Canberra College Cares

The Canberra College Cares program is an innovative education program which caters to the needs of pregnant and parenting young people as well as their children within a school based setting. The program, in partnership with the ACT Education & Training Directorate (ETD), ACT Health and government and non-government organizations have had significant successes providing holistic health, welfare and educational wrap around services.

The program offers Year 12 Certification; personal health and wellbeing support; advocacy and support services; goal orientated learning packages and on-line learning and employability skills within a mainstream ACT Government College context. The program formally commenced in 2005 with initial enrolments of 4 students, currently the program has over 120 students enrolled in the program.

CC Cares has received a number of national awards in recent years including a meritorious award for excellence in School Improvement as part of the 2008 Australian Government National Awards for Quality Schooling and the inaugural Schools First National Award in 2009.

The new facility was designed to maintain and sustain the unique, diverse and complex range of identified needs of the CC Cares program. This was achieved through physical structure and service requirements to support diversity, flexibility within “space/place “, the integration of services and the adaptability of current and future needs.

The ETD also committed to provide an environmentally sustainable facility including waste minimisation, water efficiency, transport efficiency and energy usage reduction, which is met by the design solution. The design focuses on water and energy efficiencies to provide for readily achievable outcomes.

The site identified for the new facility although appropriate for the social outcomes of the project had a number of challenging aspects including located within a 1:100 year flood plain, a number of significant trees and a 10m sewer easement and inground main service connections.

Students have adapted to the new building with ease and are making excellent use of the facilities. The numbers of students enrolling in competency based training has increased. The children have now settled into their new environment adapting to manage within the larger and somewhat noisier spaces.