Page 4752 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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I believe in looking at the evidence before making significant decisions. I believe in listening to parents, families and those working on the ground before making my decisions. Research tells us that early intervention is the key to protecting our children. Early intervention is not only the right thing to do—right for families and right for children—but it also makes good economic sense. Early investment saves us financially down the track but more importantly it produces stronger families and stronger communities. I believe that everyone has the right to a safe and happy childhood, the right to a safe home.
The department has recently completed some significant work in this area. In fact, we are running sessions today on neglect and how it is very important to identify and intervene early. Early intervention creates strong families and strong communities; it creates a safe environment for the children of our community.
This evidence-based approach drove the establishment of ground-breaking child and family centres at Tuggeranong and Gungahlin. The child and family centres provide an integrated one-stop shop. They deliver universal and targeted services to families. Specifically, the centres provide maternal and child health clinics, giving advice on child health, parenting issues, and providing immunisations and speech and physiotherapy drop-in services.
The child and family centre will enhance and further develop a best practice model for engagement with Indigenous families. The new centre will provide a visible presence within the school community through an outreach parenting hub. It will deliver parenting groups at school sites such as the best foot forward and the PPP programs. Importantly, these centres seek to help families who may be at risk before a complex family situation can deteriorate. They have developed a new model of service delivery where families, government and the community work together in partnerships to improve outcomes for children at risk of harm or neglect. This program provides an alternative referral pathway to support agencies to that of the statutory child protection systems. This is the best way to keep our children as safe as possible.
It is not just around early intervention. Stronger and more resilient families will also keep our children as safe as possible. Building stronger families will take a community-based approach—as they say, raising a child takes a village. That is why I am looking forward to meeting parents and to seeing the dads and children and play program in action.
This program helps dads with ideas to support their son’s or daughter’s early childhood development through play-based learning. I am keen to meet with mums and playgroups and hear about how we can make the morning drop-off to childcare, school and preschool less stressful. All year we have been helping playgroups to find spaces and sites on which they can meet, gather and share information and, indeed, share those moments of early childhood and parenting that are often most “stressfulsome”. We will continue to support playgroups into the future.
I am looking forward to hearing from childcare workers and the Children’s Services Forum about how they can better engage with parents about their child’s early
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