New Services At Karitane

Three New Services for Families

It’s been a very busy and exciting time at Karitane as we launch three new services; Virtual Home Visiting and Parenting Centres in Oran Park and Carramar. With the success of the Virtual Home Visit pilot program this year the NSW Government is supporting a large scale roll out from October 2018. This innovative service allows child and family health nurses to provide a full parenting centre experience via a live web link to families across NSW. In NSW 8 out of 10 mums with children under 5 years described a need for early infant and child support, but less than 30 per cent seek assistance. Telehealth provides an additional access point especially for regional and rural parents for whom access to timely support can be very difficult. Telehealth virtual home visits allow Karitane to provide faster support to families on the waiting list which can reduce the need for admission into a residential unit, support families where there is no access to parenting centres and also provide an avenue for continuing care with post-stay follow ups.

In other new and recent exciting announcements, SWSLHD in partnership with Oran Park Town will fund the first pilot of a new Integrated Care Hub with a secondary Karitane Child & Family Health Service. This will include a Karitane Parenting Centre Wednesday-Saturday at Oran Park Shopping Town. In addition to Oran Park we have opened a Parenting Centre at our Carramar location on Fridays. These new services will meet the needs of the community which were previously serviced by the Parenting Centres in Liverpool and Camden.