Reach

Mission Statement

The REACh program (Responding Early Assisting children) realised the Australian Government’s commitment to support and strengthen families by assisting to build their capacity and their resilience, assist families to receive help in times of transition and intervening early with venerable families to prevent them from experiencing crises, such as child abuse.

REACh also supports the Australian Governments commitment to the National Agenda for Early childhood development.

The Department of Family and Community Services and the Coffs Harbour Aboriginal Family Care Centre recently developed a partnership to design a program looking into the early intervention and prevention of child abuse within Aboriginal communities within Coffs Harbour with a view to taking the program nationally. The program aims to reduce the numbers of Aboriginal children in culturally inappropriate facilities. The project also aims to identify kinship obligations in responding early against child harm in a community setting where, "their own, look after their own". The principles underpinning the program are a holistic view of health, the need to recognise the role of history in trauma and loss, Aboriginal people's right to self-determination and the importance of kinship to Indigenous well-being.

This aspect of the research relates to the need to recognise the expertise of Aboriginal Elders, Aboriginal Trained Mentors, Aboriginal community members who are involved in the provision of services to Aboriginal children, and other key service providers. It is believed that the programs outcomes will provide the REACH with a comprehensive overview of Coffs Harbour's circumstances compared to national and seek best practises as an appropriate model to respond to the needs of Aboriginal children.

The broad aim of the research project is to compile an overview of the initiatives for the prevention of child abuse and neglect and to identify the programs and services that are available, or are required, to respond to child harm. Specifically, the project seeks to answer the following questions.

Descriptive statistics will be gathered of recorded Aboriginal children in care. This data will be limited by the measures taken by the Department of Family and Community Services to identify Aboriginal children. Children are defined for the purposes of this project as being 0-8 years of age. The participants of the focus groups will either be identified by their status within the Aboriginal Community or by using the 'snowball' technique. This latter strategy will be particularly useful in the recruitment of Aboriginal parents in the project. Written consent will be obtained from each participant. Participants will each be given a standard attendance fee.

The focus groups will be made up of the following people within the local region: Coffs Harbour Aboriginal Elders, Coffs Harbour Aboriginal people who provide services to Aboriginal children, and Non-Aboriginal people who provide key services to Aboriginal children.