MORNINGTON Peninsula social worker Georgia Hocking accepted Victoria’s top motherhood award at Melbourne Town Hall on Friday morning (8 May), two days before Mother’s Day.
Lord mayor Nick Reece presented the 2026 YMCA Victorian Mother of the Year award, which comes with $10,000 in grant funding from YMCA Open Doors. Hocking was chosen from more than 500 nominations; the highest number in the award’s history.
Hocking said the ceremony had brought together finalists and past winners from across Victoria.
“It was just such a celebration of mothers and people doing work in the community,” she said.
The 35-year-old grew up on a 20-acre flower farm in Somerville and now lives in Hastings with her two daughters; Scarlette, four, and Arwen, two.
Hocking said the morning of the news had been a scramble.
“I’d actually given my kids lollies to get them into the car to go to daycare that day, which is definitely not ‘Mother of the Year behaviour’,” said Hocking.
“I am a single mum, and I’m a motherless daughter. What that means is my mum has passed away, so I haven’t actually had someone nurture me in the traditional way to become a mum.”
Her mother had been battling alcoholism for years and died 12 years ago.
“I’ve learned things from what I know of her, and from other incredible women in my life,” said Hocking.
“I’ve also learned how to parent from my dad and my brother and my sister, Hayleigh.”
Hocking separated from her partner of 14 years at the end of last year. She has described the move as a financial step backwards but said she is the happiest she has been.
“I want my children to grow up in a house with people who love them and are not fighting. So I blew up my life at 35,” she said.
Hocking said her circumstances had shifted dramatically since the start of the year.
“If you had said to me in January this year, ‘Georgia, you’re going to win Mother of the Year in Victoria’, there is no way I would have believed you,” she said.
“I didn’t know where I was going to live.”
Hocking and her sisters Hayleigh and Maddi founded the suicide-prevention charity It’s Okay Not to Be Okay in 2016, the year their younger brother Ben died by suicide. He was 22.
It began as a fundraiser at the Frankston Bombers Football Club. The club had lost three players to suicide that year.
A decade on, the charity has grown into an online community of more than 700,000 people. It runs mental health workshops in schools and sporting clubs, sends grief packs to bereaved families anywhere in Australia and sponsors counselling for those who cannot afford a private clinician.
Hocking will direct the $10,000 grant towards expanding the charity’s primary school workshops into regional communities. Her hope, she said, is to run an It’s Okay Not to Be Okay workshop in every primary school on the Mornington Peninsula.
With her daughter Scarlette starting school next year, Georgia’s passion for the charity work has found a new level.
“If you thought I was motivated to care about children’s mental health beforehand, being a social worker, I can now say that as a mum, no one will put more effort into going into these schools and trying to equip these students.”
