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Eternity Aid
This arm of our church is a Public Benevolent Institution established to:
Provide relief from poverty, sickness, suffering, distress, misfortune, destitution or helplessness.
Some of the programs establisehd and undertaken by Eternity Aid include:
Reiby Life Skills Development Project:
Eternity Aid is has been operating a Life Skills Program at the Reiby Juvenile Justice Detention Centre, New South Wales since 2003. Eternity Aid identified the need for better educational outcomes for Indigenous detainees and thus established the Reiby Life Skills Program with funding support from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training. The program utilises the skills of a range of professionals including Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists and Special Education teachers, whilst also incorporating a number of community volunteers. In 2008, the program was awarded runner-up in the Department of Juvenile Justice Director General’s Excellence Awards.
More recently, in partnership with Save the Children, the Reiby Lifeskills Program has expanded to provide one-on-one mentoring in a non-threatening environment to young males aged 10-16 who are in custody – over 80% of whom are Indigenous. A positive outcome of this has been more constructive social interactions with visitors and community members. After consultation with the former New South Wales Minister for Juvenile Justice, the Honourable Graham West, the program has now expanded to include the Emu Plains Juvenile Detention Centre, with preliminary arrangements for expansion into other centres, such as Junaparina Juvenile Detention Centre and Bronte Adolescent Wing at Long Bay Forensic Hospital in 2010/11.
The four main strands of this Life Skills Development program are:
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1. Physical Personal and Health Education - Weekly touch football and sporting activities
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2. Nutritional and Living Skills.
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3. Homework Centre - fortnightly one on one tutoring by voluntary helpers from all walks of life including Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists, Specialist Teachers, University Students, and Youth Workers.
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4. Religious Studies.
We also meet with the boys fortnightly in the Detention Centre for church services. Attendance is voluntary but the boys rarely choose to miss church.
Bourke Allied Health Clinic:
The Bourke Allied Health Clinic program was born out of the Reiby Lifeskills Program as a way of extending the support into one of the communities that was highly represented within Reiby. (For a brief period in 2006, two thirds of the detainees from one Reiby Unit were from the Bourke district.) Mentors from the Life Skills program were invited to Bourke by one of the Indigenous young men in custody to provide the same safety and support that he received in Reiby. The program takes a preventative and proactive approach by providing:
a) allied health assessments and therapy for pre-school and school aged children who show signs of cognitive and behavioural delay. The philosophy underpinning this approach is that early diagnosis and intervention can prevent children from future disengagement from education and productive participation in the wider community. These are major factors in anti-social and criminal behaviour.
b) training in early intervention strategies and behaviour management for locally based staff through professional development of teachers and childcare workers, youth workers and other key stake holders, in order to build the capacity of the community and ensure the sustainability of the program.
c) youth outreach through mentoring, training and arts-based programs that support reengagement with education, improve employment opportunities and empower young people to take an active role in their community.
The Bourke program is based on an “invitational” model where the outside organisation, in this case Eternity Aid and Save the Children, are invited in by the community to collaborate on ways to provide needed support and services. The mobile Allied Health program clinic visits Bourke four times a year so that the community and the partner organisations can meet to discuss needs and future directions for the project.
Bourke Year 5 Mentoring Program:
This program provides mentoring for Year 5 Students in Bourke to prepare them for transition to High School and encourages Resilience and Leadership skills.
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