Captain Scott Smallacombe

Captain Scott Smallacombe is the Assistant Manager at the Harry Hunter Rehabilitation Centre, a position he has held since the January 2009.

Scott became a Salvation Army Officer at the end of 2000 and took up his first appointment in January 2001 as Chaplain to the Adult Services, a network in inner-city Melbourne which aims to provide paths from homelessness for those most marginalised within our community. With illicit drug prices skyrocketing due to the then ‘heroin drought’ (like all supply-and-demand imbalances) many in the using community became involved in high risk behaviours such as burglary, violent crime and prostitution of which they never thought they were capable. It was a time of many deaths by overdose and suicide and a pervading sense of fear within the drug using community. Sadly Scott was privileged to conduct many funerals and memorial services, but also to walk with others as they transitioned out of homelessness and drug dependency.

After working with the homeless community for five years Scott thought his next appointment to Westcare in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs would be a walk in the park. For the first six months of his two year appointment he worked as a youth worker in an out-of-home residential care unit as part of a team who provided round the clock care to four high risk fifteen-year-old young people who were in the care of the state. It was then that he learnt what hard work truly is: cooking, cleaning... and trying to manage some very extreme behaviours. For the next eighteen months Scott was taken off-line to help the network adjust to new legislation for the out-of-home care sector and to prepare for the accompanying quality assurance audit.

In 2008 Scott was appointed to Busselton Corps (Salvation Army church) in WA, running church activities, welfare services and a large thrift shop. It was here that he first had contact with the Harry Hunter Rehabilitation Centre (where he was appointed the following year) through the quarterly camps the centre has in Busselton.

Scott’s first contact with The Salvation Army was through a Sunday school in the park when he was nine years old. Over time his faith became more and more important in his life eventually leading to an awareness that God was calling him to Officership. Scott had trained to be a secondary mathematics and computer science teacher, and worked in IT at The University of Melbourne when accepted for The Salvation Army Training College.