An emotional councillor shared a personal story when he sought support for homeless people in Baw Baw Shire.

Responding to community concern, Cr Ben Lucas said he recently met two people living rough near Memorial Park in Drouin.
From this, Cr Lucas wants answers on how council currently supported people experiencing homelessness, relationships with social welfare agencies and further actions which could be considered.
"There's tangible things that I want to see occur from this," he said. "Just saying, we're council, we can't do anything, isn't a good enough answer for me. Empathy goes a long way."
Unofficially labelling it "Uncle Tom's motion", Cr Lucas call for an officer report on the issues. He gained unanimous support from his fellow councillors.
Cr Lucas described cautiously approaching two homeless people - Daniel and Rebecca - in Memorial Park for a chat.
The conversation was centred around their plans for Anzac Day following, what he called, "derogatory and quite disgusting" comments circulating on social media.
"Very nice people," Cr Lucas said. "It wasn't all about just getting rid of them. I found myself asking, what can we do, how can we help from a council perspective?"
He said the chat brought about memories of his Uncle Tom who was a nomad, looked like a bushranger and experienced discrimination.
"The system let him down, a lot of things let him down," Cr Lucas said. "But he was always so lovely, so giving, so caring."
Cr Suzanne Allen said council might be able to play a role in connecting welfare services.
"Once upon a time, you could walk anywhere around Baw Baw and this would not be so prevalent," Cr Allen said. "You wouldn't even know, we were a bit immune. But I think you would have to be blind now not to see the people."
"We are all humans and we all deserve kindness and some help," she added.
Cr Brendan Kingwill said he had worked with homeless youth in the past and understood "it's a very broad and confusing subject, and not an easy fix."
"I don't think we need to go and reinvent the wheel," Cr Kingwill said. "But, as Cr Allen said, we maybe need a more co-ordinated approach to how we deal with the issue."
Cr Paul Pratt praised Cr Lucas' courage, noting councillors often get told "to stay in our lane".
"We've got a responsibility to represent our community, and that's everybody in our community," Cr Pratt said.
Cr Danny Goss said the report would be interesting to provide an understanding of what council currently did, how it could work in with welfare agencies and offer further assistance. He was keen to understand more about the local homeless problem to "perhaps bring a light to it."
The officer report is due to be presented to council in late June.