Category: News

Our children and families celebrate a love of lifelong learning through HIPPY

This month saw a group of very proud five year olds and their families graduate at the end of their two year pre-school HIPPY program.

HIPPY (Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters) is an Australia-wide play-based curriculum supporting development, community, connection and confidence for children’s transition to school. HIPPY assists children to become curious learners and to achieve important developmental milestones.

Children and their families have worked so hard over the last two years with the support of their HIPPY tutors to complete the HIPPY program. To celebrate this, we held a graduation ceremonies across our centres with certificates, presents, music and of course, cake! What a fabulous way to end the year and a great honour celebrating with parents and carers.

HIPPY is a home-based early childhood learning and parenting program that empowers parents and carers to be the children’s first teachers. Not only does this program provide structured, education-focused resources and support through organised playgroups and home-visits by HIPPY tutors, it also enables parents to spend more time with their children in activities that enhance cognitive development and social/emotional development. It stimulates positive parent/child interactions and empowers parents to view themselves as primary educators of their children.

Spokesperson Ciemara Williams, Barnardos HIPPY Co-ordinator in Warrawong says “95% of children’s brain development happens before the age of five, so the earlier children become engaged with education the better their outcomes will be.”

Barnardos offers the HIPPY program free of charge to local families in Maroubra via the Sydney Metro Children’s Family Centre, Wellington via the Western NSW Children’s Family Centre and ​​​​​​​Warrawong, Berkeley, Cringila, Port Kembla, Kemblawarra and Unanderra via the South Coast Children’s Family Centre

HIPPY is now enrolling children who turn 3 before the 31^st July 2023 who still have 2 years left before starting kindergarten.

We wish our graduates all the best as they move on to big school next year, ready to take on the world!

Keeping connected

This year’s Annual Review is all about “connection” and the importance of keeping children and their families connected to their community and culture, to fully recover and thrive.

Through the pages of our 2021-2022 Annual Review, we share highlights across our centres and services, groundbreaking research into open adoption outcomes, pilot programs that address youth homelessness, vital partnerships formed with like-minded people and organisations, and many other inspiring stories of champions for children who share in our vision of helping each child achieve their brightest future.

READ 21-22 ANNUAL REVIEW

Hi, my name is Cherie McCormack and I have been with Barnardos for two and a half years. I am the Program Manager for the Adoptions program in the Hunter and Central Coast office. Prior to coming to Barnardos, I worked as a Caseworker and then a Case Manager at the Department of Communities and Justice. As a child, I always wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up.

What I find most rewarding about my role is being able to achieve positive permanency outcomes by finding loving families for children that need safe homes. The children in our program build such a strong attachment and trusting relationship with their potential adoptive parents and seeing them flourish in their care is always rewarding.

Open adoption is important as it maintains a connection between children and their birth family. The essence of open adoption is that the child knows they’ve been adopted and maintains a connection with their birth family through regular visits. Ideally, the birth and adoptive families build a stronger connection and embrace each other as extended family. This openness allows the child to grow and develop with the confidence of knowing where they came from.

Barnardos helps build the relationships between birth families and adoptive parents or temporary carers. From the very beginning upon entering the adoption program, the birth parents and the carers meet each other and work towards forming a connection. The carers and potential adoptive parents will start to attend all birth family visits and eventually move on to scheduling and supervising these visits independently of Case Managers. The birth parents will have an email address and a telephone number to contact the carers on and the carers will send updates of the children to the birth parents. At review meetings, the carers will be encouraged to give the parents updates about the child themselves and the parents are encouraged to ask the carers any questions that they have.

With my time at Barnardos, I would like to continue to work focused on the best interests of children and achieve whatever permanency goal is in their best interests.

Once again, The Peter Pan Committee volunteered its time and energy to raise vital funds for Barnardos thanks to their well-known annual Literary Lunch.

