Licensing and Accreditation

The Therapeutic Family Model of Care™ (TFMC™) is an integrated model of therapeutic residential care and treatment for homeless young people aged 15-22 years of age at intake, who come predominately from a background of long-term neglect and abuse. This experience can leave a legacy of physical, emotional and psychological difficulties; evidenced in low self-esteem, poor social and educational skills and an inability to form positive, meaningful and lasting relationships with others. Due to its developmental rather than chronological focus, the model has the capacity to be replicated and provided to children and young people at different developmental stages, and in different cultural contexts, with the appropriate considerations being made at planning and implementation.

Lighthouse Foundation has a commitment to outcomes based practice and has been awarded accreditation in Australia, by the Quality Improvement Council. This recognises that Lighthouse operates at high level of proficiency and is committed to continuous quality improvement. The Strategic Plan of Lighthouse Foundation is to make the TFMC™ available to more children and young people across Australia and internationally through sharing the TFMC™ in partnership with Community Services Organisations.

The success of the TFMC™ relies on the application of an attachment and ‘trauma-informed’ approach that influences every aspect of the work with the children/young people:

• the work with individual children/young people
• the work in groups
• the way we organise the home environment and daily routines
• the way we run our organisation
• and our relationship with the wider community

Lighthouse will support Partner Organisations to evaluate their capacity to implement and deliver the TFMC™.  This will be a thorough and thoughtful process to ensure that the potential implementation has every possibility of achieving positive outcomes for children and young people.

Organisations that may be interested in adopting the TFMC™ include those that:

• Run services for children/young people and want to develop a new TFMC™ program.
• Run services for homeless children/young people and want to adapt their service to the TFMC™ model.
• Organisations that don’t work with homeless children/young people but do work with traumatised children/young people and would like to adopt aspects of the TFMC™ approach to work with their target population.

The Process of Transfer

The process of transfer of the TFMC™ to a Partner Organisation consists of 3 stages:

Stage 1 Compatibility and Transferability Evaluation The initial exploration and decision that a transfer may be feasible

Stage 2 Development Planning A thorough exploration between both organisations to evaluate the compatibility and any development work that is required.

Stage 3 Transfer of the TFMC The implementation of the TFMC™ in the Partner Organisation.

Lighthouse Foundation will provide ongoing support, consultancy and training to Partner Organisations so that they can successfully implement the TFMC™.

For more information about how your organisation could become a Lighthouse Accredited™ Attachment and Trauma Informed Organisation or a TFMC™ Provider contact Rudy Gonzalez, Director of Culture and Practice Development.