kitchens served more than 40,000 meals in 2025, providing warmth, nourishment and connection during a time when cost-of-living pressures continue to affect many households.
This year also marked two significant milestones: 10 years of service for the Taree Community Kitchen and 5 years for the Forster Community Kitchen. These anniversaries celebrate not only the provision of a consistent, vital support service but also mark a decade of community, volunteerism and hope.
Our annual Make a Difference Appeal once again highlighted the generosity of our region, raising more than $16,000 to support our unfunded programs, including our kitchens and community outreach services.
In our Permanency Support Program, 2025 was a year of profound outcomes for children and young people. We celebrated seven successful restorations, two guardianships, and one adoption - each outcome representing the stability and belonging every child deserves. We also expanded our pool of respite carers and supported four children to transition from general foster care to kinship care. These milestones reflect the dedication of our staff, carers and families who work tirelessly to create safe, nurturing environments.
Our Local Support Services program, supporting men experiencing domestic and family violence, responded to significant demand receiving 4,350 referrals this year. We deepened our partnership with CatholicCare Broken Bay, now collaborating across two programs, responding to significant demand, Local Support Services (LSS) and Clinical Care Coordination, a complex mental health program. These partnerships have strengthened our collective response and improved service reach across the region.
Overall, across our male and female Domestic and Family Violence programs, CatholicCare supported 458 victim-survivors, including 50 children, providing pathways to safety, stability and specialised care.
The Nurturing Best Beginnings program also gained national attention. The program uses infant simulators to demonstrate the impacts of drug and alcohol use on babies. Our team presented at the NADA Conference in Sydney and later at the International Childhood Trauma Conference in Melbourne. This recognition reflects CatholicCare’s commitment to innovative, evidence-based education for young people.
The Rosewood Centre continued to expand its footprint and impact, opening a new site in Charlestown and delivering an impressive 15,026 psychology, Behaviour Support and assessment sessions to 2,115 clients. Therapeutic Services further supported 2,943 clients and families, offering compassionate, high-quality mental healthcare to those who might otherwise go without.
Our GambleAware Hunter team delivered 2,191 sessions, supporting 378 new referrals and engaging the community at 379 events across the Hunter and Manning regions.
Early intervention remained a priority, with the Targeted Earlier Intervention (TEI) program providing 562 counselling sessions, and additional counselling and casework delivered through School Based Support and our Gloucester outreach. The Beyond the Gates program continued to thrive, supporting around 320 students and families through school-based wellbeing support.
Finally, Zimmerman Services Healing and Support walked alongside 53 clients, offering trauma-informed, survivor-focused assistance across therapeutic support, Redress, crisis response and community engagement.
As we reflect on 2025, we acknowledge the dedication of our staff, volunteers, partners, carers and supporters. Together, we remain committed to building a community where every person is valued, supported and given hope for the future.