The Early Intervention Research Directorate (EIRD) has funded the establishment of the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in the Social Work Innovation Research Living Space (SWIRLS) at Flinders University.
Professor Sarah Wendt, Dr Carmela Bastian and Dr Jenny van der Arend are working together with EIRD and key stakeholders to co-design collaborative practice responses and develop understanding of ‘what works’ when responding to and supporting children and families experiencing domestic/family violence and child protection concerns.
We are working to develop and document research involving two specific collaborative responses in the southern metropolitan region of Adelaide: collaborative services between the Department for Child Protection and Konar Winmil Yunti (KWY), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Services, and between the Department for Child Protection and Women’s Safety Services SA (WSSSA).
One of the aims of the research project is to co-design, trial, and test sustainable collaborations across the Department for Child Protection and domestic and family violence specialist agencies so children and families can live positive lives.
In the last four months we have been working closely with our key stakeholders in co-designing collaborative service responses or “prototypes”. We have had practitioners from both organisations come together over a series of workshops, engage in conversations about collaborative practice and build solutions on improving collaboration and outcomes for children and their families.
We have co-designed two prototypes which will be trialled and tested in the Southern Metropolitan Region of Adelaide as from November 2019.
For more information you can read the Building collaborations_Project Update_Dec2019