Hub Showcase: Our Place Westall

Published
Monday, March 30, 2026 - 12:00 PM

Hear from Colleen McCombe about Our Place Westall. Our Place plays a key connecting role, getting to know families, building trust, facilitating referrals to services on and off the Hub site. They also as provide opportunities for parents to meet each other and access information.

  • Name of Hub: Our Place Westall
  • Hub location: Westall Primary School, Clayton South in Metropolitan Melbourne
  • Hub setting: Westall Primary School is co-located with the Kingston City Council managed Westall Community Hub, with a shared entrance. This joined up facility enables the school families to have easy access to child, health and community services.

 

How would you describe your Hub?

Westall is a very welcoming multicultural community where more than 80 languages are spoken. The community has access to services provided by Kingston City Council and others at the Community Hub, including maternal and child health, playgroups, social groups, library, legal, health, disability and family support services.

The Our Place team plays a key connecting role across the site, getting to know families, building trust, facilitating referrals to services on and off site and providing opportunities for parents to meet each other and access to information.

 

'I think Our Place is a great model to show how collaboration works really well.'

– Westall Service Provider

 

How does your Hub help services or professionals work together to make things easier for families?

The Our Place approach involves bringing schools, early childhood education, government and services together to work in partnership, and collaborate on common goals. We undertake community consultation activities to inform strategic priorities.

In 2025 we developed our 3-year shared strategic plan. Our priorities are to ensure that:

  1. Westall’s culturally and linguistically diverse community is actively supported through inclusive systems that ensure every child can access the health and developmental services they need.
  2. We support families with service system navigation and build parental capacity to support their children’s learning and development.
  3. Services offered on site and off site are seamless and easy to access for our community.

We work to create a culture of in-person ‘warm referrals’ across the site. We know that the service system can be hard to navigate, especially for families who have recently arrived in Australia.  Sometimes a verbal suggestion of what to do is not enough for community members to be confident to approach a service.  There are many service providers on site, and we provide networking time and information resources to enable as many ‘warm’ in person introductions to take place.

We help facilitate collaboration between the primary school and early childhood education provider to enable continuity of learning between kindergarten and the first year of primary school. This is to enable children have a smooth transition into the first year of school and settle easily into routines and learning.

'Our Place has a really good awareness of the needs of the community and what services are available to be able to connect people up.'

– Westall Primary School Principal

 

 

What is something your team has learned?

We have learned that different service and education settings have diverse goals, policies and ways of working. That means when we have a shared challenge, such as child safety, or known barriers to services, we need solutions that enable the different voices to develop practical solutions.

We coordinate programs and activities to support literacy and oral language development of children at Westall.  We collaborate with the early childhood services and the library to deliver Multilingual Story Time for children across the site, building a culture of inclusion as well as encouragement and celebration of reading.

 

'Playgroup and library are amazing people are very helpful and welcoming. Love this place.'

– Parent (Parent Voice Survey 2024)

 

'I would like to say thanks to Our Place and Westall Primary School who provided the opportunity for us to come and meet other families and get connected.'

– Parent (Parent Voice Survey 2024)

 

 

Related resources

 

Proudly in partnership with

The National Child and Family Hubs Network is a national, collaborative group working together to strengthen Child and Family Hubs Australia-wide through research, policy, advocacy, and learning. The Network is generously supported by The Ian Potter Foundation, Minderoo Foundation, and Paul Ramsay Foundation.

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.