ACT
Stories
Therapeutic services team in the ACT Together Consortium
In the ACT, Australian Childhood Foundation has joined two of Australia’s most respected child welfare organisations – Barnardos and OzChild – to create ACT Together, a large consortium that provides support services to children and young people who are unable to live safely with their birth parents. ACT Together aims to reduce the duplication between different government and non-government agencies and ensure better provision of stable, nurturing, long-term care for those children and young people.
The Foundation’s therapeutic services team has the clinical oversight of the work of the consortium, and is responsible for delivering a range of specialist therapeutic services to children and young people and their carers. Our team of 12 therapeutic specialists supports and educates staff and carers about trauma-responsive and relationship-based practice, and its importance in caring for children who live in foster, kinship and residential care. This approach helps everyone understand the impact of trauma that children in out of home care have experienced, and be curious and empathic about what feelings and needs children’s behaviours communicate to us.
Each therapeutic specialist also supports children’s care teams to ensure that their needs are consistently understood and met by those who care for them. We work collaboratively with carers, caseworkers, schools and other professionals and build strong relational networks of caring adults for children or young people to help them heal from the effects of trauma, to grow healthy and thrive.
Heartfelt
Heartfelt is a specialised therapeutic program that supports children between the ages 5 and 12 years to help them heal from their experiences of domestic and family violence (DFV). Our team provides trauma counselling, therapeutic group programs, psychoeducation and case management for children and their mothers or carers.
Heartfelt program works by privileging experiences of the child and focusing on strengthening their felt sense of safety and relational security with their mother or carer. Critical to this is also building a network of supports around each child that really understands the child’s unique experiences and therapeutic needs.
The Heartfelt team comprises Therapeutic Specialists and a Therapeutic Case Manager who will work with the child and their mother or carer for up to 6 months.