Working with children and families
Our relationship with families should acknowledge and understand their individual and family circumstances. This includes experiences of discrimination, grief, loss and violence.
Overview
A critical factor for successful change lies in the quality of the relationship between practitioners and children and their families. Our relationship with families should acknowledge and understand their individual and family circumstances, including experiences of discrimination, grief, loss and violence. It is important to acknowledge and understand families’ resilience, strengths and protective factors despite these experiences. Our compassion, empathy and recognition of their lived experience provides the building blocks to promote and foster healthy relationships.
Building successful relationships relies on an active appreciation of a family's culture. It is critical that practitioners role model healthy and respectful interactions, behaviours and relationships.
In Part 3 we will explore practice tools, principles and frameworks essential to working with children and families:
- Permanency Case Management
- Purposeful partnerships
- Engaging children and families
- Keeping families together
- Processes to support case management and decision making
- Understanding and working with families who experience trauma and resistance
- Upholding the rights of children
- Working with Aboriginal families and communities
- Culturally responsive practice with diverse communities
- Working with people with a disability
- Supporting a positive gender and sexual orientation identity
- Resources to support quality practice
Permanency case management
Permanency Case Management supports parents, families and communities to make permanent arrangements that provide children with an experience of feeling loved, safe and connected to their family, culture, country and community. Service providers, where significant risks have been identified, partner with families and their community to achieve stability, certainty and opportunities for children to have the best possible start in life and achieve their full potential.
Case management is a process whereby a child and/or a family’s needs are identified and services are coordinated and managed in a systematic way. The core elements of case management include assessment, case planning, implementation (service delivery), monitoring and review. The safety, welfare and wellbeing of children is of paramount concern, and the provision of services to parents or carers can be an important protective function for children. All parents and carers may have a range of unique needs, and a holistic approach to case planning, which incorporates supports for these needs, should be adopted. Engaging children and their families in a strong partnership throughout the case management process is key to ensuring better outcomes for families. Different agencies will be responsible for different elements of permanency case management, depending on the child and family’s individual needs. However, all agencies have a common purpose in working towards the best possible permanency outcomes.
Permanency Case Management aims to reduce the impacts of trauma. It encourages practitioners, children, siblings, parents, carers, guardians and other professionals to work together. They should share knowledge, skill and insight to ensure holistic assessment, purposeful case planning and trauma-informed responses. This collaborative approach supports diverse engagement and shares risk about decisions and actions that impact on children, their families and their community.
Permanency Case Management enhances the safety and wellbeing of children through meaningful relationships, partnerships and decision-making which is led by the child, their family, carers and other significant people. Assessments, decisions and case plans are informed by a family’s experiences, strengths, protective factors and context, as well as the specialist knowledge, skills and practice wisdom of practitioners.
Decision-making processes are reflective and transparent, and based upon evidence based models and tools. Permanency Case Management uses critique and reflection to continually improve the quality and effectiveness of practice, and uses empathy and a trauma informed lens to consider the experiences of children, their families, carers and other significant people.
As we have noted later in this part and elsewhere in the guidelines, adhering to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child and Young Person Principles outlined in section 13 of the Care Act is critical to permanency outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. They should act as a foundation for permanency case management.
Purposeful Professional partnerships
Working together and sharing knowledge, experience and expertise will build the competence of our workforce and enhance opportunities and likelihood for achieving positive outcomes for children and families.
The DCJNSW Practice Frameworkemphasises the importance of practitioners working together in solidarity to create a system that supports meaningful change for families. To do this, practitioners, communities and the sector form partnerships to improve practice and outcomes for children and their families.
Through building professional relationships that reflect trust, mutual respect and commitment, DCJ seeks opportunities to learn from, and enhance, each other's capacity. DCJ aims to foster collaboration anchored on a shared vision, and clear steps and responsibilities, to reach goals.
Genuine shared responsibility means that all professionals working with children and families acknowledge they have a role to play in supporting those children and families. There should be a willingness to proactively reach out to other local professionals to establish relationships and networks across a range of services. Having these professional relationships in place enables sharing of information, advice and opportunities to learn from different perspectives.
Establishing relationships with children and families themselves can provide insights from lived experiences to further enrich professional knowledge. This collective wisdom can bring new light, creativity or a different hypothesis on how practitioners might work with a child and their family.
