Page 2457 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 August 2015
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and the Domestic Violence Crisis Service. A recent example of a successful new partnership is the developing kids program, a supported playgroup where parents and children learn strategies to assist them in addressing their developmental delays.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Fitzharris.
MS FITZHARRIS: Minister, can you inform the Assembly about the child and family centres circle of security program and the outcomes it achieves?
MR GENTLEMAN: I thank Ms Fitzharris for her question. The circle of security is a relationship-based early intervention program designed to enhance attachment security between parents and their children. It is an eight-week program designed for parents and carers of children from prenatal to eight years of age.
The program is currently delivered at all three child and family centres. The program can be used with individuals or couples in a group setting or through individual home visits. However, children are not present during the group sessions. The program will benefit any parent, but in particular it will assist in situations of attachment disruption where there has been a history of abuse and neglect.
The program focuses on children’s needs and caregivers’ state of mind rather than the children’s behaviours. By focusing on meeting children’s needs, there tends to be an enhancement in caregivers’ empathy and responsiveness.
The program aims to reduce parenting difficulties and associated stress and to reduce child emotional and behavioural problems, and parents’ perceptions that these are problems. The program seeks to improve parental empathy for the child, improve parental capacity to better understand and respond to the child’s needs and improve parental capacity to better understand and regulate their own emotional state and behaviour in their relationships with their child.
Parents have been referred into the program through self-referral, Child and Youth Protection Services, drop-in or case management—that group at a child and family centre can also refer—and other community organisations or local schools. The program outcomes include an increase in carers’ overall sense of self-esteem, an increase in carers’ parenting self-efficacy, an increase in carers’ satisfaction derived from parenting and levels of carers’ reflective functioning, and a reduction in the risk of insecure attachment.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Fitzharris.
MS FITZHARRIS: Minister, can you outline any other programs offered by the child and family centres that support Canberra’s families?
MR GENTLEMAN: I thank Ms Fitzharris again for her interest in this area. The child and family centres provide a range of programs that support families and children in the ACT. These include early intervention and mental health, parenting programs, early learning and community development.
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