ONESIMUS
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Children Affected by Parental Offending (CAPO)
Based on a successful initiatives by Barnardos in the UK local practitioners in Hobart have formed a working group focused on Children Affected by Parental Offending (CAPO).
The aim of the service is to improve the quality of life for children and families affected by the offending of a loved one. CAPO aims to work jointly with families to explore and build on strengths and resources. By developing tailored packages of support, CAPO aims to provide families and practitioners with practical assistance and advice to meet identified needs and achieve positive outcomes.
This multi-agency group allows practitioners to better their practice through improved understanding of each agencies services, as well as their own, and by opening channels of communication across sectors.
The CAPO team is made up of specialists from Catholic Care, the Onesimus Foundation, The Salvation Army Communities for Children, Save the Children, JusTas, Lady Gowrie, (The Australian and Tasmanian Government) Child Safety Services, Department of Education, Tasmania Police and (The Department of Justice) Tasmania Prison Service - Risdon Prison and Community Corrections.
i-HOP Quality Statements & Toolkit
The i-HOP Quality Statements and Toolkit is a helpful resource for all professionals to develop their practice with children of offenders. The Toolkit was informed by research, policy and practice as well as practitioners and children and young people who have had a loved one involved in the Criminal Justice System. This UK tool has been used by the Tasmanian CAPO working group and copies of our quality statements are available online.
The Toolkit is structured by 8 Quality Statements for services to aspire to. These fit under the headings:
1. Awareness
2. Identification
3. Children's Voice
4. Multi-Agency Working
5. Stages of the Criminal Justice System
6. Support and Services
7. Challenging Stigma
8. Building the Evidence
Each Quality Statement includes: a rationale about why it is so important for improving children's outcomes, examples of past or existing practice and action checklists which you can edit in the PDF document or print off so that your service can self assess its work with offenders' children. There is also a fully editable template in the appendix to help your service develop a work plan using the most relevant action points from the self assessment checklists in the Toolkit.