After three rounds of community workshops in the Hunter area and South West Sydney, we are now much closer to finalising the development of a new model of guardianship support for Aboriginal children, young people and their families.
AbSec hosted these COVID-safe community workshops after guardians told us about their lived experiences with the shift to guardianship and not being eligible for ongoing assistance and support from the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) or an out-of-home care agency.
We now hope to establish a network of services, supports and resources that can be delivered by Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to ensure that these Aboriginal children have access to the supports they and their families need to thrive.
The first workshops focused on creating ideas and opportunities around identified areas of support, and canvassed the views of guardians, carers and their supporters across a range of key areas while the second workshops were expanded to include Aboriginal community members, Aboriginal organisations and workers, and looked at how to develop new supports and services. The final workshops, held at the end of October, were seeking community feedback on the co-design for supports and services and worked together on how to bring the model to life.
We are now finalising the support model and putting it out to tender. We hope to have some good news soon about when we can start getting this assistance into communities.
“It was terrific to have such great insights, responses and input from guardians, carers and community throughout the co-design workshops,” the AbSec team said.