Welcome to the first edition of The Difference, our new fortnightly newsletter keeping you in touch with community events, learning opportunities and the stories that will inspire you. It’s all about your community and how you can get involved to make a difference… differently.

In 1988 a small group of people who cared about their community decided they wanted give a helping hand to families who were doing it tough. They went on to establish a small organisation in a small Angela St, Tweed Heads cottage called the Tweed Valley Child Youth and Family Service. Since 1988 the population of Tweed Shire has doubled and life in our community is different in so many ways. We’ve seen a lot of change, but our values and vision for the communities we serve are true to our founders and we remain committed to the safety and wellbeing of all children, young people and families and work together to actively contribute to the vitality and wellbeing of our community.

We’ve grown with our community and our community partners. In 2014-15 we joined with St Joseph’s Youth Service, Byron Bay Youth House and Ballina Byron Family Centre to create a stronger and more sustainable organisation.

We’re now known as The Family Centre. We deliver services across the Tweed, Byron and Ballina Shires, and the Southern Gold Coast. We also provide services to people in the New England and North Coast regions.

More than 4000 people participate in Family Centre programs each year.

Local pro surfer, and Surf Dive n Ski's Youth Projects Ambassador, Jack Freestone visited Cabarita last week to handout backpacks to young people in the area. 

Surf Dive n Ski showed support for The Family Centre's Youth Homelessness Matters campaign by starting up a Youth Projects program. They kicked the program off with the Give Back with Us campaign. The campaign was launched nationally during January with the support of Jack. 

For every backpack purchased online or in store, the Give Back with Us campaign matched like for like and donated a backpack to a child or young person in need. 

The campaign raised over 7500 backpacks that will be distributed locally and to other charities throughout Australia.

Since January this year The Family Centre have distributed over 100 of the backpacks to vulnerable families and young people in Ballina, Byron and Tweed Shires.

The Family Centre volunteers and staff, along with the Surf Dive n Ski team smashed the previous Bunnings Sausage Sizzle with over $2600 raised.

The Bunnings BBQ crew cooked 70kgs of sausages, 20kgs of onions and served them on 45 loaves of bread. Over 200 cans of soft drink were purchased on the day.

Surf Dive n Ski kindly donated all the supplies to run the BBQ for the day – meaning 100% of monies raised will go directly to The Family Centre Youth Homelessness Matters Projects.

The Family Centre would like to thank all our volunteers who contributed to the day, Surf Dive n Ski and Bunnings South Tweed Heads.

Oz Harvest has been a great supporter of The Family Centre and our community. Each week Oz Harvest delivers rescued food to The Family Centre that is then made into hampers by our team of volunteers. The hampers are then distributed to families and young people in need in our community. Between July 2017-December 2017 we distributed 258 hampers. Thank you Oz Harvest and our Family Centre Volunteers.

The Family Centre Volunteer Leadership Group have partnered with the Tweed Heads Community Men’s Shed to design and build Buddy Benches to be installed in local primary schools in collaboration with our REALskills progam.

Buddy Benches are brightly coloured seats, which are placed within the playground – providing a place where children who are lonely or sad can sit, in doing so alerting teachers and other pupils that there might be a problem.

The Family Centre REALskills delivers the Super Me program to local primary schools. The benches compliment the Super Me program content and are a symbol of inclusion rather than exclusion. The skills taught in the Super Me programs teach the students how to explore using the Super Me powers they have in a positive way and the Buddy Benches reinforces these choices.
The first Buddy Bench was presented to Stokers Siding Public School this week by Family Centre volunteer Kathleen Baldwin. Students performed a play based on the skills they have learnt in Super Me and plan to custom paint the bench to reflect the values of their school.

DAISI knows the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) can be difficult to understand and navigate. 

To help you make sense of it and get the best results for your needs, DAISI will be running information sessions to talk about how the NDIS works and share our learnings of working with it. DAISI has developed information packs for key steps along the way of your NDIS journey and will be available at the sessions. Packs include: 

•  what DAISI knows about what needs to be done 

•  what the NDIA says 

•  useful information and resources from other organisations. 

You can also book a one-to-one meeting at sessions to discuss your individual situation with a DAISI team member. 

When: Thursday 29 March 2018
Times: 10:30am - 12:00pm or 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Where: The Family Centre Unit 1/14 Amber Road, South Tweed Heads

Places are limited so please contact DAISI to reserve a seat on 1800 800 340 by email at [email protected] or let the friendly staff at The Family Centre know on (07) 5524 8711.

Cabarita Youth Service are capping off National Youth Week with the Momentum Youth Festival. The festival is the biggest event in the Tweed Shire for Youth Week. There will be heaps of awesome activities as well as bands, food trucks, pro skate demonstrations and skate and scooter expression sessions. For more information go to www.facebook.com/CabaritaYouthService

Momentum Youth Festival
Where: Les Burgess Oval, Cabarita
Date: 21st April
Time: 11am-5pm
FREE