Families
Significant economic and social change has had a profound impact on the stability of the family. Factors such as limited employment opportunities and a lack of affordable housing have left families – in their changing forms and shapes – vulnerable to issues such as poverty, family conflict and violence, substance abuse, marital dissolution and homelessness.
Good Shepherd's family programs seek to build family resilience through the nurturing of family cohesion, flexibility, open communication, problem solving and the affirmation of belief systems.
Peninsula
Family Strengthening Program
Family Solutions is a partnership between Good Shepherd Youth & Family Service, Anglicare Vic, and Oz Child. It aims to provide enhanced family services to vulnerable families in the Mornington Peninsula Shire by providing a range of timely, coordinated and tailored interventions to promote resilience, strengthen parenting capacity, and improve outcomes for children.
The program can provide: Family Support, Child & Family Counselling, Parenting Groups, Parenting Strategies, Volunteer Mentoring Support Programs and Referral Support and Advice. Family Solutions strengthens and supports families by providing immediate as well as ongoing support.
Family Solutions has a family friendly single contact point which families use to get help across the Mornington Peninsula area which can be accessed by phoning 1300 721 383.
St Albans
Family Counselling
The Family Counselling service exists for families who are under stress and experiencing difficulties who live, work, go to school or study in the City of Brimbank.
The Family Counsellors provide counselling and support to families on issues such as:
- Parenting difficulties.
- Conflict issues between parents and their children.
- Difficulties with anxiety, stress and anger.
- Relationship difficulties between couples, parents and their children.
- Dealing with depression.
- School difficulties.
- Dealing with impact of abuse (physical, psychological, sexual).
- Sexuality issues.
- Grief and loss issues.
- Dealing with separation and divorce.
Good Shepherd Family Counsellors also provide information, advocacy and referrals to specialist services and work collaboratively with other agencies to provide the best level of support to families.
Step Out
The Step Out Project commenced in October 2004. The project aims to assist parents or primary carers with young children, particularly young parents who are socially isolated and living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods within the City of Brimbank (such as St Albans, Sunshine and West Sunshine) to improve their parenting skills. It provides parents with the opportunity to develop resilience, relationship and parenting skills, as well as enhance connections to, and participate in their local community. This is being achieved by offering parents or primary carers:
- Parenting and relationships skills development to enhance family functioning through:
- Weekly Mums' and Kids' Group – attended by 10 mums and 15 children.
- Cooking Up a Storm Program – cooking and nutrition programs for mums.
- Individual and relationship counselling and support.
- Links to training and employment opportunities and strategies to manage work-relationship-family responsibilities.
Raised awareness of financial management, particularly focused on dealing with utility companies, banks, schools and other mainstream services.
- Opportunities to engage with and participate in social networks and to connect with their local neighbourhoods.
- Support for greater community involvement through participation in early child services and other local activities.
Step Out intervenes at key transition points in the lives of young children and their families to work on complex relationship and parenting issues and build personal, family and community capacity. This early intervention strategy is implemented to promote better life choices for these young children, who are particularly vulnerable to transgenerational welfare dependency, poverty and disadvantage.
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