There is broad and welcome agreement in Australian research, policy and program development of the critical importance of the early years in laying the foundations for a child's long term health and wellbeing. Much less attention has been given to the needs of older children (8 to 16 years) and their families. There is growing anecdotal evidence of the need for more attention on this group if resilience is to be fostered at every stage of a young person's life.

This presentation will canvass the existing research on this age group and their families and report on an innovative service, Project Circuit Breaker (PCB), which has been developed and implemented by Mission Australia over the last two years in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. PCB is a voluntary early intervention and prevention service for children ten to sixteen years and their families who have displayed early signs of risk. It provides flexible, highly responsive and integrated services that enable families to cope with the presenting crises and develop the resilience and skills to prevent a reoccurrence of these crises.

The presentation will describe the key features of PCB, outline the findings of the project's action research and evaluation, share the learnings on how to best meet the needs of this group, highlight what may be transferable to other settings and argue for the need for a continuum of supports for families to promote resilience and wellbeing at every stage of a child's life.