Skills program a beacon for vulnerable families

An evidence-based parenting program being trialled in Australia through the NSW Department of Family and Community Services is showing great potential in keeping vulnerable families together.

SafeCare® was developed a decade ago by the National SafeCare Training & Research Center, Georgia State University, and has been shown to reduce child neglect and harm by 26 per cent. Six agencies across NSW are now piloting the program and we are working with the Department and trial sites to implement it.  The US, Britain, Canada, Spain and Israel have already adopted the program.

More than 60 NSW families have already taken part in the Blacktown, Nepean and Cumberland areas of Sydney.

Building skills

“SafeCare® is not just about giving advice. It’s about teaching specific skills to address parenting challenges and having the support to master a skill,” said Annette Michaux, a Director at the Parenting Research Centre.

“It really has potential to keep families together safely and help parents with quite complex needs. Raising children is a learnable skill. It doesn’t just come naturally and for some of us learning that skill is a little bit harder.”

Ms Michaux said the program was backed by rigorous research and tested over many years. There were promising results for families where children were at risk of child abuse and neglect.

One-on-one parent interaction

SafeCare® trains practitioners to support parents one-on-one. It  enhances their positive interactions with children, keeping their homes safe and improving their children’s health.

Over the past year we began working with the National SafeCare Training & Research Centre in the US to become an accredited SafeCare training and coaching organisation as part of the NSW implementation of SafeCare. Local, high-quality SafeCare coaching support will be available to these agencies once our staff are accredited.

Learn more

• Read the Sydney Morning Herald article about how SafeCare is making a difference in NSW
• Read more about SafeCare in How we support change