Annual Review 2023-2024
The 2023-24 DWCS Annual Review outlines the activities and initiatives undertaken by the support service.
Previous Annual Reviews and Newsletters can be found here.
Latest News
Volunteer with DWCS
If you would like to volunteer with DWCS, please click here to access our Volunteer Application Form or click here to learn more.
Our Mission, Our Beginning, Our Service, Our Values:
For more information, please click here.
Help Bring Hope to Rural and Remote Communities Brochure:
Your donation could:
- Help people like Charlie to find their way and rebuild their life.
- Help mothers like Evelyn who are forced to raise their children alone.
- Help children to participate in all educational opportunities.
- And help in so many other ways.
Click here to read the Brochure. Donors may wish to print this additional information.
Want to organise a fundraising event for DWCS?
Click here for information.
Click here to read or download a Thanksgiving Prayer for Farmers.
About Us
Our Mission
Downs & West Community Support (DWCS), a ministry of Sisters of Charity Community Care Ltd (SCCC), offers encouragement, discreet and personalised assistance to farming families and their communities in Southern Queensland who are severely affected by climatic conditions or family matters beyond their control.
We are motivated by a sense of responsibility to provide compassionate care and to share our resources as far as possible.
SCCC Ltd is a not-for-profit Registered Charity and DWCS is dedicated to supporting our farming families and their rural communities. DWCS is funded by the people for the people!
Our Service
drought - flood - fire - storms - COVID
Farmers and their communities experience financial and emotional hardships. A loss of income and farming infrastructure, culling of quality stud breeders and the prospect of needing to leave their home and farm has a direct impact on family, social interaction, their health, and agricultural production.
Support DWCS offers focuses on individual and family needs. These may include:
Practical support may include providing food and household hampers, toiletry care packs, Christmas hampers and gifts.
Financial support may involve providing cash assistance, prepaid grocery and petrol vouchers, essential home appliances, paying domestic and farm bills, purchasing stock feed, replacing water tanks, fencing, gates and repairing machinery.
Emotional support is achieved by visiting farmers – unlimited face to face interactions, writing letters, phone contact, visiting people in hospitals and utilising appropriate referral systems as required.
Social Events involves hosting Wellness Days and the unique Dragonfly Health and Wellness Retreats for country women, which may include health checks and relaxation therapies, self-care presentations, motivational speakers, companionship, and times for personal reflection.
We work, in collaboration with other rural service providers, to organise rural events and will assist, where possible, families needing immediate care.
Our Objectives
to support farmers and their local rural communities by offering a listening ear, pastoral care, practical assistance, and organising events,
to work in collaboration with, and to utilise the appropriate referral systems of other rural organizations who offer professional counselling, financial advice, and local community updates,
to raise funds for purchasing essential provisions for those suffering the impact of drought, floods, fire, and other matters beyond their control, and
to raise awareness of the impact Natural Disasters are having on farmers, their families, and rural towns and to seek practical support and concrete action from those in a position to share resources.
BEING EXTENSIVELY USEFUL............in the service of the poor
Read more about us here.


