Page 3470 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 22 October 2014
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and treated with respect and dignity, carers are supported to sustain their caring role, and carers’ diverse needs are acknowledged and appropriate supports provided. These principles are evident in the high quality of services provided by many of the non-government organisations who support carers, including Carers ACT.
I would just like to reflect on an opportunity I had a few weeks ago to pop over to Barnados, as they encourage more foster carers to come into the ACT. We had a wonderful presentation there by Professor Judith Pratt, who told us about the really difficult role that carers take on and, of course, the challenges that they may see from kids in foster care. The challenges include those children that have come from perhaps a traumatised background and need real support and encouragement to grow as they get a bit older.
It was really enlightening to hear her frank definition and description of how these children can be, but it was also encouraging to hear how these children can be brought back into a somewhat normal life later in life if trauma is dealt with at an early age. She was really descriptive in telling us how parents operate in the parenting function with their young children, especially as young babies. She described the actions that we do automatically as parents. We look down at the baby’s face and we have interactions in terms of our facial recognition and the baby’s facial recognition. We tend to giggle when they do and we look sad when they look sad. She told us this is the way children are hard-wired for later on in life, that those interactions and physical changes in their faces show how they can react with other people later on in life.
She explained that those children that have had trauma do not have the same hard-wiring and it takes quite a long time for foster carers and clinical assistants to be able to help get that child back to a normal lifestyle. It was a really rewarding day, especially for me and those people that were thinking about becoming foster carers. I congratulate Barnados for that seminar.
In 2014-15 the government has provided almost $1.4 million to Carers ACT to deliver community support, respite, advocacy, information and alternative forms of communication. Carers ACT has also been engaged by Disability ACT to deliver a carer wellness program and a national disability insurance scheme carer pathways program from 1 July this year through to 31 December 2016 at a cost of $300,000. The carer wellness program is designed to support carer wellness through practical preventative activities and strategies. The NDIS carer pathways program is designed to assist carers to build their skills and confidence in adapting to self-directed approaches in the context of the NDIS.
Carers ACT are also funded $370,000 to provide policy, support, training and capacity building for people with mental illness and their carers to participate in consultation processes run by the Health Directorate. In addition, Carers ACT are funded $420,210 to provide a range of services to clients under 65 years old—and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander carers that is under 50 years old—through the ACT home and community care program for younger people. These services include counselling and support, information and advocacy, centre-based day care and social support.
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