Examples of methods that could be used to build these partnerships include:
- reaching out to other professionals to discuss opportunities for collaboration
- attending and participating in interagency and community training and events
- forming and joining relevant communities of practice
- reaching out to partner agencies to develop and deliver presentations on model collaborative practice.
The story ‘School is where the heart is’ shows what can be achieved for children when great people working with children come together to work towards a common goal.
The story ‘Dreaming Big’ demonstrates how interagency collaboration between a DCJ practitioner, a clinical doctor, and carers helped to support a young person and his family, and keep the family together.
Engaging children and families
Effective engagement contributes to the development of a productive relationship between a practitioner, and the child and their family. Engagement is fundamental to working effectively in child wellbeing and child protection contexts as it can increase the likelihood of realising sustainable, positive change for a child and their family. It is important that children and families are involved in the decisions that will affect them, that their views and preferences are taken seriously and treated with respect. See Supported decision making is a human right
Initially, engagement occurs during the early stages of work with a child and their family, principally when a practitioner first makes contact and there is a commitment to work together. As a process, engagement involves the practitioner creating an environment that is conducive to the child and/or their family actively working to achieve change.
It is also important to maintain a relationship with the child and their family for the full duration of their involvement with the child wellbeing and child protection system.
Strategies that will enhance ongoing engagement include:
- listening to the needs and aspirations of the family and child and reflecting these in service delivery
- creating meaningful opportunities for children and families to participate in decisions about their lives
- delivering services in a flexible way to overcomes barriers to engaging or accessing the service
- understanding and responding to cultural differences in the child protection landscape, which is crucial to engaging families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
- being clear and transparent about the practitioner’s role and the role of other organisations
- promoting collaboration between organisations servicing the family to minimise duplication and the potential for excessive or conflicting demands being placed on the family
- being trauma informed, understanding how experiences of trauma may prevent the re-traumatisation of children and families
- ensuring everyone involved understands and works to uphold the rights of children
- demonstrating reliability by keeping appointments and returning phone calls
- maintaining accurate records and confirming with the child and their family any agreements made
- promoting ongoing meaningful discussion with the child and their family
- remembering that practitioners and the family have a common and shared interest in wanting what is best for the child
- demonstrating respect, kindness, empathy and genuine interest in ensuring the best possible future for the child
- being clear and transparent about risk, concerns and expectations of the parents and family, particularly in statutory child protection cases or where there is a need to place a child in out-of-home care
- if there is a need for a new practitioner or a request by the family, a coordinated transition should be undertaken with the child and their family, and the rationale documented in the file
- communicating in a way that the family understands, including meeting their specific communication needs such as providing an Auslan interpreter, written information in easy to read or simple English formats, and using other alternative communication means.
It is important to listen to children and families and understand their needs. If a family can understand the merit of a particular service for their unique circumstances, they may feel more willing to engage with the service. If they feel unsupported, stressed or threatened by the service, or cannot see its practical benefits, they are more likely to avoid participating.
Practitioners need to be vigilant and actively work with families to overcome barriers preventing them from engaging with the service. There can be a wide range of reasons why a family is not engaging with services. It is important to actively follow up and try to understand what these might be. This is especially important for work with Aboriginal families who may have concerns about working with government agencies and also for parents with disability.
Keeping families together
Our first priority is to keep families safely together.
Legislation
Under section 37 of the Care Act, if the Secretary determines that a child or young person is at risk of significant harm, the Secretary must offer Alternative Dispute Resolution processes to the family of the child or young person before seeking care orders from the Children’s Court (unless there are exceptional circumstances).
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
ADR is a term used to describe a variety of different processes where an impartial facilitator helps people resolve issues and disputes between them. ADR must be offered by DCJ to a family when a child or young person is found to be in need of care and protection in an effort to prevent them from being taken into care. Family Group Conferencing is DCJ’s preferred form of ADR.
Family Group Conferencing
Family group conferencing (FGC) is a family-focussed, strengths based form of alternative dispute resolution. It aims to strengthen partnerships between family members and encourages greater parental decision making and responsibility. FGC aims to provide an opportunity for families working with DCJ to develop their own plan to keep their children safe.
