$39.5 m crisis funding will help thousands of families
The Ngala residential parenting service will offer free access to its program from October
A $39.5 million State Government grant included in the 2025-26 State Budget will allow the Ngala residential parenting service to provide free support to thousands of West Australian families.
The service offers early support for parents and the baby in a residential setting where nurses, midwives, lactation consultants, social workers and psychologists can help with everything from sleeping and settling, to bonding and mental health.
Ngala CEO Michelle Dillon says the service expects to take in about 100 families a month at its purpose-built centre in suburban Kensington.
The expanded service aims to reduce the number of hospital presentations due to mental health issues for parents and babies.
Up until now, families needed to have private health cover to access the service, but the government grant, which runs for four years, will allow Ngala to offer places for free.
“We were the only state in Australia that did not have funded residential beds for families,” Ms Dillon explains. “Ngala hasn’t been funded by the government and, as far as I know, lobbying has been going on for over five years. I’ve been with Ngala for two years and it was probably my number one priority last year to get this funding.
“But now we have it, so this is super exciting, and we’re super grateful to the government for realising the need and working with us.”
Previously, the residential parenting service only operated on four nights a week, but the grant will mean they can now open six nights.
Families can have a six-hour day stay or spend up to three nights living at the centre.
“We were doing a four-night stay, but to try and get more people through the service we’re going to drop that to three nights to increase our volume,” Ms Dillon says.
“But we’ll look at each person individually, so if three nights isn’t enough, then we’ll work out what else we need do to support the family.
“I’ve just been talking this morning to the CEO of Karitane (a NSW early parenting service) and they do a four-night stay, So we’re going to try and do some research on what suits different families. Families’ lives keep changing, so we need to keep changing and adapting with them.”
“ We were the only state in Australia that did not have funded residential beds for families.
Ms Dillon said Ngala receives about 8,500 calls a year through its parenting helpline.
“This is just people ringing about anything to do with parenting, from ‘I can’t get my child to sleep’ to ‘I’m just having moments of anxiety’ and ‘I don’t know what to do’,” she says.
“From that parenting line, our senior clinical nurses will triage and direct them about what they can do. Can we solve that problem in a conversation? Can we give you something? Do we believe you need more support? So we’ll triage them through that phone call.
“But we also have other people who will ring and just say they want to come in and have some support, because they know about the services we offer.”
Each extended-stay family is hosted in a two-room space with a bed and a cot.
“We have 11 adult beds and 12 children’s beds,” Ms Dillon says.
“Obviously we believe in the family unit, so it can be mum and mum, mum and dad, dad and dad, mum and grandma. In our Aboriginal families, grandmas often come in with the mum, so we can have two adults at night, and we have a family unit where if you’ve got toddlers or other children you can bring them in with you as well.
“We have queen-size beds, or you can have two king singles. With mum and dad, we’ll give you a queen-size bed. If it’s mum and grandma, we’ll change the bed configuration.”
The new arrangements and universal access to the service will begin on October 13.