A highly successful Launceston-based program offering support to young parents in difficult circumstances is in need of secure long-term funding.
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Karinya Young Women’s Service hosted their patron, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner, AC, Governor of Tasmania, on Thursday for a tour of the shelter and its Young Mums’n’Bubs program.
The program began in 2012 and has been funded for three years by the Ian Potter Foundation and the Tasmanian Community Fund.
The Governor met several young women and their babies who are part of the early-intervention program, designed to assist teenage parents aged 15 to 19 who are facing the challenges of being a young parent.
Ian Potter Foundation’s senior program manager Dr Alberto Furlan said Karinya’s young mums program was a major success and he hoped to see it continue with state or federal funding.
“Without any doubts, one of the best programs we’ve funded in the past five years,” Dr Furlan said.
“It’s been really successful in providing support for the mothers and young children, and fathers in some cases.”
Dr Furlan said the Foundation had supported Karinya through both funding and expert consultation to develop the program.
“Now we do all we can to help them to seek and achieve ongoing funding, through possibly the government,” he said.
The shelter has been in operation since 1979, offering crisis support for women by giving them a safe and stable place from which they could regroup and find support to rebuild their lives.
Karinya’s management committee chairperson Shandell Elmer thanked the Governor for visiting the shelter.
“The shelter is funded through state and Commonwealth funding, but the mums’n’bubs program is funded through philanthropic funding,” she said.
“The program has achieved such great outcomes … we see things like people staying at school, reconnecting with families, and being able to make choices that weren’t there previously.”