Lotus Found Her Calling In Community Services

Friends and family had been telling Lotus Kairon that she would make a fantastic counsellor. After finishing high school, Lotus thought she’d give it a go. It was a great decision, now a first-year student working towards her Diploma in Community Services at Melbourne Polytechnic.

Already, the empathetic young woman has learned about advocating for people, assessing children at risk and implementing service programs, as well as the occupational health and safety and legal and ethical aspects of community service work. Lotus says ‘I thought community services is really nice and helpful and I probably should just give it a try'.

‘Most of my family and friends think that I'd be good with helping out people and I’ve received feedback from people that I’d be a really good counsellor. I just took it from there.’

Lotus was excited to attend the new Greensborough campus near to her home, and she says the facilities here are exceptional. Her friendly teachers, who bring their varied industry experience in aged care, case management, homelessness and child welfare into the classroom to share with their students are also a welcome addition to her career path.

She’s looking forward to doing a placement next year to get hands-on experience in the industry.

Never a Dull Day 

Never boring, Lotus says that there is always work to do through her course but it's definitely manageable, ‘the study load is fairly reasonable, it’s not too much but there’s always something to do every day you go into class, we have a different topic but it goes for the whole day, so we learn a lot about it. It’s actually easier to retain the information that way. If you talk about one subject in one day, honestly that’s much easier for me because I have the whole day to remember everything.’

Importantly, she connects well with her classmates too.

‘My class is a nice mix, you get young people, the mums and the older people. They are really nice, very communicative and have their own opinions about the community. No one is afraid to voice their opinions if they feel anything.’ Lotus feels that this makes for open conversation around important issues in the community. 

The Five Year Plan 

‘I hopefully will have a nice job, maybe I’m helping children or doing family violence work or even counselling or case managing,’ Lotus says. ‘The thing is, I’m quite open to anything at the moment. I want to try different things first before I can really say where my focus will settle'

If you'd like to find out more about Community Services or Mental Health Care , have look at our course program here