Services

A family group conference (FGC) is a structured decision-making meeting made up of family members.

‘Family’ is determined broadly, to include the children, parents, extended family and even significant friends and neighbours to the family who may not actually be blood-related.

The goal of the meeting is to provide families with a safe space and time to reach a plan to facilitate the safe care and protection of a child or children in need.

 Community conferencing assists diverting youth away from the court and sentencing system. The rapid changes of adolescence and the tendencies for risk-taking behaviour that manifest in young people mean that the court system is often too slow, or formal to address the issues that underlie unlawful behaviour. 

Community conferencing is meant as both a restorative justice process and a means of rehabilitation, aiming for greater flexibility and responsiveness than the court system permits. The youth is encouraged to acknowledge responsibility and make reparation to the victim of the offence. 

Community conferencing is used around the world as a means of bringing youth into a community-based structure that allows for learning and growth from unlawful behaviour. It can reduce reoffending whilst promoting community ties with youth. 

The Registrar’s Office is responsible for managing compulsory conciliation process for non-attendance at school.

The conferences will involve everyone necessary to support a resolution to non-attendance, including parents/guardians, the child (if the child wants to), and school staff.

Individual conferences will be run by independent conciliators 

The intent of this process is to improve outcomes for Tasmanian students not currently attending school by providing those who are responsible for ensuring a child attends school with a way to participate in a process and to voice their needs to enable and support them to ensure the student returns to school.

 The Five Step framework is a way of preventing, understanding and healing from violence against girls and women. It is based on the concept of Universal Human Rights and draws on a powerful metaphor and multiple psychological modalities for working in trauma informed ways to help women interrupt patterns of abuse in their lives and in ways that empower girls and women and challenge victim blaming. 

 This eight week evidence based program explores common types of abuse that women experience and how this abuse relates to violations in human rights. It is a manualised program that can be used in group or individual settings.