Risks to children are reduced when families have a support network to help them reach their goals and address the factors placing their children at risk. FGC gives families ownership to develop their own plans for how they will work together to protect their children. When these plans are effective, they have the ability to prevent children entering out-of-home care. FGC can occur more than just once in working to support the family and ensure the safety of the children.
FGC is an essential component of working with Aboriginal families to ensure the maximum number of opportunities for support are explored. In accordance with the Principles of the Aboriginal Case Management Policy, any FGC should be in line with best practice principles of Aboriginal family-led decision making.
Other forms of ADR conducted by an impartial facilitator include:
- Family Dispute Resolution (facilitated by Legal Aid or a Family Dispute Resolution Service
- Care and Protection Mediation (facilitated by Legal Aid)
- Mediation (facilitated by a Community Justice Centre mediator)
- Private mediation (facilitated by an accredited mediator - this could be a mediator chosen or agreed to by the family).
Family Action Planning
Case planning is the core of purposeful work that supports families to make sustainable change that helps keep children safe. Case planning is a family led process which helps families make clear links between specific actions and the behaviours that need to change to create child safety. By bringing parents on board and supporting them to take ownership of the changes needed, we will be able to increase child safety and have a clearer sense of their actual readiness and ability to make sustainable changes.
Family Action Plans are case plans for change that are developed in partnership with families and their support networks to address concerns for children’s safety. The focus of these plans is to influence change until the risk level comes down and it is safe for children to stay safely at home.
Family action planning involves:
- creating a future vision of family safety
- building a shared agreement of what needs to change
- stepping out the actions needed to achieve that change
- engaging and connecting with support services (based on how ready the family is) to assist in those steps
- measuring progress towards a goal.
Processes to support case management and decision making
Practitioners are most resilient when they are supported to feel confident and hopeful. Participating in regular reflective supervision can help with managing challenges and stressors.
Group Supervision
Group supervision is a shared process of consultation and decision making where practitioners discuss their work with families to gain support, ideas and alternate perspectives from work colleagues.
DCJ regularly invites partner agencies with unique knowledge, skills and perspective to group supervision sessions (e.g. early childhood educators, school counsellors).This genuine partnership creates faster and more effective referrals and information sharing, more purposeful wrap-around services and case plans, greater transparency around decisions, and ultimately, better outcomes for children and families.
Group supervision:
- allows practitioners to keep children visible and at the centre of their work
- is the opportunity to share and mitigate risk
- provides professional supervision.
The Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies offers training for group supervision facilitators.
Family Finding
The practice of Family Finding builds and expands the supportive network of family and community members that can offer a sense of belonging to children and families. Finding family members that are willing and able to ensure children are safe make an enormous difference in their lives.
All agencies can play a role in Family Finding work with children and families, whether or not DCJ is involved. Support provided by extended family networks can help prevent escalation of risk factors, and give children placed in out-of-home care placement options with family they feel connected to. Family Finding work can be an early intervention response for families with emerging risk factors and vulnerabilities.
The story ‘Turning Point’ shows how FGC can contribute to helping family networks support parents to create the change needed to keep their children safe.
Understanding trauma and resilience
When a person experiences fear, terror, loss and feelings of helplessness they can experience trauma. All types of abuse, including exposure to domestic and family violence, can lead to trauma.
Families who are involved in the child protection or out-of-home-care service system may have experienced significant trauma. This trauma may have been a result of their previous experience with the child protection or out-of-home-care system. Trauma can change the way a person's body responds to stress, how they see themselves and others, and their ability to concentrate and learn.
It is important for professionals and carers to talk to children and their families to understand how they responded to these distressing events and whether they need support. The symptoms of trauma can manifest in many ways depending on the person, their situation and their current environment. Cognitive, emotional, physical and behavioural changes can signal that someone is experiencing a response to trauma. Being exposed to ongoing danger can disrupt how a person learns about safety, and many children and adults often find it hard to trust others. For example, the intergenerational trauma experienced by many Aboriginal people continues to adversely affect Aboriginal families and communities today.
Children and adults can heal from their experiences, and practitioners have the opportunity to restore a person’s dignity and contribute to their healing by:
- creating partnerships with children and adults who have experienced a traumatic response
- understanding the relationship between intergenerational trauma and oppression
- building hope and resilience.
