On Thursday 10th October, Cathy McKenzie was presented The Jan Pentland Memorial Award. This prestigious annual award recognises an Accredited Member of Financial Counsellors Victoria (FCVic) who has demonstrated excellence in financial counselling service to the wider community above and beyond their normal duties as a financial counsellor.
Cathy McKenzie, Banyule Community Health Financial Counsellor, is employed in the same role that Jan Pentland held at Banyule Community Health over 30 years ago. Cathy embodies many of the values and skills that Jan had as a Financial Counsellor when she worked in our local community. Like Jan, Cathy is a great connector with the wide array of health, welfare, and legal workers at Banyule Community Health, ensuring community members get a truly integrated response.
Cathy started at Banyule Community Health in 2013, quickly becoming an asset to the team bringing her previous experience of working in the corporate sector, with a thirst to bring her Financial Counselling skills and a strong social justice lens to her work.
Cathy excelled in the role, bringing her skills and knowledge to a range of teams. Cathy has strong working relationships with many of our teams at Banyule Community Health including our Family Violence Team our Community Legal Service, our Gamblers Help team and our Aboriginal Health team. Her efforts have enabled access to the highest level of financial counselling support offering access to advocacy, information, and advice. These relationships ensure she is always accessible to those in the community most at need of her services.
In recent years, Cathy has seen a significant increase in demand for financial counselling services. The need to respond to this demand required innovation and a mindset shift. The need to create greater capacity to respond was essential, but funding to the sector was not matching the need. Cathy innovatively expanded capacity by creating a model that integrates Financial Counselling students and volunteers. Cathy developed clear and well-designed models of orientation and support with students, creating opportunities, mentoring and feedback that made the student/volunteer experience a rich one. This level of additional resource has essentially doubled our Financial Counselling resources to the community, and additionally provided a platform for mentoring the next wave of Financial Counsellors in our sector.
Cathy consistently goes above and beyond to advocate and change systems. She loves the chance to improve the conditions for a person who is experiencing hardship and provides them with the tools and resources to rebuild their lives.
Congratulations Cathy on being recognised by your peers and FCVic for your ongoing commitment and leadership in the financial counselling sector.