About Us

Research. Practice. Capacity Building. Collaboration.

Supporting Excellence in Therapeutic Care

The Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care is an Australian first Intermediary Organisation established to support practitioners and key sector, stakeholders of Intensive Therapeutic Care in New South Wales, Australia.

The NSW Intensive Therapeutic Care (ITC) reforms underway in New South Wales provide an integrated continuum of therapeutic care options that are positioned to more effectively address the needs of traumatised children and young people and achieve improved outcomes across the domains of safety, permanency and well-being.

As a key element of this reform, the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF) and Southern Cross University (SCU), in partnership, have been contracted by the NSW Government to support all providers of Intensive Therapeutic Care in NSW.

WHAT WE DO

1 - We Make Knowledge Accessible & Fill the Gaps

We produce a range of research and practice-based resources to support young people living in the Intensive Therapeutic Care system in NSW and in therapeutic care elsewhere. These include Research Reports, Research Summaries, Practice Guides and Tools, and Practice Reflections.

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WHAT WE DO

2 - We Support Knowledge to be applied to Practice

The Centre provides a range of training and capacity building activities, including:

Provision of the mandatory, Foundational Training in Intensive Therapeutic Care
Facilitation of Therapeutic Specialist Communities of Practice and bi-annual Forums
Tailored consultancies for ITC Agencies and other residential care and out-of-home-care agencies regardless of context and location.

What We Do

3 - We Co-Produce New Knowledge

The Centre responds to the evolving knowledge and practice needs of therapeutic care. As such, we initiate research projects that seek to identify and expand knowledge around best practice in close collaborations with our research and sector partners. Examples of current research projects include Client Mix and Placement Matching and the needs of LGBTQIA+ young people in residential care.

Our Team

Meet our team of highly skilled and experienced researchers and practitioners in the field of therapeutic care.

Meet our team

Knowledge Review Panel

We actively work with a Knowledge Review Panel to quality assure our work. The Knowledge Review Panel is chaired by Dr Lynne McPherson, Southern Cross University, and is comprised of leading national and international academics and researchers who resource and support our efforts in research, knowledge collation and evaluation.

Cultural Governance Review Panel

Our Cultural Governance Panel is chaired by Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson, a Jiman/Bundjalung Aboriginal woman, and is comprised of Aboriginal leaders from across NSW and other states in Australia. The Cultural Governance Panel has been established in recognition of the over-representation of Aboriginal children and young people in the care system in NSW. The Panel has a critical role in resourcing, supporting and reviewing the work of the Centre to ensure its cultural strength, appropriateness and humility.

Our Vision

The vision of the Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care is to be a source of credible knowledge that can be used to enable the implementation of best practice approaches to therapeutic care.