Family Services

The Family Services provides a range of services to families with children 0-18 living in the city of Moreland. In March 2008 the Family Services became part of the Hume Moreland Integrated Family Services, an alliance of nine agencies providing family support services to Families in Hume / Moreland. Although the Family Services retains its own intake service for self referrals, all other referrals and allocation happen via Child First.
The goal of the Family Services is to work in the best interest of children, by supporting families to become more resilient, function better and to reduce the risk of cumulative harm developing. The families who are referred to the Family Services can have very complex presenting issues such as past trauma, current mental health and substance misuse etc whilst other referrals are significantly less complex.
 
The Family Services can help families:

• To understand how issues such as trauma, major lifecycle challenges and intergenerational conflict etc can impact on current family relationships and to support the family to work through these issues.
• Assist parents to have better parenting skills
• Build healthy parent and child /adolescent relationships
• Understand and deal with major life changes, Separation and    birth of a baby.

The Family Services Staff work alongside families providing

• Case management support.
• Advocacy and referrals to appropriate support services
• Family and individual counselling
• Group work  programs covering a variety of topics relevant to parenting and family life
  

Group work
Group programs covering a variety of topics relevant to parenting and family life

• Young Mums Group, 
• ABCD parenting adolescents, 
• PND group (Post Natal Depression group) 
• Jelly bubbles parenting 2-5.
   
  

We are currently looking at setting up groups working with men and cross cultural work.
 
Referrals
Referrals directly to the Family Services are via self referrals. However we are open to discussing referrals with -

• Schools 
• Maternal Child Health Nurses 
• Doctors 
• Hospitals 
• Other professionals