Chinese Stroke Support Group - Social Well-being Finalist: 2026 Tidy Towns Awards
For Chinese-speaking stroke survivors and their families in Victoria, recovery can mean navigating serious health decisions in a second language, often alone.
The Chinese Stroke Support Group, was built to close that gap. Volunteer-led and entirely community-run, the Blackburn-based group offers bilingual health education, mobile health screenings, gentle exercise classes for stroke survivors and seniors, and respite support for family carers, alongside community outings and greening activities that keep members connected to each other and to the wider community.
A decade in, the CSSG has supported hundreds of Chinese-speaking stroke survivors, carers and at-risk seniors, run health education drives reaching thousands, and built a pipeline of young university volunteers who train alongside community elders. What the group has learned along the way is straightforward: peer support delivered in someone's own language changes behaviour faster than a pamphlet ever could, and a carer's wellbeing matters just as much to recovery as the survivor's.
The X-factor is the "Circle of Care" model itself: physical health, emotional support, cultural connection and intergenerational mentorship, all under one roof, in a language people actually understand.
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