Safe Families

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Safe Families

• Intro
• Personal Introduction
• Tangentyere Council
• Safe Families Model
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Lessons learned

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Tangentyere Council

• Provides a service to 19 town camps
• Historically poor infrastructure and
• service provision
• Population consists of approximately
• 1250 adults and 400 young people

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Tangentyere Council

• Family and Youths Services
• Housing
• Social Justice
• Employment and Financial Services

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History Safe Families

• Consultations with
• Local Aboriginal leaders
• Community groups
• Service providers

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Safe Families

• Focuses on an Aboriginal, family inclusive,
  community centred approach in relation to child
  protection issues in order to keep Aboriginal
  young people safe and with family.

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Safe Families Vision Statement

• Kinship care is crucial to the physical,
  emotional
• and spiritual wellbeing of all young people
• Support families to preserve their traditional
• obligations to nurture and provide care to
  young
• people

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Safe Families Vision Statement

• Fostering and preserving community connectedness
• and the cultural integrity of Aboriginal
  families
• Ensure young people grow up strong, safe,
  resilient
• and healthy in their transition to adulthood

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Safe Families Target Group

• Children and young people aged up to 14 yrs
• Young people presenting as at risk
• Young people subject to child protection
• intervention
• Young people who present with multiple and
• complex issues

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Safe Families Intervention

• Referral
• Crisis Accommodation
• Assessment
• Accommodation medium to long term
• Case management
• Review

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COMMUNITY
FACS
SAFE HOUSE
Kinship Carers
Family
Foster Carers
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Short term placements
Emergency
Community Transition
Alternative Carer
Respite
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Department of Health and Community Services
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How do we work?

• Employment of local Aboriginal staff members
• Family mapping
• Family meetings
• Language speakers
• Informal and formal networks
• Collaboration with other organisations and
  agencies

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Lessons learned

• Importance of actively involving family
• members in process
• Importance of maintaining language, stories,
• law and tradition for cultural identity
• Need to acknowledge the value of traditional
• knowledge and skills

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Lessons learned

• Need for collaboration with wider community
• Importance of flexibility in approach
• Provision of specific training to meet needs of
• staff members

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Strengths

• The Service is well accepted within the
  community
• Flexible model able to meet the need of the
• community and the statutory child protection
  body
• Young people feel more at ease and safe
• Maintain connection to country
• Language, Culture and tradition is kept alive

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Weaknesses

• Recruitment of staff
• Funding for training
• Lack of career structure
• High demands on staff members from community
• due to cultural obligations

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