Community health leaders are pleading with the Victorian government to urgently back permanent disaster recovery services as towns struggle to pick up the pieces.
Forty-five homes were razed in the western Victorian town of Pomonal last month after catastrophic bushfires swept through the Grampians fanned by destructive winds.
Everyone has since found replacement accommodation but the scale of the recovery effort is beginning to hit home, Grampians Community Health chief executive Greg Little said.
"If you lose 45 houses in a town with probably 150 houses in it, it's pretty s**t," he told AAP.
"Initially they wanted to get back in and start working together, and they were a pretty resilient mob.
"It worked for a start ... but you start to see now the cracks that people are tired, they're starting to struggle and they're seeing the work that still has to be done ahead of them."
Independent community health services play a role in emergency management, offering mental health counselling, assistance with insurance claims and clean-up support.
"We're out there every day with one to two staff," Mr Little said.
These services have helped Victorian communities recover from more than 130 disasters over the last decade, with two-thirds coming in the last four years alone.
They rely on time-limited grants from the state government to provide case management, with no long-term funding available.
Gippsland Lakes Complete Health, which covers the east of the state, has received calls from people looking for help following last month's wild storms.
The service boasts a team of 15 emergency recovery support staff but they face an uncertain future as the funding is due to run dry at the end of June.
Chief executive Anne-Maree Kaser said it took six weeks to recruit 27 case managers when the team was set up in response to the 2019-20 bushfires.
"When people have lost everything and are completely traumatised, we don't have time (for that process)" Ms Kaser said.
The Gippsland and Grampians bodies are part of an alliance of rural and regional community health services pushing for a permanent trauma-informed workforce.
Ms Kaser said the proposed fixed model would ensure local skills and knowledge are not lost and allow the services to build recovery and resilience capability between disasters.
In its state budget submission, the Victorian Health Association requested the Allan government set aside $38.7 million for a four-year pilot program across the 11 rural and regional independent community health services.
A pilot makes economic sense, the peak body's chief executive Leigh Clarke said.
"We know climate change is going to result in more frequent and intense events so there is value in that long-term commitment," she said.
The Victorian government has been contacted for comment.
