Newcastle and Hunter
This year we assisted 3,225 clients throughout the Newcastle and Hunter region.
Of these, the Family Relationship Centre (FRC) saw 1,210 cases. As a team we are constantly looking for ways
we can refine our Family Dispute Resolution (FDR) service to best meet the needs of parents and children –
including before, during and after mediation. There are many reasons why a proportion of FDR cases may
always be ‘unsuitable for mediation’, however, as a group we were keen to consider how we could broaden the
scope of our service with the aim of increasing the capacity of parents to engage with, and benefit from, FDR.
Our FRC Manager Margaret Stewart led a project to consider how we might achieve this objective, with one of
the recommendations being to establish a Family Counsellor position embedded within our FRC.
In January 2016, we flexed our staff resources to make this happen. Our Family Counsellor, Cherie Gibson,
takes referrals from Family Dispute Resolution Practitioners (FDRPs) in the FRC. Generally, most cases referred
to family counselling would have previously been issued a Section 60I Certificate, meaning the mediation was
not proceeding. The brief counselling offered to FRC clients is targeted to the barriers to mediation identified
by the FDRP. To date, the FDRPs and clients have strongly embraced this service with FDRPs also saying this
extra support is getting more cases through to mediation.
To measure the effectiveness this new service model has had on client outcomes, clients have been asked to
complete The Parental Empowerment and Efficacy Measure (PEEM) at Session 1 (i.e. intake) and again at either
Sessions 3 or 4 (i.e. discharge). Early results are very encouraging; with average intake PEEM score being 106
compared to their discharge score being 143 out of a possible 200. Data shows that FRC clients attending
brief family counselling targeted to assessed barriers or challenges to mediation are achieving, on average,
a 20 point increase in their reported ‘Efficacy to Parent’ and average a 17 point increase in their reported
‘Efficacy to Connect with Others’. These early results and anecdotal reports from FDRPs and clients are a strong
indicator that FRC client outcomes have improved as a direct result of flexing the service model to better meet
presenting needs. Most significantly more parents feel better prepared, skilled, and confident to successfully
negotiate a child-focused parenting agreement.
Another highlight for our region this year was the awarding of a 12-month contract in May to deliver a Parent
Support Activity under the Commonwealth Government’s Communities for Children (CfC) program. The
contract has a number of deliverables, including: (i) deliver evidence-based parenting programs (in our case
we selected the program Bringing Up Great Kids); (ii) deliver Interrelate parenting group programs, one-to-one
counselling and case management services to vulnerable parents and families, and (iii) deliver professional
development workshops tailored to the needs of local child and families workers.
We immediately engaged with stakeholders to promote the new service and understand local service gaps.
We are confident we will exceed the expectations the CfC committee have for this project, having already
facilitated the first of four sector development workshops we will deliver over the life of the contract. After
canvassing local stakeholders, Carmel Smith designed a ‘trauma informed care in child/family services’
workshop, which was attended by 55 professionals with demand to attend the workshop so strong we had a
cancellation list in place. Feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive (e.g. 100% of attendees rated
the workshop as either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’).
Celebrating the launch of Connect, our Family Mental Health Support Service in Lake Macquarie
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