early intervention services
Brighter Futures
Brighter Futures, DoCS early intervention program, provides vulnerable families with access to a range of services shown to:
- reinforce positive family relationships
- increase resilience
- promote healthy child development
- prevent child abuse and neglect
To be eligible for Brighter Futures, families must require long-term support and be experiencing at least one of the Brighter Futures program vulnerabilities.
Services for families are delivered over a period of up to two years in order to produce lasting effects for children.
DoCS and 14 non-government lead agencies funded under the program work with over 400 children and family service providers to help connect families to the services they need.
resources for Brighter Futures workers
- Service Provision Guidelines - provide the core policy and operational framework for delivering Brighter Futures. They also provide information about using the DoCS Connect portal – the online referral, reporting and data collection tool.
- Abridged Caseworker manual - policy and practice information for the Brighter Futures Program.
- Costing manual – a tool to help non-government organisations determine the indicative unit costs for a range of child and family services.
practice resources for frontline workers:
-
Working with Aboriginal communities - presentation
- case study handout to go with presentation - Child behaviour management
- Drug and alcohol
- Domestic violence
- Parental intellectual disability
- Parental mental health
There are also brochures and fact sheets for parents available in a number of community languages.
evaluation
DoCS has appointed the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) at the University of NSW to undertake a four year independent evaluation of the program.
Rigorous evaluation will allow DoCS to build upon current knowledge about early intervention services and refine the program over time to improve its effectiveness and efficiency.
SPRC have produced an interim report on the Brighter Futures program.
early intervention research
See the latest research in prevention and early intervention.
