A stable, safe, nurturing and permanent home environment supports the healthy development of children and young people; it shapes their personality and future adult lives.
The New South Wales Government aims to provide a permanent home for all children through its recent Permanency Support Program. Its newly developed permanent placement principles seek to place all children in care into a safe, permanent home. The first step is to work intensively with the family to address the issues that led to their child’s removal, with the aim of restoring a child to their birth family.
Co-parenthood, developed by The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, is a new shared-parenting model of foster care which helps parents and carers work together to return children home and stay home long term. It was co-designed with families and practitioners and leverages lived experience to heal trauma, build parent’s social networks, and turn intergenerational cycles of disadvantage into cycles of opportunity.
The model has three key parts. The first stage is all about building trust and a foundation between carers and parents. The second is all about building parenting capability. The third stage is about preparing parents and children for restoration and ensuring families have long term support.
“With this support, guidance, development and understanding, families might not be split as much as they are”, said Alister. “It’s the direction we need to move in rather than having carers on one side of the room and birth families on the other, and the child in the middle.
Co-parenthood is all about creating better outcomes for kids in care. It’s of great benefit to children when they see the attachment figures in their life (carers) getting on and working collaboratively with their parents.
“This helps with the repair, healing and development of children who have experienced trauma – it’s unrivalled to anything else. A child seeing positive adult relationships is one of the most effective and healing influences to help a child overcome adversity and trauma.
“For example, one child in the Co-parenthood program is able to live in a safe and stable environment but he has regular interactions with his parents – supported by carers – enabling him to focus his energy on being a kid, going to school and playing with friends.”
Carers who opt to provide Co-parenthood receive specific training plus extra support from caseworkers, access to MacKillop’s employee assistance program, and are an important component of the child’s care team.
“Carers realise – seeing the child so well connected, happy, settled and safe is motivating to try and make things work. When carers and parents work together, children and young people do better.”
Following a successful pilot in Blacktown, the Co-parenthood model will continue to be offered in Western Sydney and is also being rolled out in the Grafton and Wollongong areas. MacKillop is seeking more carers who would like to deliver Co-parenthood. Would you or someone you know like to be a Co-parenthood carer?
For more information on Co-parenthood, please call MacKillop on 1300 791 677 or visit www.mackillop.org.au/fostercare.