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It has been very important that support has been improved for families in the camps as
they deal with the many issues that can complicate their lives.
Targeted Family Support is a program based around early intervention, so we try to divert
families away from the child protection system.
There are a lot of challenges. Lack of confidence within the families, the presence of DV domestic
violence within our community, schooling, financial difficulties that families are facing
all the time.
From families that I work with, what they've said to me is there's a real fear that Child
Protection are only involved to take children away. A lot of families don't have the understanding
that they actually really want the children to stay with you if they can be safe.
we want to be able to help at the very beginning, so examples of being able to provide maybe
a $40 mattress at the very early stages of when things are going wrong, compared to spending
thousands of dollars at the other end when it comes into a child protection.
If there's a lot of other things that are going on that impact your daily life, there's
no ability to then think past that to think about the issues of violence and substance
abuse because that's not the immediate need. The immediate need is 'I have no house, I'm
hungry, I think to help families to get those needs met, then we can work on looking at
some of the other areas.
If you can make one Mum smile and feel good about being a Mum, if you can make a Dad feel
like he's actually part of a family and taking place and doing a Dad's role in the family,
that's just wonderful, but if you can make a baby or a young person smile and feel good,
that just outweighs all the negative stuff. The program is really aimed at trying to prevent
families actually going into the welfare system. So yeah its been working really well in town.