Take Two - Third Evaluation Report More than Words ... - Berry Street

The training, research and Aboriginal teams have
been able to attract other sources of funding through
government, philanthropic trusts, fee for training, other
contributions from partner organisations and private
philanthropists to expand the impact of the in uence of
Take Two. A number of these include:
• Training for youth justice, permanent care, family
support and schools;
• Research and publications for Of ce of Child Safety
Commissioner (OCSC);
• Extension of research strategy, such as regarding
Aboriginal children’s social and emotional wellbeing
and the speech and language needs of children who
have experienced abuse and neglect;
• Development of models for trauma-sensitive practice
in other settings, such as youth justice custodial
settings and residential care.
These additional sources of funding and the projects
they have supported have expanded the in uence
of Take Two and its ability to impact on the broader
system. These projects and other initiatives include
those in an international context, national context, state
context, organisational context, program governance,
management and program practice (as seen in
Appendices Two to Seven).
As shown in Appendix Two, the pro le of Take Two
is developing on an international level. This has
been through conference presentations, publications
in international journals and developing networks
and collaborative work with organisations in other
countries, such as the ChildTrauma Academy and the
University of Washington. This creates opportunities for
communication with researchers and theorists regarding
the nature of the client group and research-informed
interventions. Take Two’s growing pro le at a national
level is seen in Appendix Three. Take Two’s emerging
pro le and networks increases the opportunities for the
clinical work within Take Two to be informed by and
inform the international and national research, policy
and practice regarding traumatised children.
In addition to local conferences and publications
within the Victorian statewide context, Take Two has
contributed to the policy, program development and
practice related to the child protection, out-of-home
care, youth justice, education and mental health elds.
Examples of these contributions are found in Appendix
Four.
Appendix Five provides examples of some of the
organisational activities within Berry Street related to
Take Two, such as administrative restructures and the
expansion of the work of the Aboriginal Team across
other parts of Berry Street. Take Two has continued
to strengthen its governance and other aspects of the
underlying management structures as seen in Appendix
Six. Most notably has been the addition of VACCA to
the partnership of Take Two. Appendix Six also lists the
beginning of the process for accreditation with ACHS
involving program certi cation. This is an important
aspect of the quality assurance and improvement
processes. Appendix One provides a description of
the ACHS standards relevant to Take Two and the
activities conducted by Take Two to meet or work
towards meeting these standards. The ACHS framework
provides a means of monitoring and measuring a health
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organisation’s endeavours towards quality assurance
and improvement. Take Two was successfully certi ed
in 2007 and then accredited as a health service with
ACHS in late 2009
A structural change that occurred in 2008 was
the establishment of the knowledge area which
brought together the areas of research, information
management and practice development and training.
This integration under the one management structure
was in recognition of their inter-connectedness and
to ensure greater cohesion. It aims to facilitate the
clinicians’ ability to access client information and to
utilise outcome measures, build knowledge, explore
new knowledge and utilise research ndings.
Finally, Appendix Seven provides examples of some
of the tasks and activities by Take Two in improving
its therapeutic, research, training and program
development. The details of some of these initiatives are
discussed later in this chapter. Many of the initiatives in
relation to the work with Aboriginal children and the
community are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.
The following sections of this chapter spotlight some
of these activities in more detail, including the infant
mental health project, the neuropsychology project and
the Take Two training strategy. For brevity, some of the
data relating to the outcome measures are presented in
Appendices Eight to Eleven.
3.5 Structures and other inputs of
Take Two
As mentioned in Chapter 2 on the evaluation framework,
an evaluation should report on a range of elements of
the program including inputs. In addition to describing
the client group, inputs include staff, teams, materials,
equipment and facilities. Training of Take Two staff is a
signi cant input and is described later in this chapter.
3.5.1 Structure of Take Two teams
As a result of the original funding and design and the
subsequent growth and program development for
Take Two the program and staff structures have gone
through substantial growth and other changes. Figure
5 maps the location of the Take Two teams throughout
Victoria as at the end of 2008.
Figure 6 provides an overview of the team and staf ng
structure for Take Two as of the end of 2008. As mentioned
in Tables 1 and 3, Take Two employs staff from a range
of disciplines and with a variety of experience including
in the mental health, child protection and other related
elds.
3.5.2 Other inputs
Facilities
As the Take Two program is located throughout the state,
a number of of ces have been established, mostly colocating
with other services, such as other Berry Street
locations (e.g. Seymour, Wangaratta, Shepparton,
Morwell, Eaglemont, Clayton and Richmond), DHS
locations (e.g. Mildura) and other organisations (e.g.
Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Flemington). Two
teams also have some accommodation within partner
organisations such as the Research and Information
Management Teams (La Trobe University) and the
Practice Development and Training Team (Mindful). The
Therapeutic Care specialists in Therapeutic Foster Care
Frederico, Jackson, & Black (2010) “More than Words” – Take Two Third Evaluation Report, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia