From journal articles to Quick Guides and webinars, you will find tools and information to support.
This report from Southern Cross University explores the experiences of family workers and managers engaged in telepractice to develop understanding of family work using online technologies. The study finds that telepractice offers a range of benefits and drawbacks for clients and the workforce, suggesting it is suited to use within a suite of practice methods rather than as a replacement for face-to-face engagement.
The Research Centre for Children and Families at the University of Sydney has released this report investigating the support needs of foster and kinship carers in 2020 arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Among carers surveyed, 89 per cent had more support needs as a result of COVID-19. State-wide data from a telephone support service found that the most common support needs were related to family time or contact, education and specialist support. The report concludes with recommendations to improve responses during future crises.
This report released by Wanslea in Western Australia seeks to build the evidence base on the impacts of caring on the mental, physical, social and financial health of grandparent carers, investigate service gaps, and explore the commonalities and differences in the experiences of grandparent carers. The study found that caring comes with significant costs to grandparent carers’ wellbeing with common challenges including poverty, health and navigating systems.
This report from Amanda Sacker and colleagues investigates inequalities in outcomes among adults with care experience by examining health and social functioning in mid-life using longitudinal data from the Office for National Statistics. The study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, found that kinship care was associated with better outcomes in adulthood than foster care.
ARACY has released this report outlining the results of a literature review on the impacts of COVID-19 on children with disability and their families in Australia, and findings from two policy roundtables. The review found that the pandemic exacerbated many of the problems already faced by families with disability, with children younger than school-age being the most negatively affected.
This article, published in Pediatrics, investigates the impact of the First Assessment Single-Session Triage clinic, a waitlist intervention and demand management model of care for transgender young people and their families waiting to access specialist gender services. The study found that compared with a control group, transgender young people supported by this model experienced improvements in depression and quality of life.
Mission Australia has released this report analysing the qualitative data from the 2020 youth survey for young people who cited COVID-19 as the biggest issue they had been facing. The analysis found that the areas of most concern for these young people were COVID’s impact on education, isolation and mental health.
A new COVID-19 snapshot from the Commission for Children and Young People has been released outlining findings from their check in with young people about the impacts of COVID-19
This report examines the intersections between family violence, housing, and homelessness. The report estimates that each year around 7,690 women are returning to a violent partner due to a lack of affordable housing and around 9,120 women are becoming homeless after leaving their home due to family violence. It concludes that an additional 16,810 social housing properties are needed to address this issue.
