Our Services

The service aims to benefit:

• Children aged between 0 and 3 years and their families living in Sutherland Shire who have been recognised as needing extra support.
• Community minded residents of the Shire who gain satisfaction from volunteering their time and sharing their experience to help families in need.
• The local Sutherland Shire community benefits as caring, trust, reciprocity and participation are built.

Our Primary Activities:

• We work with isolated new mothers to develop mothercraft skills, providing a role model, providing guidance, information and strategies if requested.
• We provide an extra set of hands for new mothers who have premature babies, who have had multiple births, or who have young children to care for.
• We operate a food pantry to assist disadvantaged families struggling with financial difficulties.

Families who will benefit:

• Mothers who are isolated geographically or socially
• Multiple birth families
• Teenage parents
• Single parent families
• Mothers with limited parenting skills
• Older experienced mothers struggling with sleep deprivation
• Premature babies
• New arrivals to our area (from other regions or states)
• Migrants or refugees
• Mothers with Postnatal depression
• Child or family member with an illness or disability
• Mothers lacking family support 
• Mothers struggling to adjust to motherhood
• Families where there are frequent pregnancies
• Families where husbands/partners are serving in the Defence Forces
• Socially and economically disadvantaged families
• Families of all income levels are eligible for our service

Volunteers support mothers by:

Visiting for a few hours once per week, lending an extra hand to help with a baby or child, being a good listener, helping with shopping or appointments, providing company, assisting with information on parenting or other community supports.

An important part of the work of the volunteers and coordinators is building resilience. They help mothers by being an external support and resource.  Volunteers may model new parenting skills, and build on personal and interpersonal strengths.  Building resilience allows a person, group or community to prevent, minimize or overcome the damaging efffects of adversity. Building resilience is effective, can have life long benefits, can be inexpensive or nil cost. Resilience is linked with success in life and prevention of substance use problems, mental disorder and violence.   (Hillin, A.  and McAlpine, R. 2006)

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Referrals

Referral procedure

• Referrals are received from workers in health and welfare agencies
• Every referral is considered carefully
• Mothers with newborn babies will be a priority
• The coordinator will undertake an initial home visit assessment interview with the family
• Some referrals may be declined

Some families may need support other than what we provide - they may need to be referred to other specialised services, for example:

• Mothers with drug and/or alcohol problems
• Families where there is domestic violence
• Parents with untreated or unmanaged mental illness
• Partners or other persons known to be a safety risk residing in or visiting the home
• New referrals requiring immediate crisis intervention and case management

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Important Notes

The safety of volunteer and the support of the parent is a priority.

The Service Co-ordinator considers what current support a family has before agreeing to link a volunteer with the family.

Sutherland Early Support Service does not focus only on disadvantaged families or crisis intervention. Our service is about prevention and building stronger, healthier families and communities.

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