Family Program (Our child protection program)

Jannawi has operated this service for local families from the same site in Wiley Park for over 30 years. It is one of the oldest, if not oldest NGO child protection service in Australia. Staff present at National Child Protection Conferences and social work students are regularly placed at Jannawi for up to 6 months by different Universities as part of their practice placement requirement. Jannawi also has a long history of providing child protection training to other professionals and agencies.

The program works with children who have experienced child abuse and their families. Many of the families we work with have experienced or are still experiencing domestic violence. We work intensively with children and use many activity based groups as an effective means of supporting them, providing therapeutic interventions and building resilience.

Jannawi provides an intensive program that can have contact with a family 3 or more times a week and usually is involved with children and families for between one and two years.

In recent years we have worked with around 60 children a year and provided a range of services that usually requires the involvement of many agencies.

These services include

• Child Protection (assessment, safety planning)
• General Family Support (advice, service coordination, information)
• Therapeutic Services (counselling for children and parents)
• Early childhood assessments and targeted developmental interventions for children
• Advocacy
• Case management
• Therapeutic Groups for children and parents
• Parenting groups
• Educational programs for children
• Recreational and school holiday programs for children
• Practical support (transport, financial assistance, court support)
• Supervised access visits (these are usually for children already in long term care and where  more specialised supervision of the access is required)

Our model works well for families with complex issues and needs as they only need to relate to one agency for support. It works well for children because the intensity of service provision promotes increased safety, provides opportunities for growth and development and provides meaningful information for the purpose of assessment.