Community, Youth and Family Health

The Community, Youth and Family Health program is multi-disciplinary and provides an extensive range of centre-based and outreach services to children, individuals and families, including:

• Family support and group programs
• Casework and counselling (individuals, couples, young people and families)
• Dietetics
• Financial counselling
• Health education and promotion
• Outreach midwifery and sexual & reproductive health services
• Paediatric occupational therapy
• Paediatric speech therapy
• Physiotherapy (including physiotherapy for children with special needs)
• Podiatry
• Problem gambling counselling (through Gambler's Help Southern)
• Psychology for children with special needs
• Water and general exercise programs
• Horn of Africa projects
• Men’s Responsibility group
• Anxiety and depression group

Additional activities

In addition to these core services, staff have been involved in a diverse range of activities, including the following:

• Jointly initiating a number of activities with the City of Port Phillip at the International Women’s Day. Approximately 120 women participated in creative activities to celebrate women’s contribution to our community.
  
  
• We are one of the few Victorian services that assist parents and carers to deal with their child’s violence and abuse. In 2006, the Who’s the Boss program assisted almost 20 parents and carers to try new parenting strategies to respond to abuse by adolescents in the home.
  
  
• Delivering an anxiety group specifically for clients of the mental health team over eight weeks. This unique approach enhanced the capacity of mental health staff to work with their clients to implement and sustain group interventions.
  
  
• The Allied Health Team continue to assist clients to learn skills to self manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and poor nutrition.
  
  
• Over 25 new volunteers commenced with ISCHS in 2006 and volunteered in a range of roles including Community Winter Breakfast and yoga class assistants, family visitors, community drivers and client survey assistants.
  
  
• The Port Melbourne Childhood Nutrition project has been successful in improving intake and access to fruit and vegetables in primary school aged children.The project won a Victorian Public Health Award in the Spotlight Innovation category and the 2005 City of Port Phillip Civic School Project award.
  
  
• Two successful submissions for family violence were funded to provide counselling and groups for women and children and a men’s group to address their violence and abuse.