This year, the Literary Lunch focused on our Beyond Barbed Wire program to support incarcerated mothers and their children. The lunch was hosted by one of Australia’s most respected investigative journalists, Kate McClymont, AM and guests had the opportunity to hear first-hand about our clients thanks to insightful Barnardos staff Jodie Morrison and Shiree Talbot. Guests also had the opportunity to listen to talented author Diana Reid and many left with a signed copy of her latest novel, Seeing Other People. The event was an absolute hit and the committee is still receiving donations! A heart-felt thank you to the Peter Pan Committee: so much goes into the organisation of such an event! We are so grateful to have Champions for Children like you.

A Barnardos South Coast Corrimal foster carer, Diana (78), has been nominated as Australia’s kindest person of the year after she spent the last two decades caring for over 50 foster children. She first started in 2001 said the experience for her has been nothing but rewarding. Her story was published in Illawarra Mercury along with several other media outlets.

Diana quotes:

“I used to pick my grandson up from school and he’d bring the newsletter home which I’d read and one day I saw an ad from Barnardo’s, they were looking for foster carers and I thought to myself that’s something I’d like to do.”

“He was just a ball of life that little mischief and I loved spending time with him.”

“He’s 27 now and we still catch up.”

“It breaks my heart to see people only wanting babies, not older children. I’ve always loved everyone equally.”

Diana has cared for all age groups, from newborns to teenagers and enjoyed all of the different experiences. She is currently caring for a newborn baby, having taken him in when he was only 3 days old.

“I was having morning tea with my friends and my phone rang. It was Barnardo’s asking if I wanted to take a three-day-old bub home.”

“My friends always ask me, is this the last one? Are you finished yet? and I just say I don’t think so.”

Diana is urging everyone to consider foster caring if they have the capacity, to help make a difference to the children’s lives.

Read the full story on Illawarra Mercury.

I’m Yousif Tamim and I have been part of the Streetwork team as a youth worker in the Barnardos Sydney Metro Youth Centre for 3 months. At Streetwork, we connect with vulnerable and homeless young people at risk of drug and alcohol abuse and help them overcome different challenges they’re facing.

I’m originally from South Sudan but moved to Egypt and then eventually to Australia to escape war. Life was very hard in Sudan and my parents were scared that we would be made to fight in the war so they sold what they could to get us passports as quickly as possible. I’m very grateful to be living in a wonderful place that’s safe and free. Now, I want to give back to the country that we now call home.

I remember coming to Australia without knowing a word of English so we would learn by catching the train so we could listen to people talk. As a child growing up, I was always drawn to helping people. I helped in a church, volunteered as a bilingual worker because I speak multiple languages (Arabic, Denka, Farsi, Swahili etc.) and worked as a youth worker for 13 years organising camps and workshops for migrant kids to help them settle in the community.

When I joined Barnardos, I immediately felt like I was amongst family. The first people I met were Zoe, Chantelle and Vik, who were so warm and welcoming. I feel so fortunate to work in a supportive and collaborative environment, while being able to do something I have so much passion for. The kids we work with struggle with serious issues like joblessness, homelessness, family problems, trauma, and anxiety at such a young age with no one to turn to for help. People assume that they can’t be helped because they’re violent or always in trouble. Because of this, they lose all hope for the future, and turn to drugs, alcohol, and violence to cope.

We know that these young people don’t usually look for help so we would have to go to places where they normally hang out to just try to start a conversation – be it shopping malls, alleyways, parks, and even graveyards. The common phrases we hear from these young people are: ‘I feel trapped’, ‘I have no one’, ‘no one cares’ and ‘life’s too hard so what’s the point’.

What inspires me to get up every day is being able to see big and positive changes in the young people that we support. We will help them with whatever they need with no judgement. If they’re homeless, we’ll help them find a place to stay. If they’re falling behind in school, we’ll provide counselling and educational support. We’ll even teach them the safe and right way to use syringes. They know they can call us anytime and we’ll be there for them. Since Barnardos has a very good reputation, we are also called by schools, parents, and the police to help young people that need support.

Young people are our future and I’m very proud to be part of a respected organisation that does the vital work of guiding young people towards the right path. I see all of us in Barnardos as fingers that make up a hand. Each finger has a different shape and length – they can’t do much alone but when we (the fingers) work together as a hand, we can do anything.