As a practitioner, you can assist children who have experienced trauma to develop their own resilience. Strategies based upon connection, mastery and emotional regulation are essential to this process. Practitioners should also consider whether specialist trauma counselling may be helpful, and refer to an appropriate service with consent. Practitioners should also consult with specialist services on individual cases if they are unsure of their assessment or of appropriate responses. Agencies should have local referral pathways should children or their families require specialist services.
Beyond Blue provides a resource on building resilience in children. The Blue Knot Foundation provides trauma-informed care and practice information, and delivers trauma-informed professional development training to personnel across sectors.
The United States National Child Traumatic Stress Network also has a range of resources for child welfare professionals exploring the essential elements of trauma informed practice.
Upholding the rights of children and young people
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the most widely accepted human rights treaty. The treaty establishes a wide range of protection and participation rights for children up to the age of 18.
The UNCRC states that children everywhere, without discrimination, have rights to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse, and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural, and social life.
In our work with children and families it is important to remember the UNCRC recognises that families should be afforded necessary protection and assistance to fully assume their responsibilities within the community. The UNCRC affirms that children should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.
Wherever possible, children should be involved in decisions that affect them. Encouraging participation does not mean children are always able to make the final decision, but allows their views to be taken seriously and treated with respect. This also means explaining to them when and why decisions are made against their wishes, in an age appropriate way. It is important to be honest, transparent and clear with children regarding the decisions that affect them.
Charter of rights for children and young people in OOHC
People working with and caring for children in OOHC are responsible for ensuring children have access to the Charter of Rights for Children and Young People in out-of-home care and that these rights are upheld. The NSW Child Safe Standards for Permanent Care establish minimum requirements for accreditation and require all out-of-home care providers to arrange care in accordance with this Charter.
Engaging and working with young people
The NGO Learning Centre, in collaboration with the CREATE foundation have created a ‘Ten Tips for working with children and young people in care’ podcast. Many of the tips apply to work with all young people, including:
- Effective work with young people balances building rapport, having deeper conversations, and getting things done.
- Young people sometimes report that adults are often good at being engaging, or good at following through and getting them what they need. Young people want us to know they need both.
- Young people value spending time chatting about the day to day with professionals, it’s important that not every conversation is serious or heavy.
- Young people also want to be understood on a deeper level. It’s important to try to understand how a young person feels about what’s happening and what they need, and following through with actions. Be someone a young person can always reach out to, no matter what.
- Be cautious about being swayed by records or other people’s opinions about a young person. Meet them and get to know them as an individual.
- Where possible, spend time in neutral territory, and places the young person likes to be.
- Take time to understand the developmental stages of adolescence, and translate your knowledge into understanding.
- Have high expectations of what a young person can achieve in the world. If you believe in them, they will too.
Understanding adolescent brain development is critical to effective work with young people. Because the brain is still developing, young people can struggle to plan for and understand the impact of their decisions. They may behave impulsively, make poor decisions and engage in risk taking behaviour.
This is all part of the normal teenage experience. This time of growth is a time of great opportunity for young people to learn lifelong skills, particularly in planning, reasoning, managing emotions and controlling impulses. This means we, as practitioners, have an enormous opportunity to provide support and guidance that facilitates growth in these areas.
The Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People also has a number of resources to help facilitate the participation of young people in decision making.
Working with Aboriginal families and communities
All professionals working with Aboriginal families and communities need to understand the history of Aboriginal dispossession, social, political and economic exclusion, genocide, grief and loss and intergenerational trauma. The effects of trauma, combined with ongoing experiences of racism and exclusion today, continue to impact Aboriginal people. Historical Government policies, laws and actions created circumstances where Aboriginal people have been disempowered, disenfranchised and unable to participate in decisions about themselves, their children or families. As a direct result of these conditions, Aboriginal children are significantly over-represented in the child protection and OOHC systems. It is important that we do not repeat these mistakes when working with Aboriginal families and communities today.
Systemic disadvantage continues to be experienced by many Aboriginal people today. Working collaboratively with community, and adopting a strengths-based approach that demonstrates understanding of unique cultural perspective and practices, will help to attain better, culturally appropriate outcomes for Aboriginal people.
