Breaking Cycles Building Futures

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Breaking Cycles Building Futures

• Brotherhood of St Laurence

2
Overview

• BCBF is funded by the Premiers Drug Prevention
  Council
• Component of the Best Start Strategy

3
Aims

• To develop more engaging and inclusive universal
  early childhood services
• Key focus on vulnerable children/families who do
  not use or prematurely disengage from these
  services

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Project Stages

• Stage 1 - Review of literature
• What are the barriers to access and inclusive
  practice?
• Strategies which have been successful in
  addressing these.
• Stage 2 - Community consultation
• Views of service users/providers/key stakeholders

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Project Stages

• Stage 3 - Guiding Principles
• What works based on the findings of stage 1 and 2
• Stage 4 - Implementation
• Work with Best Start Partnerships to implement
  strategies

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Timelines

• Literature review
• Report by mid April
• Community consultation
• Report by end May
• Guidelines
• 1st draft mid June, final by end August
• Implementation (subject to funding)
• August 03 - August 04

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The services

• Services from pregnancy to age eight, with a
  major focus on universal services
• This takes in a wide range of services, eg
  antenatal care, MCH services, childcare,
  preschool and primary schools

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Vulnerable families

• Low income (unemployed/under-employed)
• Young parents
• Sole parents
• Health, mental health and/or substance use
  problems
• Physical, sensory or intellectual disabilities
• Homelessness
• Contact with child protection or legal system
• CALD communities (partic new arrivals and
  refugees)
• Indigenous

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Preliminary Impressions - Service Use Patterns

• Not that easy to obtain a comprehensive picture
• Type and quality of data varies from service type
  to type
• Data is fairly general in nature - contacts,
  enrolments
• Not much detail re service user characteristics

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Preliminary Impressions - Service Use Patterns

• Reasonably high use of most services - but not
  uniform use
• Variability between regions and specific service
  sites within regions
• Some quantitative and much qualitative evidence
  for lower service use amongst vulnerable families
• How can we track this? (issues of sensitivity and
  privacy)

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Preliminary Impressions - Barriers

• Typically assessed through surveys, 11
  interviews, focus groups
• Distinguish b/w access versus engagement/ongoing
  participation
• Numerous (eg affordability, availability,
  accessibility, acceptability etc, etc)
• How do these factors operate and interact?

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Preliminary Impressions - Inclusion strategies

• Many strategies trialed - not as many evaluated
• Those evaluated are often from different service
  contexts (overseas, targeted rather than built on
  universal)
• Those evaluated often assessed as a whole
  package - difficult to tease out impact of
  specific service elements and their relative
  effect

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Preliminary impressions - Strategies

• Some possible success factors
• Policy and funding support
• Management and staff commitment
• Time
• Staff training

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Preliminary impressions - Strategies

• Some possible success factors
• Eliminate costs or keep to minimum
• Provide outreach or facilitate transport
• One-stop-shop (actual or virtual) with range of
  necessary services
• Be proactive in seeking out client group
  (targeted on universal)
• Be proactive at transition points (eg hospital to
  community)

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Preliminary impressions - Strategies

• Some possible success factors
• Focus on building trust and relationships
• Parent participation/ownership
• Attention to cultural sensitivity (through
  resources, staff training, bilingual workers)

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Contact

• Stephen Carbone Research and Policy Project
  Manager
• scarbone_at_bsl.org.au
• 9483-1385
• Level 1, 67 Brunswick Street Fitzroy 3065