As Open Family's Founder and Chairman, Fr. Bob has been an outspoken advocate of the poor and disadvantaged since the 1960's when he first began parish work.

In what was a natural progression of his career in helping others, Fr. Bob found himself working on the streets with the displaced and alienated, where he made friends and earned the trust of street kids and prostitutes. What started off as a solo effort outside his role as South Melbourne parish priest, eventually became Open Family, when in the early 1980's Fr. Bob approached local South Melbourne and St. Kilda business people with a view to establishing a Foundation.

Throughout his life, Fr. Bob's goal has always been to provide a semblance of basic human relationships and trust to young people who have been rejected from the family, the education system and the welfare system.

“What knocks all of us about is the fact that so many of them die so young” says Fr. Bob. “We want to support them out there on the streets where teenagers without a home are the loneliest people in the world.'

For his efforts with street kids, Fr. Bob was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1989.