Other services

Supervision

 

GTS also offers a supervision service where the staff member attends contact visits between a child their birth parents, siblings or other family members with whom they are not living. This provides an opportunity for a relationship to continue between the child and their family, while ensuring that the child is not exposed to stressful or unsafe situations.

 

Contact House

 

In 2009, the Department of Housing and Community Services provided a residential property for Galilee to use as a contact and supervision house for our clients.

 

The Galilee contact house offers facilitated contact sessions for non-residential parents with their children. Contact between the birth parent and the child is supervised under strict guidelines with the primary objective of the service being the safety of the child/young person.

 

The contact house has been set up as a family home, intended to produce an environment where parents and their children can participate in household tasks and routines, with a strong focus on meal/snack preparation, indoor/outdoor social and leisure activities, bathing and toileting, and engaging and assisting with homework. The purpose is to encourage the development of the parent and child relationship in as natural an environment as possible. The Contact house has been designed using a strengths based model to introduce and include recognition of attributes and skills in both the parents and the children. Galilee also believes in acknowledging the parental challenges that are faced and is committed to providing outcomes and suggestions to address these challenges thus allowing a way forward.

 

The set up of the contact house is still in development but has been showing promising signs. Staff and management of the Galilee Transport and Supervision program are excited by the positive results that they have seen in the lives of the babies, children and young people in care.

 

In-home Support

 

GTS has also expanded its service to offer in-home support to parents which includes teaching parenting skills such as cooking, cleaning and budgeting. GTS can also accommodate the supervision of sleepover visits in the family home.

 

About Galilee Transport and Supervision Service (GTS)

 

The Galilee Transport and Supervision (GTS) service offers transportation for babies, children and young people within the Canberra region. GTS has been in operation for seven years and accepts referrals from the ACT Office for Children, Youth and Family Support (OCYFS), other foster care agencies, and the general public.

 

GTS does not replace the regular transport usually undertaken by foster carers or agency workers but can assist when they are unable to do so. GTS currently provides services for approximately 200 children and is available seven days a week, 365 days a year.

 

GTS offers transport to and from:

 

• school

• specialist appointments

• sporting events, and

• contact visits with birth parents and other family members.

 

 

 

Staff

 

Galilee staff receive training with the focus on practical parenting designed to assist and instruct parents and children through gentle example.

 

All GTS staff are carefully recruited and receive ongoing training relating to the issues of children and families involved with Child Protection Services. All staff undergo a Working with Children police check prior to employment with Galilee.

 

GTS staff are trained to supervise contact visits and can provide written observation reports of the visit.

 

 

 

Contact

 

GTS

 

Phone: 02 6290 2191

Fax: 02 6290 2512

Email: gts@galilee.org.au

 

Physical address

 

Building 3

Pearce Community Centre

Collett Place
Pearce ACT 2607

 

Postal address

 

PO Box 205

Mawson ACT 2607