About Us

drummond street services is a quality service provider of child and family relationship counselling, groups for parents, children; and young people and education and training services for professionals and those working with families across a range of sectors.

Our major funder the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FAHCSIA) through the Family Relationship Services Program, allows us to deliver thousands of counselling and group work hours to families including individual adults, couples, children and young people. Each of these family members bring to our service a range of presenting issues and differing expectations but all share the common goal of wanting to resolve some relationship difficulty. In some cases this involves relationship work for couples wanting to improve or restore their relationships. For others this involves working through the difficult transition of separation and may or may not involve working with children and young people.

The complexity of this work requires a range of therapeutic techniques and approaches and especially the capacity to assess where individuals within a family “are at” as they negotiate different stages of the family life cycle. At times this requires us to assist partners through the separation grief and turmoil in order to reach a healthy position where they can recognise the impact on their children and to make appropriate parenting decisions. For each separating couple the time needed can be very different depending on the co-occurrence of other factors such as depression, drug and alcohol abuse, infidelity, family violence, and the level of supports available to the couple.

Over the years, our service has noted the changing nature of our client group and the issues that they bring that can impact on their relationships and the counselling work. Counsellors have noted increasing complexity in relationship issues which include:

General Adult Counselling Work

  • Co-morbid drug and alcohol and/or high prevalence mood disorders such as depression and anxiety
  • Involvement with the family law system particularly separated couples with conflict regarding child custody/access arrangements. Increasing issues for child access and connection to fathers and co-parenting
  • Increased issues for couples in their thirties wanting to start a family and juggling work, career /family and relationship needs and relationship intimacy and sexual relationships outside of the couple
  • The impact of financial stress/unemployment/gambling
  • Men’s relationship issues including the need to address intimacy, anger management and parenting/access issues
  • Women, particularly an increasing number of young women with parenting/career and work and mental health issues
  • Families in crisis with complex issues requiring longer-term intervention
  • Older couples’ transition to retirement and the impact of this on their relationship.
  • Specific relationship life cycle transition issues such as relationship formation and becoming parents, reforming families with step and blended families.

Children/Young People

  • Children and young people continue to need support in coping with divorce/separation including their experience of multiple family separations and family reformation i.e. blended families.
  • Increasing number of young people feeling overwhelmed with taking on a caring role for a resident parent struggling with the emotional grief of relationship breakdown.

drummond street continues to be at the cutting edge of program, service and practice development such as the delivery of our additional programs for families from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds including the African Australian Community, and Same-sex families and couples.

We will continue to ensure the development and delivery of programs and services which meet the diverse needs of all families in our community.

This historical overview was based on the “The Citizens Welfare Service of Victoria” 1887-1987 -

100 Years of Service written by Paul Anderson. (see Publications for full report)

Karen Field

Chief Executive Officer