A positive and supportive family life is the best way for children to grow up to reach their full potential. Our family support services must grow as the Canberra community grows, to ensure new suburbs receive the same assistance as those raising a family in more established areas.
Growing Healthy Families
We will expand the Growing Healthy Families Program at the Gungahlin, West Belconnen
and Tuggeranong Child and Family Centres over the next two years, through funding of
$1.264 million. This will provide resources that support engagement, inclusion and access to culturally informed services by the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
A Step Up for Our Kids
A Step Up for Our Kids will transform the way we support children and young people in care to put their needs at the centre of a more tailored, responsive system. It is a major investment to support vulnerable children and young people to reach their potential, providing the right service at the right time.
Officially launched in January 2015, the five-year Strategy A Step Up for Our Kids – One Step Can Make a Lifetime of Difference commits to:
- An investment of more than $39 million over four years in the future of our most vulnerable children and young people. It is about breaking the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage and keeping children safe at home.
- Reunifying children and young people with parents as quickly as possible, or for those who cannot safely go home to their parents, growing up secure and loved within another family because they only get one chance at childhood.
- Creating a therapeutic, trauma-informed care system which responds more effectively to the needs of children and young people in care.
- Placing foster and kinship carers at the centre of the care system and providing them with the support needed to provide quality care. They are the child's primary support and healer.
New Services under the Strategy will be rolled out in stages from early 2016.
Better Services Program
The Government will extend the One Human Services Gateway to improve community access to a range of human services in the ACT. The Strengthening Families Program is also being extended to provide early intervention and targeted support for up to
50 families with the greatest need in the community. A total of $1.156 million will be provided over two years while future years will be funded from the savings generated.
Continuation of the Community Sector Reform Program
The Government will also continue to work with the community sector through a range of activities to support strategic reform, with a focus on the transition from outputs to outcomes, and continued initiatives to reduce red tape.
