Salisbury Communities for Children

Mission Statement

Facilitating the development of families and local communities to provide children with holistic opportunities to experience wellbeing and achieve their potential.

A community where all children experience the best in parenting from supported empowered parents who are connected with a community that values:

Early-life enhancing and intervention activities for children
Parents building & maintaining positive relationships
Community services, agencies & institutions working together

Executive Summary

This exciting initiative aims to work with agencies, institutions & services working in the site to significantly improve outcomes for children in terms of health, family functioning, early learning and development, child-friendly communities and the integration of family & children’s services.

Strategies

Salisbury Communities for Children in partnership with the Australian Government Family Support Program Children and Family Partnerships initiative aims to deliver positive and sustainable outcomes for children and families at risk in the City of Salisbury. We plan to develop activities to support families with children 0-12 years under the four priority areas of Healthy Young Families and Learning and Care, Supporting Families and Parents, Child Friendly Communities and Reducing Disadvantage through Social Inclusion and Family and Children’s Services Working Effectively as a System.

Healthy young families and learning and care

In the area of healthy young families and learning and care our activities will focus on the development and maintenance of groups for children and their families that facilitate child development and parenting skills, support groups for women with mental health issues, support groups for mothers and their babies with attachment issues and groups that facilitate social connections and transitions to targeted groups.

Supporting families and parents

This strategy will include in a wide range of activities however we will principally focus on further developing integrated family support seamless services through the parent and child hub with outreach spokes and satellite centres concept, we have been developing. Key activities will include mother and baby groups, parenting support and education, supported play and development groups, music and movement groups, information sessions for parents and health care professionals and distribution of a wide range of resources for families.

Child friendly communities and reducing disadvantage through social inclusion

We plan to build on existing engagement with vulnerable new arrivals, refugees and ‘hard to reach’ families as well as continue to build capacity to own and respond to early childhood issues and issues that relate to families and communities through leadership training. We will also initiate new activities for 6-12 year olds providing intervention for at risk children and their families and socially inclusive access to sport and recreation programs for children not currently accessing such programs due to financial hardship.

Family and children’s services working effectively as a system

As Facilitating Partner in this initiative we will continue to engage with key family & children’s stakeholders, provide leadership in developing collaborative action and seamless referral systems and facilitate relevant training & development activities for both volunteer and professional service providers.

Research and evaluation of early childhood initiatives over the years has found considerable evidence for the need of:

Provision of integrated environments where young families can access parenting & relationship support.
Assistance with early learning & development for disadvantaged children through the provision of supported play, language & literacy activities.
Child friendly, safe, physically challenging and age appropriate child play areas.
Provision of support for parents at risk of post-natal depression.

Both national & local evaluators will be collecting data from this initiative to add to the existing evidence base.

This initiative has been funded till June 2012 and during that time we will be working with the three tiers of government, agencies, institutions and other service providers to address issues of sustainability.

Our inability to fund capital works will mean that our “FamilyZone / Satellite concept will need to begin in partnership with DECS and sustainability aspects will need to be addressed as site services are introduced. We also plan to establish key partnerships with government and non government agencies such as Child, Youth and Women’s Health and a key NGO to oversee the development of the hub and significantly contribute to it’s sustainability.
Home visiting recruitment & training will add to and be sustained by existing services such as Centacare, Lutheran Community Care and Child & Youth Health who will be engaged in developing training, recruitment & placement strategies within the site. Supported playgroups will be developed in manner that will invite other institutions & agencies to maintain viable initiatives in consultation with Playgroups SA.
Promotion of parent-child reading activity in collaboration with the planned Salisbury Library Lapsit program will hopefully result in such activity becoming normative for all families.
Development of play areas will be in partnership with Salisbury Council who are enthusiastically engaging with our plan to develop child friendly communities. We anticipate local businesses will actively support this initiative as more details become available and as we encourage them in practical ways to consider the concept of creating more family friendly workplaces.
Services will be provided to children in schools via an organisation who currently provide workers in this environment and will incorporate aspects of the project into everyday activities and ongoing programs. Various organizations will support activities and incorporate these into the everyday functions of that organization. Volunteer training of community members is a significant contributor to sustaining activities with 0-12 families.
A skills transfer /train the trainer approach will be used wherever possible.
Professional training and development activities will contribute to sustained capacity of organisations and build community capacity.

We are also hopeful that the communities for children approach to building community capacity will spark the support of business, government & community sectors to ensure its continuity.