Yvonne Sadgrove from Centacare said the expo was brilliant.

“It’s fantastic for us to refresh who’s who at the zoo,” Ms Sadgrove joked.

She was talking to Adol Takpiny from the Department of Justice about services that could be referred between agencies.

“Adol has all the Department of Justice stuff and so that’s good because a lot of it fits in with all of our community organisations too,” Ms Sadgrove said.

Ms Takpiny had travelled from Sydney for the expo.

“We’re trying to do a lot of stuff out of the big cities, that’s why I’m here today, just to promote the department to service providers and to members of the community as well,” Ms Takpiny said.

“I hope to get a lot of people here today. We hopefully will be coming to Griffith on a frequent basis to speak with the community and work out what is needed to be done here.”

Centacare were excited at the prospect of being able to better liaise with the department.

“With Centacare we’ve already talked to Adol about having an open court day, so that people can come in and feel comfortable in the courts, and maybe having someone from victims services to come and have a chat,” Ms Sadgrove said.

The Community Services Expo was organised by Barbara Penninga from Griffith Neighbourhood House along with Cheryl Wood from Griffith Central.

Having 42 service providers in the one place at the one time was important for residents as well as service providers Ms Wood said.

“They can get a lot of info by just walking around,” Ms Wood said.

The interagency networking was important to Ms Penninga.

“Organisations, groups, services and community members can connect all in the one spot for a few hours over two days and find out about services, get information and put a face to a name,” Ms Penninga said.

“Funding and programs can change, so it’s tricky for residents, as well as other services, to know what is a current program.

“It can be quite a maze.”