SHINE at Doveton College

A closer look at the SHINE program at Doveton College

SHINE Mental Health Support Services tackles mental health issues experienced by children and their families. While a child-focused service, SHINE recognises that the biggest positive impact on a child’s mental health and well-being comes from their parents’ own well-being and ability to provide a safe, stable and healthy home.

Through early intervention and prevention, SHINE aims to strengthen resilience and coping skills to reduce the risk of experiencing lasting mental health problems.

SHINE works as a wraparound model – delivering a comprehensive service to the community. Developing individual case-plans tailored to the needs of children and families by ‘wrapping’ them in services and support.

Doveton College is the perfect place to deliver the SHINE program, thanks to its community focus and co-located services. Parents and children can access a range of services, such as legal aid, general practitioners, occupational therapists and other health professions, all on campus.

Here first hand from a Parent at Doveton College

A Village Approach to Support

The strength of SHINE comes from our ability to link children and parents with services that compliment their counselling, and work with children’s teachers to “be on the same page” when it comes to supporting the child’s development.

As well as this, we’ve found that making a personal introduction to other support services is far more effective than simply making a referral, or telling a parent to look up another organisation. Helping parents connect with Centrelink, legal aid or health services has a much higher follow-through rate – and better long-term outcomes for kids.

Running Successful Programs for Parents and Children
Family Life’s Creating Capable Leaders program is an 8-week leadership program for parents. It arms them with learning strategies and initiatives for maintaining healthy relationships and coping with stress.

This program is outcome-focused and helps parents achieve outstanding results – like one group’s Healthy Rainbow initiative.

These parents wanted to address a lack of access to healthy, affordable foods in the Doveton area. Rather than buying at the local supermarket, they sourced local fruit and vegetable from the markets, packaged it themselves, and sold them to other families for $10 a bag.

Through this project, they learnt greater resilience, independence, and the ability to plan and achieve goals. Projects like this have created lasting impacts to lives of many families and children attending Doveton College.