We believe that all children have the right to live safely and be nurtured and supported to achieve their full potential. We believe that fundamentally all parents want to do the right thing by their children and we are committed to working with children, their families and caregivers to help make this happen.
Our Child & Family Services work in partnership with the Department of Communities – Child Safety Services, supporting parents to address the underlying issues which have led to the child protection concerns by targeting interventions towards known risk and protective factors.
Our professional support staff provide practical assistance and counselling, encourage positive changes and link families into sustainable local community supports, thereby ensuring the long term wellbeing of children and their families.
Our programs offer a range of services to families referred by Child Safety Services, and where possible will work with self-referred family members for support or counselling. These are:
Assessment services
A ’stand-alone’ assessment and report to assist Departmental staff in their decision making regarding permanency planning for reunification or foster care will take 4-6 weeks to complete.
Intensive Home-based Family services
Qualified Family Intervention Practitioners work with parents in their own homes to address the issues which have led to the child protection concerns. This may be either through a preservation or reunification framework. Clear goals are negotiated and then families are supported to work towards these goals with progress reviewed every 3 months, and the Department is provided with regular update reports to assist in their decision making.
Child, Family, individual, couple counselling services
When specific barriers to progress are identified, a counsellor or psychologist can work with parents or children at various points in the case plan. For example, following a child’s removal and placement in foster care, counselling may assist parents to address issues of grief and loss, anger and denial, and explore motivation to make changes consistent with the case plan. As families move closer to reunification counselling may assist parents, children and foster-carers to address challenges relating to returning to the family home after a period of time apart. This counselling service has some capacity to take community or ‘self-referrals’ from individuals, parents and children who are not involved with the Department.
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