We’re incredibly proud to share that OzChild’s Functional Family Therapy – Child Welfare (FFT-CW) team has been named a 2025 Victorian Protecting Children Award finalist, nominated for the Robin Clark Making a Difference Award.
These annual awards, held each September during Child Protection Week, celebrate the outstanding work of individuals and teams across the child and family services sector who go above and beyond to improve the lives of children, young people, and families. This particular award, named in honour of Robin Clark, a passionate advocate for the rights and wellbeing of children, recognises excellence, innovation and leadership in child, youth, and family welfare across Victoria.
The FFT-CW team, consisting of four therapists, Maria, Natasha, Kate, Indiana and team leader Kady, have supported over 500 families since the program began in 2018. Often working alongside families with complex needs and identified as high risk, the FFT-CW team delivers high-impact interventions that promote family cohesion, stability and safety. Since 2022, the FFT-CW team has supported over 340 families referred from the Inner and Outer East regions of Melbourne. Over 83% of these families fully or substantially completed their goals.
The aim of FFT-CW is to keep children and young people in their existing homes or foster care placements by strengthening relationships, reducing risk, and supporting sustainable change. For our FFT-CW team, being named a finalist is a powerful recognition of their ability to achieve this.
Speaking of the impact of the program, Child Protection Practice Leader, Sam*, said “The FFT-CW team demonstrates outstanding engagement skills… FFT-CW have often worked with families who have experienced other programs without success of change. [The Program] has resulted in CP closing involvement and facilitating longer-term change in client’s behaviour, increasing capacity in parents and improving parent-child relationships. A team manager recently commented, “if it wasn’t for FFT, child protection would still be involved with many of our families”.
Winners of the 2025 Victorian Protecting Children Awards will be announced in September 2025, and we’re proud to be standing among such inspiring nominees from across the sector. You can view the other nominees on the VCPA website here.
This is the second consecutive year OzChild has been recognised in this award category. In 2024, the Putting Families First team, a partnership between OzChild, AAFRO, Charis, VACCA and YSAS, took home joint winner of the Robin Clark Making a Difference Award for their work supporting families in the Brimbank -Melton community through a holistic, collaborative model that prevents involvement with the child protection system.
*name has been changed to protect identity
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