THE launch of a new Anglicare program to support struggling families in Orange will be welcomed by welfare workers and charities but it must raise questions about the level of support for the most disadvantaged in our community.
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The aim of the Survive and Thrive program is to keep family units together and prevent the alternative, which is children being taken from their parents and placed into care.
It is quite literally a lifeline for families that are not coping with a range of pressures and are perilously close to becoming dysfunctional.
Whether through financial pressures caused by unemployment or gambling, or personal problems including alcohol and other substance abuse, a relationship breakdown or a lack of experience with successful parenting, a significant number of families in Orange are constantly on the brink of collapse.
For a fortunate few Anglicare will be on hand to offer support with counselling for both parents and families as well as tangible help with services like childcare and toy libraries.
Some of Anglicare’s clients may come from among the families it or other agencies already help. Among welfare agencies and charities that need is already well known, and it is growing.
From visits to church charities for financial help to a reliance on the regular food van visits to augment the family housekeeping, many people live week to week.
In this precarious position children are inevitably the casualties. They may be missing out on regular schooling as well as regular meals or they may be living in a family group where violence or the threat of it is a constant source of fear.
The temptation may be to simply remove at-risk children from these families but that should only be an action of last resort.
The Survive and Thrive program puts a safety net between families and state intervention that would see children separated from parents and siblings.
Sadly, that is sometimes necessary, but this program gives hope that is a step that can be avoided more often.