For 26 years, the Mirabel Foundation has been dedicated to supporting children orphaned or abandoned by parental drug use. These young people, and their kinship carers (often a grieving grandmother), face a dauntingly difficult road and when it threatens to become too much Mirabel’s Intensive Support Program, supported by the Newsboys Foundation, steps in.
On a surface level, Mirabel’s motto is that every child deserves a childhood and if you were to turn up at a lot of Mirabel events, such as a day out at Luna Park or a weekend camp, you’d mostly find laughing, excited, happy children.
But not always. Even after years of recovery a young person can become overwhelmed by their past and their present. That’s when Mirabel’s Intensive Support Program goes into action.
“We are usually already working with a family, so you can see the young person is suddenly not going to school,” Mirabel founder and CEO Jane Rowe explained.
“Suddenly, they’ve started, maybe, self-harming. They’ve disconnected from their community.
Because we’ve got a relationship with them, it makes it so much easier for one of our team to identify this and start spending time with them. You’re not coming in cold.
You’ve got the family’s history. Often, you’ve worked with that young person for six or seven years, and then you see them develop really concerning behaviours.”
Mirabel’s Intensive Support Program sits within the foundation’s wider support initiatives for children and teenagers, almost as a triage-as-required program offering emotional and practical support when most urgently needed.
Once disturbing behaviours are identified, the team may prioritise one-on-one support, or work towards guiding the young person back to school, engaging back into their community or even a new hobby.
For those really struggling, Mirabel’s team may support them in finding a psychologist or even towards hospitalisation, if required.
“We do whatever we can to help them engage and to get their hope back,” Jane said.
Often there’s a tangible reason for the dip in the young person’s ability to cope. A lost parent might have returned to their life, or other disturbances at home might be the issue.
“Our youth team works with the young person, while we are also working with the carer so we can bring it all back together,” Jane said.
It’s not being melodramatic to say intervention by Mirabel’s Intensive Support team can be lifesaving.
“Without Newsboys’ funding, we would not have the resources to be spending individual time with these kids,” Jane said.
“Our team are really skilled to do this well, and different teams are experienced in different parts of the support, from running a camp and engagement to the really pointy end.
“Newsboys has been supporting us since the start and they have had such a massive impact on our work, because they’ve taken risks with us too. They get it. I feel like it’s such a great collaboration because there is such a strong, trusting relationship.”
Having outlined the urgency and the seriousness of the Intensive Support Program, Jane suddenly smiles and says that one of Mirabel’s team members was getting a haircut recently when she mentioned to the hairdresser that she worked for a children’s charity. “Is it Mirabel?” asked the stylist. “I used to be a Mirabel kid.”
After a quarter of a century, there are thousands of young Victorians who are only living their best possible life now because of the intervention, care and skill of the Mirabel Foundation when they desperately needed it. Newsboys’ investment in the Intensive Support Program continues to be essential.
Nick Place