Brisbane Youth Service has been working with vulnerable, at risk young families for forty years. Many of these families have an extensive history of trauma. In addition to the stigma attached to being a young parent, a history of trauma can impact on their ability to be a competent caregiver and develop a secure attachment with their child in the first 1000 days.

We know that trauma can threaten the emotional and psychological security of a child. When a young parent is unable to meet the attachment and developmental needs of their child, alongside early deprivation of appropriate enrichment and stimulation, this can lead to delays developmental milestones.

We recognise that young parents are difficult to engage, particularly in parenting programs. We find success through relationship based practice using a strengths based perspective to underpin our framework of engagement. Once relationship and trust is built, we use an attachment and infant mental health based interventions to build the parent/child relationship and create a safe environment for the family.

We have recognised the importance of supporting young families within the first 1000 days as this has a major impact on the child’s infant mental health, building a secure attachment and the overall parenting capacity and wellbeing of the family. We will speak further on the challenges with working with young families and the importance of working within this attachment framework. We will also elaborate further on why this early intervention is essential for the first 1000 days of a child’s life.

Professionals across multiple services work alongside fathers to care for and support the growth and development of children, yet engaging fathers can at times be challenging. However, the value of engaging fathers cannot be understated; there is much research on the positive developmental outcomes children experience with involved fathers, with research also showing that the influence of a fathers love is as great, and at times greater than the influence of mothers. A positively involved father reduces a child’s chances of mental health issues and behavioural problems and improves social emotional wellbeing, performance at school, and is the number one predictor of the development of empathy. The valuing of dads and the value of dads to children doesn’t often break the social conscience and rhetoric. Debunking the myths about working with dads and highlighting opportunities to engage dads in sensitive, inclusive and authentic ways is critical to assisting professionals who support families and children. The Family Place Approach has been developed to provide high quality practices in safe spaces for children and families in the Logan region. This presentation will discuss the outcomes for fathers and children observed through the work at The Family Place. The barriers to engaging with dads, practical strategies to engage them will be discussed including the benefits of fathers to children s development. It is hoped to provide new insights to professionals for the valuing of dads to children’s development so they may show leadership in practice as inclusive services for supporting the whole family.

Over a number of years, various Australian states and territory governments introduced legislation permitting pre-birth notifications of infants to child protection authorities. The aim is to provide supports and services to the pregnant woman to ameliorate the risk of postnatal harm. Despite widespread acceptance of pre-birth notifications as an early intervention measure, the number of infants being removed from maternal care continues to rise; this pattern is most evident among substance-using women. Compared to the US, Canada and the UK, Australia has been slow in developing models of care able to bridge obstetric services and child protection; discharge planning for vulnerable infants therefore remains fraught, particularly as there are few programs able to address co-occurring problematic substance-use, mental health and family violence. As a result, Odyssey House Victoria, through its Kids in Focus program, forged a partnership with the Women’s Alcohol and Drug Service at the Royal Women’s Hospital, the major provider of obstetric services in the State of Victoria. This presentation outlines key elements of a program positioned “at the pointy end of the stick”, the interface between obstetric care, alcohol and other drug treatment and child welfare. It describes how the Social Work Outreach program attends to safety and improves outcomes among high-risk infants and their mothers through multidisciplinary collaboration and assertive outreach. Two perspectives are presented: those of service providers and women taking part in the program.