The Life Without Barriers Queensland Child, Youth and Family team has been awarded CARE Certification, developed by the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University.
In an Australian first, Life Without Barriers has partnered with Cornell University to implement the CARE Model.
CARE has been implemented by 50 agencies internationally. It is made up of a worldwide network of practitioners that contribute to research and evaluation of the CARE program, and share and learn from each other.
The Queensland Child, Youth and Family team started its journey towards CARE implementation with a CARE Leadership retreat in 2017. Since then, they have undertaken a rigorous implementation process that has included training hundreds of staff, and aligning their processes, practices and systems with the CARE principles.
The overarching purpose of this work is to ensure that Life Without Barriers offers the best trauma-informed practice supports to the children and families we support.
The CARE model helps us to deliver great services by:
Influencing the way we think about children. The CARE model helps us form relationships, helps children build their competencies, and guides our interactions with children and their families.
Guiding us to make decisions and take actions based on the best interests of children.
Giving us a shared language and understanding so we can be consistent in our practice and work towards a common goal.
Martha Holden, Director Residential Child Care Project, Cornell University, congratulated Life Without Barriers on being awarded the CARE certification in a letter to CEO Claire Robbs.
"The commitment of the Queensland leadership group has been an inspiration to us at Cornell and for other organisations and a positive force for children and families.”
“The Life Without Barriers National and Queensland leadership team has diligently worked to fully implement CARE and serve the best interests of children and families. Even during the challenging and difficult last two years, they maintained their focus and continued to embed CARE into their practices and programs," said Martha.
Life Without Barriers Executive Director of Child, Youth and Family, Jane French reflected on the Queensland Child, Youth and Family team's achievement.
“Firstly I would like to congratulate the Queensland team. This is a really important milestone for Life Without Barriers and I look forward to seeing our other State and Territory programs achieving CARE certification over the coming months.
"How we approach caring for vulnerable children and young people defines us, and CARE gives us the framework and tools to support children to heal from their trauma. Our people have embraced the CARE principles and continue to deploy their learnings day in and day out across our residential, foster and kinship care programs.
"I would also like to thank Martha Holden and our partners at Cornell who have been a great support to Life Without Barriers over the years and we look forward to this ongoing partnership into the future”
To find out more about the CARE model, click here.
