Funding boost for Interrelate will help Cobar families

A recent funding boost for Interrelate, a not for profit provider of relationship services that specialises in supporting parents and children, will ensure more families in Cobar get the help they need.

Interrelate Business Development Manager Ian Thwaites was in Cobar last week to meet with local Interrelate staff and talk about how they can help local families and, in particular, what services the Children’s Contact Service (CCS) can offer them.

“The aim of CCS [which comes under the Interrelate banner] is to help families that are separated from their children to have safe contact and good contact with the other partner,” Mr Thwaites said.

Interrelate is currently looking at how they can provide better outreach options for families in Far Western NSW.

“Distance is a very big problem,” Mr Thwaites said.

“We are based in Dubbo and are looking at virtual online options that we might be able to provide to communities such as here and Bourke.”

Prior to COVID, Mr Thwaites said all of their supervised visits had been face-to-face.

As a result of COVID restrictions on movement and travel, they started offering families online supervised visits which, Mr Thwaites said, worked very well.

“We were able to provide online supervised visits and telephone calls and we often now use Zoom as well.

“If any Cobar families are interested in organising Zoom visits, particularly when families are separated and one partner is not really feeling comfortable supervising the visits or there’s some other issues, it’s an option that we can hopefully provide.”

Mr Thwaites said Interrelate’s goal is to help families get to the point where ultimately they can manage their own arrangements.

“So while we do the supervision, we also support families during that time to come up with arrangements for themselves that will work,” he said.

Cobar’s Interrelate Child, Youth & Family Worker, Charmaine Arnold, said the extra funding to broaden the Children’s Contact Service was good news for local families. “There’s families in Cobar that need these sort of services and we want to get it out there to let them know that we’re here and we can help,” she said.

Interrelate can offer families a wide variety of support including: mental health and wellbe- ing support, counselling, family dispute resolution, mediation, relationship education, parenting support, relationship and sexuality education for students, carer support, domestic violence and family violence support.