Practice Profile
Set Me Free
Contact details
Agency: Tanderra
Address:
PO Box 289,
Toronto
Newcastle, NSW 2283
Contact: Jann Nicoll
Social Worker
Phone: 02 4950 8328 Fax: 02
4950 8636
Email: tanderra@bigpond.com.au
Funding source
Tanderra RefugeProgram duration and frequency
The program comprises 1.5 - 2 hour sessions once a week for six weeks.Program description
The “Set Me Free” program is a personal development and empowerment course. Through the safe environment created at Tanderra Refuge, women, many times from dysfunctional backgrounds, abuse, domestic violence, etc, are able to understand their behaviours and beliefs and realise who they are. The “Set Me Free” Program is a program to understand and be free from the limitations that we create within ourselves. Building skills of understanding, confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth are all integrated in the course.
The aim of the project is to empower woman and to educate them to act instead of react to life’s experiences. The course is about balancing the physical emotional, mental and spiritual health of each person. Through simple techniques of stilling the mind breathing, letting go, choosing to heal, taking right action and living consciously one becomes balanced. These solutions offer an outline for more positive living in the face of adversity or during a critical or transitional period.
Geographical Area
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Target Group
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Is the program/practice based on the findings from empirical research, theory and/or a particular framework/model?
- Yes
Briefly explain the research and/or framework model and the way this influences or informs the intended outcomes and objectives of the program/practice.
The “Set Me Free” program encompasses a psychoanalytical approach. The basis used is the theories of Freud.
Psychoanalysis is a theory of personality – based on a force known as the unconscious conflict, which usually stems from childhood.
We embrace the three systems which are the building blocks of personality, i.e. forces of mental processes, which influence the way we think and behave.
One of the concepts of psychoanalysis is the unconscious.
In unconscious motivation, traumatic events earlier in life, seemingly forgotten continue to influence behaviour, but they do so without the individual’s full awareness. Too difficult for the ego to manage and may never fully disappear.
Studies show that anxieties from early childhood, sexual abuse are often repressed into the unconscious realm but continue to influence the victim, disguised as symbolic behaviour. Symbolic behaviour is an expression of the anxiety, but disguises the underlying conflict.
Behavioural and cognitive approach is also used. Behavioural and cognitive therapy is based on two broad views of personality.
The second factor is social learning theory, its emphasis the social and cognitive processes on the development of our personality.
- Our abilities and skills
- How we see things
- What will happen?
- How we can achieve an outcome
Has the program/practice been the subject of evaluation?
- Yes - internal evaluation
What instruments were relied on to evaluate the program/practice?
- Written evaluations following attendance
- The effects of the program/practice on participants by pre-test and post-test comparison
Briefly describe the outcomes of the evaluation:
After a period of attending the course women express through written evaluations i.e. by question forms, that they have developed skills to overcome obstacles in their daily lives.
The success of the course grows as many women return to the course to embark on further personal growth. The evaluations showed positive outcomes. Comments include:
'Felt positive within self'
'Everything fell into place'
'Happier'
'Change to succeed'
'Motivated'
'I have direction in my life'