Welcome to the Greater Bendigo Early Childhood Directory of Services.

Early childhood is defined as between birth and starting school. Therefore, this directory details services for families with children within this age range. Family in this context encompasses all the rich and diverse types of families that exist in our community.

This is a holistic directory that focuses on services within the City of Greater Bendigo, located on the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung and the Taungurung Peoples of the Kulin Nation.  Services in this directory are either specialist early years services, or they provide a holistic range of services that families may access.

The purpose of this directory is to enable early years workers and other colleagues to easily make warm referrals and supported transitions to connect families with the resources they may need to enable them to flourish and lead happy, healthy lives.

If you are a member of the community seeking information on services available to families in Bendigo, please contact The Orange Door (TOD). TOD can identify the help and support families may need and connect them with relevant services.

We will do our best to keep this directory up to date. To inform us of needed changes please contact us.

We would like to thank all the agencies listed in the directory for generously sharing their time and knowledge to make this resource come to life.

Services listed in this section are either block funded, fee-for-service (FSS), or use both funding models.

  • Block funding is where a funder (usually the Federal and/or State government) gives a provider funding to provide a service. These services are usually free to access.
  • FSS is a payment model where services are unbundled and paid for separately by the consumer. These services are not free.

In this section, each entry details if the provider is block funded, FSS, or use both funding models.

In focusing on the early years, this directory has concentrated on providers who help people access the NDIS, and/or provide Early Childhood Intervention. For a detailed list of registered NDIS providers access the NDIS Provider Finder at https://www.ndis.gov.au/participants/working-providers/find-registered-provider/provider-finder

Mental Health services are separated into primary providers and secondary/tertiary providers. The difference between these providers are:

  • Secondary health care are speciality services which usually require a referral from a GP or other health care provider.

This directory has focused on listing supported playgroups, which “…are playgroups run by a paid facilitator that aim to support families with particular vulnerabilities or needs. Supported playgroups focus on supporting the development and wellbeing of both parents and children. Many also aim to help parents and children to transition to community (i.e., self-managed, unsupported) playgroups.”

Most community playgroups are not supported playgroups.

To locate community playgroups within Greater Bendigo read the Bendigo Playgroups Flyer

To locate community playgroups throughout Victoria go to the Playgroup Victoria website at https://www.playgroup.org.au/