The Role
The Secure Care team operates from the Kath French Secure Care Centre (KFSCC) in Stoneville. The KFSCC offers a planned, short-term intensive intervention for children who are at extreme risk and where existing services cannot manage the risk. The secure care service reflects best practice therapeutic services and provides some of Western Australia’s most vulnerable children with their best opportunity to stabilise and begin to address the complex problems and behaviours, that prevent them from maintaining longer term placements and transitioning to more independent living.
Secure Care has a multi-disciplinary team approach that includes a team of Secure Care Officers, Senior Secure Care Officers and casual Secure Care Officers, who cover shift vacancies and staff absences. Secure Care provides 24 hour care for children; therefore Secure Care Officers are required to work shifts, including staggered start times, evenings, weekends and public holidays.
Guided by Sanctuary - a Therapeutic and trauma informed practice model - Secure Care Officers are employed to care for the children, working therapeutically in a coordinated team approach. Secure Care Officers engage with the children and assist them to work within the individual program developed for each child. Practice is guided by a number of theories including Trauma, Attachment, Systems and Developmental.
Secure Care Officers receive training that assists them to understand the effects of trauma and abuse on brain development that results in challenging and confrontational behaviour. Training includes Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, which provides knowledge and strategies to avoid behavioural escalations, as well as the capacity to take physical control of children as an ultimate safety measure.
The Secure Care Officer role is an active one, and the staff employed need to be able to physically manage children; respond to behavioural escalations; react quickly to prevent children from harming themselves or others. There is an expectation of fulfilling domestic duties which includes lifting. In addition Secure Care staff are at times required to assist in the transport of children which includes driving up to 400km at a time.
The psychological demands on a Secure Care Officer are high for the majority of work tasks. The Secure Care Officer can be exposed to incidents and risk of verbal threats, aggression, violence and other situations of conflict on a regular basis. The behaviour of children within Secure Care can be volatile, requiring a Secure Care Officer to be confident, resilient, reasonable and have the ability to make independent professional judgements in crisis situations.
Senior Secure Care Officers oversee the interactions that Secure Care Officers have with children, and are a critical part of the assessment of children entering care, and developing and implementing their therapeutic and safety plans. They also work directly with children, where they provide a high standard of trauma informed therapeutic care. Senior Secure Care Officers ensure the principles of the Sanctuary framework are embedded in practice, and that practice meets the requirements of the Children and Community Services Act 2004. Senior Secure Care Officers also work shifts, including nights, weekends and public holidays.
The Secure Care leadership group consists of an Assistant Director and Director, who manage the day-to-day operations of Secure Care, as well as develop and contribute to policies and programs directly affecting their unit. These are all Specified Callings positions, which mean that a relevant qualification is required.
Working with children in the Secure Care environment requires a special person – someone who is resilient, patient and is committed to meet the developmental, emotional and cultural needs of each child.