Practitioners need to consider Aboriginal history, culture and practice in everything they do. Aboriginal people and communities are diverse. It is important to listen and try to understand a family’s individual experiences, beliefs, strengths and wishes. Aboriginal people and communities are resilient and have strengths that they have needed to draw upon to deal with adversity throughout history and into the present. It is important to try to find out what those strengths are. It is essential that professionals attend training to develop their cultural competence. An example of this is the NSW Health Respecting the Difference Training: The Aboriginal Cultural Training Framework: Respecting the Difference (the Framework), will assist increasing cultural competencies and therefore promote greater understanding.
In recognition of this longstanding injustice, the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 includes the principles of Aboriginal self-determination (section 11) and participation in decision making (section 12). This ensures Aboriginal people participate in decision making regarding the care and protection of their children, through means such as FGC. The right to self-determination for Aboriginal people is also provided for in Article 3 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Grandmothers Against Removal NSW (GMAR NSW) co-developed the Guiding Principles for Strengthening the Participation of Local Aboriginal Community in Child-Protection Decision-making (the Guiding Principles) with DCJ and the NSW Ombudsman’s Office. In particular, they highlight the role of Local Advisory Groups through which local Aboriginal communities can participate in decision making regarding the care and protection of Aboriginal children.
The Aboriginal Case Management Policy (ACMP) is an operational framework for all practitioners working with Aboriginal children and families across the continuum of support in NSW. The ACMP provides a framework for Aboriginal-led and culturally embedded case management practice to safeguard the best interests of Aboriginal children. It is the key mechanism for implementing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Placement Principles.
Additional resources to support your work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families can be found on the following websites:
Culturally responsive practice with diverse communities
Culture and experience influence parenting practices. We can build more effective and sustained working partnerships when we better understand the cultural background of the children and families we work with. This extends to learning about the child and family’s identity, religion, language, beliefs and values.
When we work to understand a family's culture, values and beliefs, our practice will be more responsive and tailored to the child and family's needs.
While it is important to recognise and respond to the influences of cultural factors, it is critical that harmful or neglectful behaviours are not labelled and dismissed as 'cultural practice'.
Consulting with appropriate multicultural services or communities can help to build understanding of the cultural background and practices of a family. Cultural consultation is not just about looking for information to identify culturally appropriate services. It involves engaging genuinely in the process and seeking specific knowledge, skills and assistance to make sure the needs of children and their families are met.
Additional resources to support working with culturally and linguistically diverse families include:
Working with children and parents with disability
Children with disability
Children with disability are at higher risk of experiencing abuse and neglect, and practitioners need to hold the same standards and concerns for children with disability as for other children.
Children with disability have all the rights of any other child. Particular attention may need to be made to upholding the rights of a child with disability to express their views and be heard. They have the right to be provided with age and ability-appropriate assistance so they can participate fully in decision-making, as noted in Article Seven of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is also a requirement under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992 to make reasonable adjustments for individuals with disability.
Some children with disability may also experience other forms of discrimination, such as racism or sexism. These experiences are important to understand as it may increase risk to the child, impact on their wellbeing and on their ability to access services.
Caring for a child with disability can have an impact on the family. In taking a holistic view of the family, services and supports should be identified for carers of children with disability as part of responding to the wellbeing of the child.
The information kit ‘Finding a Way’ seeks to address the barriers existing in the protection of children with an intellectual disability against the harm of sexual abuse. This project is the outcome of a partnership between Rosie's Place and the NSW Health Education Centre Against Violence.
Children with disability should not be defined by their disability. When working with children with disability, make sure you take time to get to know them – what they enjoy, what matters to them, how they see the world. Look to understand their disability and the impact it has on their lives, and make sure you are able to communicate with them in a way they understand. See below for communication tips.
Parents with disability
All parents experience challenges, although parents with disability are more likely than the general population to experience a range of barriers. Some of the biggest challenges they face can be overcoming stigma, assumptions and labels about their disability.
Just like any other family you work with, the children of parents with disability need you to understand any risk in the context of their own unique circumstances, not the labels they have been given. Supportive relationships outside the home and involvement in the wider community can lower risks and improve outcomes for children of parents with disability and the parents themselves.
When reporting and responding to safety and wellbeing concerns for children with a parent who has a disability, it is important that we:
- adopt a strengths based approach and
- provide reasonable adjustments to meet the individual needs of the parent. This is to enable them to participate as much as possible and do not further compound the barriers and judgements faced by the family.
