The State Government is ensuring that Western Australian children have the opportunity to reach their full potential...
The Responsible Parenting Initiative (RPI) aims to promote the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children do not engage in anti-social, truanting or offending behaviour. The initiative includes three important elements:
- Interagency collaboration and coordination
- Targeted parenting services - ParentSupport
- Legislation (currently in draft) to enable:
- Information sharing
- Responsible Parenting Agreements
- Responsible Parenting Orders
In 2004, the State Government commenced state-wide implementation of the ParentSupport service in the South East metropolitan police district and the service was expanded to the East metropolitan police district in May 2006. This new service provides intensive support to parents to help re-establish their natural authority and to improve family relationship.
The Departments of Education and Training; Child Protection; Housing and Works; Corrective Services and Police are able to refer parents to the ParentSupport service. A referral is made when normal avenues are not working, parental responsibilities are consistently being ignored or when family intervention is required.
ParentSupport specialists work one-on-one with parents in their home or other appropriate venue to improve their parenting skills, confidence and parent-child relationships. The service also provides group-based parenting education and skills training and intensive home visits to support appropriate parenting.
Interagency collaboration and coordination is an essential element of the RPI. The initiative recognises the increasing demands facing districts and regional Western Australia and understands that centrally designed initiatives have the potential to create additional burdens for district interagency teams if they are not implemented effectively.
The RPI has designed a process to guide a district engagement and consultation to ensure that ParentSupport service works in partnership with local Government and non-government agencies. This consultation process aims to build on what’s already working well, identify district issues and trends and ensure that this new service operates in response to local needs and issues.
The program is currently operating in Perth’s south-east metropolitan corridor and will be rolled out to additional areas on a staged basis.
The Government has also introduce a system of Responsible Parenting Agreements and Orders. This legislation will deal with parents whose children, aged under 15 years, are engaging in antisocial behaviour, truanting from school or criminal behaviour.
Where parents are unwilling to voluntarily take up parenting support through a Responsible Parenting Agreement, key agencies will be able to apply to the Children’s Court for a Responsible Parenting Order.
Find out more about the Parental Support and Responsibility Act 2008.