Martha Holden visits Australia to present and advise on the CARE model

October 1, 2012

During the month of August, Martha Holden (Director, Residential Child Care Project) visited Australia to attend The Association of Children's Welfare Agencies (ACWA) conference and meet with local residential services personnel and a university's child protection research center.

The ACWA conference was held August 20-22 in Sydney. Holden co-presented a workshop, CARE: Creating Conditions for Change on implementing the CARE model in two organizations in Australia with Diana Boswell, Director of the Thomas Wright Institute, Canberra; Hilary Martin, Director of Marymead Child and Family Services, Canberra; and Leith Sterling, Director of Professional Development, Anglicare Southern Queensland, Brisbane. Holden and Boswell have been working with these two residential services organizations for the past year helping them implement the CARE program model throughout their organizations.

There is currently great interest in implementing a more therapeutic approach to care for children in statutory care living in residential facilities in South Australia. Holden was invited by the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia to meet with the new Director of Residential Services (the statutory agency) in South Australia, Dana Shen, who is actively exploring the application of a therapeutic model of care with staff and providers. She also presented to managers from the statutory agency and the principle service providers about the principles of therapeutic care in the CARE model and to discuss implementation. Finally, she met with the Australian Centre for Child Protection research team to talk about the evaluation process in the CARE model and discuss how to embed some sort of evaluation and quality control in re-designed services from the outset. The Centre saw the potential to shape the development and nature of residential services in the State into the future.