ANFPP Blacktown went live in 2018 and had the first bubs of the program born in the second half of that year. The clients had been engaged in the program from their pregnancy all the way until their baby turned two and then graduated.

The team at ANFPP were pleased to be able to acknowledge the commitment and resilience for the first graduations of the program that took place this year from the 22nd of October 2020.

Since then there have been 7 clients graduate. It was not the graduation that the team had envisioned for the clients to receive however due to COVID and the current restrictions, the team were able to adapt the plans and still make it work so the client was able to enjoy and celebrate this great achievement.

The graduations were individually given approval to go ahead by management as we were not doing home visits at the time and were advised to make sure social distancing was enforced for the client, staff’s and community’s safety.

The graduations took place in an open park with the client, bub and one support person able to attend along with the home visiting team. The celebration was extremely emotional as there had been some great memories made over the past two and a half years and trust was regained from clients who thought they could never trust a service again. It was great to sit in the open air on the yarning mat and enjoy some healthy snacks together laughing and sharing in the memories made.

The clients could not believe how fast the program seemed and some stated that they thought at the beginning that “two and a half years sounded like forever when I first joined.” Other clients commented “The program should go until the bub was 5 and ready to go to school”. They were reminded of the fidelity of the program and the evidence-based research that had gone into it they just did not want to see it end. There was one thing though that all of the clients agreed on and that was that they could not believe how cute and grown up their little ones looked in the tiny cap and gown, and they were all so proud of how far they had come and how much they had achieved over the time of the program.

It has been a beautiful experience to grow as a team, learning the program from the start to finish and see how far the clients have come from the day they were consented onto the program working towards their own goals and achievements.