Children and Youth Services is seeking information about the availability of a therapeutic remote/wilderness program in Tasmania for clients aged 12- 18 years requiring out-of-home care and who experience a range of complex needs, challenging and risk taking behaviours and peer/family and social functioning problems.  A key feature of the program is that it is located in a remote/wilderness setting away from the damaging high-risk environments of the young person’s own homes/social networks. 

Where Children and Youth Services determine that it is in the young person’s best interests, it would seek a placement of this type where a young person’s challenging behaviours and needs cannot be addressed in less intensive environments.

The aim of the program would be to provide an out-of-home care environment and therapeutic program for young people that leads to behavioural change demonstrated by a significant improvement in self-control, an improved capacity to respond to direction and boundary setting, improved self-reflection and insight about their behaviour, and a demonstrated ‘readiness’ to re-engage with schooling and improved resilience in their home environment.  It is anticipated that the program will:

• have a theoretical basis and is consistent with a therapeutic evidence-based model that can demonstrate a logical theory of change, showing linkages between strategies and outcome be delivered from a trauma informed perspective and include the creation of individual therapeutic plans for each young person
• be able to respond to the young person’s needs in a culturally appropriate and inclusive way
• demonstrate child-safe policy and practices
• be of sufficient duration to enable the young person to achieve meaningful change in a child-safe residential placement
• be located in a remote/wilderness setting