Working with families

We work to keep families together as much as possible. In some cases, this might mean supporting children or young people to remain safely with their birth family at home. In other cases, it might mean supporting children or young people to return home to their family after they have been removed for a period of time.

Supporting a child or young person to remain at home is known as family preservation. Returning a child or young person home is called restoration. In both cases, home must be safe for the child or young person. These are the two permanency options we try to work with first.

DCJ may refer families to evidence-based services and programs such as Family Group Conferencing,  Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN®) and Functional Family Therapy for Child Welfare (FFT-CW®) to help keep families together. Other child protection programs such as Brighter Futures, Intensive Family Preservation and Intensive Family Based Services also support vulnerable parents to care for their children and keep them at home safely.

Under the Permanency Support Program, DCJ may also refer families to providers to deliver Family Preservation Packages. These packages provide wrap-around services that support children and young people to remain safely at home with their family.

They offer:

• family and parenting support
• child focused support
• safety monitoring and risk mitigation.

We also work with extended family and close community members as part of keeping children and young people connected to their family and community.

Services available under family preservation can help reduce the number of children and young people going into out-of-home care (OOHC).  By reducing the number of children in OOHC, more funding can be spent on supporting families to care for their children and have them remain living at home.