Territory Stories

Let's start: a program for Territory parents and children

Details:

Title

Let's start: a program for Territory parents and children

Other title

Let's Start parent child program

Creator

Robinson, Gary; Mares, Sarah; Jones, Yomei; Stock, Carolin; Hallenstein, Birgit; Branchut, Virginie

Collection

E-Publications; E-Books; PublicationNT

Date

2012

Description

This paper describes the 'Let's Start' program for Aboriginal parents and children in the Northern Territory, including its context, rationale, and the evidence of its effectiveness. This program follows on from the 'Ngaripirliga'ajirri - Exploring Together Program' for school aged children in the Tiwi Islands, run from 1999-2004, and the 'Let's Start - Exploring Together for Indigenous Preschools' program for younger children in the Tiwi Islands as well as Darwin, which was run from 2006-2010. Based on this experience, the program has been adapted and redeveloped as the 'Let's Start Parent-Child Program'.; Made available via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).

Notes

Centre for Child Development and Education, Menzies School of Health Research

Table of contents

Background -- Introduction -- What is Let's Start? -- Early intervention: context and rationale -- Conclusion: the Let's Start approach -- References.

Language

English

Subject

Children, Aboriginal Australian; Services for; Parenting; Study and teaching

Publisher name

Menzies School of Health Research

Place of publication

Darwin

Format

21 pages : colour illustrations ; 30 cm.

File type

application/pdf.

ISBN

9781922104021; 9781922104038

Copyright owner

Check within Publication or with content Publisher.

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/282332

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/413018

Page content

20 Lets Start Parent Child Program Conclusion: The Lets Start Approach The approach developed by Lets Start has addressed the challenge of delivering an effective and accessible therapeutic program for Aboriginal parents and children in remote communities. There is a track record of program delivery and evaluation in several different remote communities and and regions and in Darwin over 10 years. There is evidence of the effectiveness of Lets Start. Program coordination is provided by leaders based in Darwin who spend threefour days a week in the participating communities, working with stakeholders, engaging parents and overseeing the contributions of community members who work for the team. Lets Start can be aligned with whole-school strategies to promote social and emotional learning and positive behaviour management. Lets Start provides a service that is able to work with a range of target groups according to their developmental age and needs. It does not isolate individuals from their context, but creates a way of working with child and parent that acknowledges family and community relationships and reaches out to these. Lets Start is able to assess parent, child and family functioning in a considered way, and is able to respond to many sources of difficulty and to help see that parents access other services they may need. Lets Start includes processes to ensure program fidelity, and support the professional development of staff, through training and practice supervision. The Lets Start Program works with many currently unintegrated services and agencies: health, including both primary health care and specialist paediatric and mental health services; education, both in the classroom, through teachers appraisal of childrens needs at referral and in subsequent evaluation of outcomes, and through links with school support services. The Lets Start approach to school-based early prevention can be strengthened through enhanced collaboration between agencies and services.