It is widely accepted that building parenting skills and strengthening families reduces the risk of child abuse. Emerging evidence indicates that a universal approach to providing services reduces the overall prevalence of abuse in communities. This approach reduces stigma, encourages help seeking, and ensures services are available to everyone.
Uniting Early Help Family Services Program (EHFS) is designed to overcome these challenges and aims to put the evidence into action by co-locating evidence-based support in universal services where families are already engaged. EHFS is located within schools, early childhood services and health services. The place-based service delivery both increases families’ access to supports but also normalizes parenting skill development and help seeking. Over the past 3 years the mainstream program has provide evidence-based group work and/or short-term interventions for nearly 1000 families.
Our presentation will focus on our experiences of breaking down the silos to create a seamless, unified system that is child-centered, family focused, and evidence informed. We will share the services that we have put in place to meet consumer need and how we have assessed these needs. We will also discuss case-studies and outcomes data to demonstrate that time-limited, low cost, support can meaningfully strengthen parents’ capacity to provide safe environments for children as well as support parent empowerment, self-efficacy and confidence.The session will be co-presented by Natalie Worthington (Manager – Child Youth and Families), Angela Hoy (Team Leader – Early Help), a frontline Early Help Practitioner and a partner from one of our universal services (names withheld until selection)
Angela Hoy
Team Leader – Family Wellbeing Program, Child and Family Services, Uniting Vic.Tas
Angela Hoy, BSc Community Health and Pediatrics Nursing. Decades of experiencesupporting families and early parenting support, working in various evidencebasedprograms including QEC and Uniting.
Natalie Worthington
Manager, Child and Family Services, Uniting Vic.Tas
Natalie Worthington, BSW with over 10 years experience working the Child, Youth and Families Sector in both statutory services and the community sector.
Rachel Smart
Senior Practitioner, Uniting Vic.Tas
Rachel Smart is a Senior Practitioner in the Early Help program at Uniting. Rachel has a Bachelor of Social Work from Deakin University and has experience working in adolescent mental health and Family Services. Rachel has been involved in the Early Help Program since the pilot commenced in 2022. Rachel has experience co-locating with primary schools and maternal and child health centres to deliver early intervention supports, and currently facilitates a range of group programs for parents, carers and children.
