Empathy and Action: Learning from Care Leavers

Delivered by four Lived Experience Experts, this training will help workers better understand care leavers’ experience and what skills and attributes care leavers are looking for in a worker and service.

With funding from the Foundation for Young Australians and the Australian Government Department of Health and the support of the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, a group of care leavers have come together to develop and deliver an online workshop for workers that support the mental health and wellbeing of young people who have been in care.

This workshop has been specifically designed for those workforces that do not regularly work directly with care leavers, e.g. mental health workers in the outer second and third ring of their support networks, and therefore may not fully understand or appreciate the impact of their pre-care and care experience.

Why?

The issue we are aim to address is the lack of suitable and useful mental health and other support services specifically for out-of-home care leavers (18-24 years). Often, support workers do not have appropriate knowledge of the trauma, or a shared experience of the care system, to adequately assist or holistically work with a young care leaver around their mental health concerns.

Ultimately, our project aims to positively impact the wellbeing of Victorian care leavers, 18-24 years old. We think this training is particularly timely because care leavers are disproportionately impacted by the hardships of the pandemic and the bushfires due to the disadvantage and trauma they have already experienced.

We would love to share our knowledge and insights with you, so together we can create a brighter future for care leavers in Victoria.

You can choose to join one of the following session dates:
Thursday 25^th November 3:00pm – 5:00pm
Thursday 2^nd December 3:00pm – 5:00pm

Registration is free, but get in quick, spots are limited!