Message from our President & CEO: Delivering a reimagined future

This year, we’ve continued our work to keep families safely together and improve the lives of children, young people and families through our evidence-based, trauma-informed programs. Amongst the upheaval of recent years, this work is more important than ever.

We’ve seen how COVID-19 continues to exacerbate existing inequities, and we’ve also seen increasing social and financial pressures and worsening mental health for families across all our services.

More children were removed from their families and excluded from school, and we became more aware of the levels of family violence in our communities.

But this only strengthened our resolve to continue our work to courageously change lives and reimagine the child and family services system so that children, young people and families get the support they need before it’s too late.

We’ve shown resilience and a deeply held belief that we can help those we work with to heal, connect and be safe, hopeful and thriving. Our staff have continued their work, unwavering in their pursuit of better outcomes through evidence-based approaches. And we’re proud to see that commitment reflected in the deep impact our programs are having in these challenging times.

This year’s report highlights some of those programs and the impact they’re having. These are programs that focus on healing trauma, addressing family violence, providing safe homes, trauma-informed education and proactive care for families and communities. They include Multisystemic Therapy, the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P) Tuning into Kids® and Tuning into Teens™, the Teaching Family Model, Take Two and the Berry Street School.

We’ve seen improved family relations and school attendance, substance use reduction, and improved ability for parents to respond to their own and their children’s emotions. We’ve also seen reductions in children’s symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and challenging behaviours, stabilised and improved mental health, and young people successfully returning home from residential care.

This year’s report is also a celebration of the unique culture of Berry Street – one we hope extends from our workplaces through to our supporters and the partnerships we forge with each other and across the sector. It is characterised by a genuine commitment to learning from the past and being guided by voices of lived experience, as well as a daily enactment of our values of courage, integrity, respect, accountability and working together. We believe these values and this culture have been fundamental in helping us navigate the unchartered waters of the last few years and deserve to be celebrated.

We also report this year on the completion of our 2019–2022 Strategic Plan. This time has seen significant change and internal reform at Berry Street, including the establishment of a new Executive Team in 2019. As we prepare for the development of the 2023–2026 plan, we reflect on what we’ve achieved over the past few years towards our goals of reimagining the future, making an impact, supporting our people, and future growth and sustainability. As we look to the future, we look forward to realising the benefit and value of the reform we’ve undertaken so that we can grow our service offering and be positioned as a provider of choice in child and family services and education.

Our reconciliation agenda has also made significant progress this year. We completed our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan, launched our Bagung Ngarrgu digital workplace, opened our new office – which strongly features culture and reconciliation – and continued our Cultural Support Plan project. We are pleased that this year’s report outlines this progress too.

Finally, we have also seen the Y-Change social and systemic change platform for young people continue in their powerful advocacy for meaningful change in the sector this year – with an even stronger focus on mental health as well as family violence and the impact this has on children and young people. As ever, the team fearlessly and eloquently use their voices of lived experience to fight for real and sustained change for the children and young people we work alongside.

Last year, the ability to change and adapt was a theme that ran through everything we did. This year, we proudly report how this adaptability, combined with our culture and values have guided us through one of the most challenging times we’ve faced together to have lifechanging impact on the children, young people and families we work with.

To all our staff, partners and supporters – thank you for your enduring efforts to deliver a reimagined future for children, young people and families.

Our new Annual Report is here: Reimagining Futures, Creating Impact

Berry Street is pleased to release its Annual Report 2021-22. This year’s report is a powerful testament to the critical difference that our work can make.

We invite you to download our 2021-22 Annual Report to read about how:

• our evidence-based services are delivering a deep impact (from page 12);
• we are continuing to reflect on and celebrate our reconciliation journey (page 16);
• Y-Change is supporting children and young people to lead change in their own right (page 17);
• the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM) positively impacted Malak Primary School (page 18).