Community Education

Bumblebees Therapeutic Program

The Bumblebees program is for young children aged 3-5 years, targeted at helping them to develop positive self-concepts and healthy strategies for emotional regulation while teaching them Protective Behaviours. Topics are covered in a play-based and age-appropriate format, and include Emotional Regulation skills, Body Autonomy, Early Warning Signs, Personal Space, Privacy, Secrets vs Surprises, and Good Touch / Bad Touch. Individual sessions are available, while group sessions are delivered throughout the year at various venues throughout the region including local early childhood education centres. We also offer Protective Behaviours Education to parents and caregivers. Services are fully-funded by the Federal Government, so if you would like to enrol a child in your care, attend an education session, or have our staff deliver Bumblebees to a group of children in your early childhood education centre, please submit a referral form or call us to discuss.

Energetic Minds

Energetic Minds is an 8-week Protective Behaviours program focusing on reducing anxiety in children. The program reconnects body and mind through yoga and art therapy. The sessions consist of psychoeducation about the fight and flight response, emotional regulation skills, breathing, and grounding techniques. Through art therapy, yoga poses and hands-on learning the children are building their self-esteem and confidence while developing healthy relationships. The feedback from the participants and parents is that they are engaging more mindfully with the world around them and are regulating their emotions better now. Sessions run through the school term, with 6 children attending each session. Sessions are currently being held at Phoenix House.

Tidda’s Youth Program

The Tidda’s Youth Program for youth is facilitated by our Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander therapeutic counsellor. The program focuses on connecting and supporting young, female, at-risk Aboriginal and /or Torres Strait Islander children & youth. Education and support are provided in areas of living skills, protective behaviours, healthy bodies, healthy relationships, and accessing other local support services. This program is currently being run in select local schools.

The Shark Cage

The Shark Cage Framework is a way of preventing, understanding, and healing after lived experiences of violence. It is based on the concept of Universal Human Rights and draws on a powerful metaphor and multiple psychological modalities for working in trauma-informed ways to help people interrupt patterns of abuse in their lives and in ways that empower them and challenge victim blaming. Phoenix House offers this program for adults, and a separate program with the same content for young people.

Protective Behaviours for Parents / Caregivers

The consequences of childhood abuse can devastate children and families. Learn about protective behaviours, how they increase the safety of children and young people, how to talk to children and young people about them, and how to implement them in your home.

Love Bites Respectful Relationships Program

Love Bites and Love Bites Junior are extremely successful Respectful Relationships Education Programs for young people aged 11-17 years.

Love Bites aims to provide young people with a safe environment to examine, discuss and explore respectful relationships. All Love Bites programming takes a strength-based approach and views young people as active participants who can make choices for themselves and their relationships when supported with information and opportunity for
skill development.

The overall aims of the programming are to equip young people with the knowledge needed to have respectful relationships, encourage, and develop their skills in critical thinking and assist them in being able to problem solve and communicate effectively. When equipped in these areas, Phoenix House believes young people can make the right choices for themselves and their relationships that are free from violence and abuse.

Phoenix House offers these programs at various times and venues throughout the year.

Bringing up Great Kids

The Bringing Up Great Kids is an identified Evidence-Based Program for Communities for Children Facilitating Partners. It has been evaluated and found to be an effective program in supporting the development of mindful and positive relationships between parents/carers and children.
Phoenix House offers the foundational Bringing Up Great Kids Program, as well as additional programs for parents raising adolescents, and raising children after lived experience of family violence.