When working with parents with disability, communicating in a way that makes sense to them, is a way of providing reasonable adjustments and enabling the parent to participate in the conversation. This may include use of easy to read information and simple language. It is helpful if you check that the parent clearly understands the reason for your involvement. The rights of parents with disability are upheld in Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Children may also be carers of parents or siblings with disability and this may have a significant impact on their life, their peer relationships, school outcomes and mental health. It’s important to be aware of the caring duties children may be performing where there is a person with a disability in the family.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) oversees funding for supports and services for children and adults with disability. NDIS contact points in NSW can be found on the NDIS website. It is important for practitioners to be informed about the NDIS and how children and families can be supported to access the scheme.
Agencies that work with children and parents with disability need to have the required skills, training and support. Additional resources to support your work with children and parents with disability include:
- First Peoples Disability Network Australia
- Multicultural Disability Advocacy Association
- Australian Indigenous Health InfoNet
- Intellectual Disability Rights Service
- Carers NSW
- ASPECT
- People With Disability Australia
Communicating effectively with children and adults with disability
There are a number of organisations that have developed simple resources to support communication with people with disability. These include the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, the Queensland Government and the NSW Department of Education National Disability Coordination Officer Program.
The Raising Children Network have a ‘Children with disability: guide to disability’ resource kit, which provides specific information about disabilities impacting children. There are also videos highlighting the experiences of real families. The Australian Association for Children with a Disability also has a range of resources to support families with children with disability.
If you are working with a child or family member with disability it is important to seek specialist consultation to support your practice and communication. The NDIS website has a list of partner agencies in NSW who provide assessment services to families and children with disability.
Some other tips for communication with children with disability include:
- Look and speak directly to the child, even if they have a caregiver or support person present
- If you have difficulty understanding, ask them to repeat or show you, or point. Never pretend to understand if you do not.
- Find out what communication methods they use - including any forms of alternative communication
- Listen to children, no matter how they communicate their thoughts, views and concerns. This might mean spending time with a child who is not verbal and observing their ability to interact and communicate.
- Ask the child or the people that know them best how they prefer to participate. What environment is best to meet them in? How do they prefer to communicate? Who is best placed to support them during conversations?
- Use tools and visual aids - be mindful of any barriers to reading and/or writing.
- Allow extra time for conversations. Be flexible - if one approach does not work, be prepared to try something different.
Videos
Talk to me - this video is about children’s desire to be spoken to regardless of their abilities.
The story Best friends highlights engagement strategies practitioners can use when working with a parent with disability.
The Disability Discrimination Act aims to protect people with disability against discrimination and unfair treatment.
Supporting a positive gender and sexual identity
Children who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning/queer, and other diverse sexual orientations and gender identities (LGBTIQ+) may be more at risk due to negative attitudes and discrimination.
Studies show that familial rejection can lead LGBTIQ+ youth to engage in behaviours that put their health at risk; trigger depression and other mental health problems; and in the worst of cases, result in homelessness or suicide. LGBTIQ+ Aboriginal children may experience additional risk factors, so it is critical that practitioners have a strong understanding of cultural factors when working with Aboriginal children and families, and family and kin networks are built through initiatives such as FGC and Family Finding to support Aboriginal children.
It is important to support children who identify as LGBTIQ+ by respecting and accepting them as they are and providing age appropriate information about available services, support, events and celebrations.
The following links lead to helpful resources to support these children:
- Twenty10 - a community-based, non-profit organisation working with a supporting people of diverse genders, sexes and sexualities
- ReachOut.com - LGBTIQ support services
- CREATE Foundation - resource for LGBTQ young people in care
- Serving LGBT2SQ children and youth in the child welfare system: A resource guide
Resources to support quality practice
Shining a Light on Good Practice
Shining a Light on Good Practice tells the real stories of children, families and their work with DCJ child protection practitioners. These are stories of strength, partnership and perseverance that rarely get shared with a wider audience.
See Understand and Respond to Sexual Abuse kit
The See Understand and Respond to Sexual Abuse kit provides very practical guidance to see, understand and respond to child sexual abuse where abuse is disclosed or suspected, but not confirmed. The kit supports work with children, families, communities and suspected offenders.