About Us
What is ISS?
Act for Kids’ Individual Support Services provide intensive, tailored support to the children and families who need it the most. We provide an innovative approach to the delivery of child protection and family support services in Queensland, through individualised packages that are formulated around a child and family’s needs. Commissioning child-focused services in this way creates individualised, comprehensive packages of care that are responsive to the often complex needs of the children and families supported by ISS.
We follow:
- a child-centred, ecological approach
- a partnered approach with government
- a needs-based service commissioning supported by adequate resourcing
- multidisciplinary, team-based approach
- acceptability and engagement of children and families to work with Act for Kids in a consent-based intervention.
ISS specifically aims to work with:
- children and young people who have experienced, or are at risk of cumulative harm and multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
- children and young people with complex behaviours that are prohibitive to accessing long-term care placements, schooling options, recreational activities, and community facilities.
- high-risk families in contact with child protection services.
- overrepresented groups (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children with disabilities, parents and carers with disabilities).
What we deliver:
Stability
Increased stability and improved outcomes for children.
Individualised, tailored approach
Dedicated specialist team implementing therapeutic interventions informed by assessments and evidence-based practice.
Experienced professionals
Highly experienced multi–disciplinary trained staff.
Diverse and inclusive
Culturally-responsive packages to increase home or placement stability and improve developmental outcomes for all children.
Return on investment
Achievement of outcomes offsets the ongoing and increased costs of child protection.
Flexible delivery
Intervention for any child known to Child Protection Agencies that needs extra support and therapeutic interventions through key developmental periods, at any point along the child protection continuum.
Professional reporting
Reports are produced monthly. Frequent tracking of changes are reported against an Outcomes Framework.
Stakeholder training
We provide training and capacity-building to caregivers, educators and all relevant stakeholders.
The intensiveness, workforce and intervention mix, timing/duration and ecological approach are characteristics that are all enabled through a higher level of resourcing for packages, that is more reflective of the level of need and complexity in this cohort of children and families. Reflecting this complexity, being able to address multiple challenges with multiple members of the family (including extended family) at the same time and within the same program helps to achieve the program’s outcomes.
Act for Kids Services
Acknowledgment of Country
Act for Kids pays its respects to the traditional custodians across the lands in which we work, and acknowledge their elders past, present and future.
