About Reconnect Support Services Tasmania
Reconnect Support Services Tasmania is an award-winning, person-centred and trauma-informed support service based in Hobart. We are built on empowerment, dignity, respect, trust, integrity and innovation — and we live those values every single day.
We need to be clear about something upfront: what we do is not group home care. It is not residential care in the traditional sense. Reconnect is not about rosters, shift-filling or task completion. We are about relationship. We are about going above and beyond. We are about creating a genuine home — a place where children feel safe, cared for, loved, valued, and worthy.
That last word matters. Worthy. Many of the young people who come to us have spent years being told — through actions, through neglect, through broken promises — that they are not worth showing up for. Our job, every single day, is to prove that wrong.
About the Role
This is not a support worker role in the way most people understand that term. There are no checklists that define success here. Success looks like a young person who used to flinch at raised voices choosing to sit next to you on the couch. It looks like a child who has not trusted an adult in years asking you for help. It looks like ordinary moments — cooking dinner together, watching a movie, walking the dog — that quietly, slowly, begin to feel like home.
The children and young people we support through Child Safety have experienced complex and developmental trauma. Abuse. Neglect. Family violence. Removal from everyone they knew. These experiences have shaped how they see the world, how they see adults, and how they see themselves. They do not yet believe they are safe. They do not yet believe they are loved. They do not yet believe they matter.
Your role — above everything else — is to help them begin to believe those things. Not through programs or interventions. Through you. Through your presence, your consistency, your warmth, and your absolute refusal to give up on them.
You will not be a therapist. But you will be therapeutic. Every meal you cook, every drive to school, every late-night conversation, every time you stay calm when they are falling apart — that is the therapy. That is the work.
Who We Are Looking For
This role will suit someone who:
• Understands that behaviour is communication — a young person who is dysregulated, aggressive, or withdrawn is not being 'difficult'; they are communicating their pain.
• Has a genuine curiosity about what is driving a young person's presentation, rather than reacting to the surface behaviour.
• Can remain regulated themselves under pressure, modelling the calm that children are still learning to find.
• Understands the concept of 'connection before correction' and applies it naturally in their work.
• Is comfortable providing 'time in' rather than 'time out' — staying close when it matters most.
• Has patience for the long game; trust is built in small, repeated moments over time, not quickly.
• Understands attachment and developmental stages, and can meet a young person at their emotional age — not their chronological age.
• Approaches their own practice with reflective curiosity, including in formal reflective practice sessions.
• Can hold hope for a young person, even when the young person cannot hold it for themselves.
Minimum 1-2 years of experience in therapeutic or residential care settings with young people is required.
This Role Is NOT For You If...
We will be honest with you, because these young people deserve honesty from us too.
• You are on your phone constantly during a shift. These young people need your eyes, your presence and your attention — not the back of a screen. If your phone is in your hand more than your engagement is with the young person in front of you, this is not the role for you.
• You clock in, complete tasks, and clock out. This work is relational, not transactional.
• You see 'bad behaviour' and reach for consequences first. In this role, curiosity comes before consequence — always.
• You struggle to stay calm when someone is escalating. Your regulation is the young person's lifeline in those moments.
• You want to fix people quickly. Healing from trauma is slow, non-linear, and sometimes invisible. You need to be okay with that.
• You take it personally when a young person pushes you away. They are not rejecting you — they are testing whether you will stay. You need to stay.
• You are not open to feedback, supervision or reflective practice. Growth is mandatory in this team.
If you read that list and felt called out — that's okay. This role isn't right for everyone, and there's no shame in that. But if you read it and thought 'none of that is me' — we want to hear from you.
Key Responsibilities
In this role, you will:
• Provide day-to-day therapeutic residential care to children and young people, in a safe, homelike environment underpinned by trauma-informed practice.
• Build and maintain genuine, consistent and healing-focused relationships with the young people in your care.
• Understand and interpret trauma-based behaviours — including fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses — without taking them personally, and respond therapeutically.
• Actively implement each young person's Care Plan and Treatment Plan, including Behaviour Support Plans, under the guidance of the Therapeutic Specialist.
• Participate meaningfully in Care Team Meetings, contributing your observations and reflections on each young person's progress.
• Engage regularly in Reflective Practice sessions, developing your skills and deepening your understanding of the young people you support.
• Maintain safe, structured routines that provide the predictability and stability essential to trauma recovery.
• Collaborate with the broader care team, child safety caseworkers, education providers, health services and other agencies.
• Support cultural connection for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, including facilitating connection to kin, Country and culture.
• Manage handovers thoughtfully, ensuring critical information about each young person is communicated with care and accuracy.
• Maintain documentation in line with legislative, contractual and organisational requirements.
• Actively practice self-care and seek support when experiencing vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue.
What We Expect — Non-Negotiables
We take our responsibility to these young people seriously. The following are non-negotiable for this role:
• A genuine, demonstrable understanding of trauma-informed care — you should be able to articulate what this means in practice.
• A commitment to building and sustaining relationships with young people, even when those young people push you away.
• The ability to remain emotionally regulated in moments of high stress, supporting the young person to co-regulate.
• A strengths-based, non-judgmental lens — you will not label, pathologise or blame young people for their behaviour.
• Willingness to reflect honestly on your own practice, including your triggers, reactions and blind spots.
• A team player — therapeutic care cannot be delivered in isolation; you must work collaboratively and consistently with your colleagues.
• Absolute commitment to the safety and wellbeing of every young person in your care.
Successful candidates must complete both police and Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) checks before commencing employment.
Qualifications & Requirements
Essential:
• Certificate IV in Child, Youth and Family Intervention, Community Services, or a related field (or currently studying toward this).
A relevant tertiary qualification in youth work or social work is required.
• Current Working With Vulnerable People (WWVP) registration or willingness to obtain.
• Current First Aid and CPR certification (or willingness to obtain).
• Valid Tasmanian Driver's Licence.
• Willingness to undergo a National Police Check.
Highly Regarded:
• Previous experience working with children and young people in out-of-home care, child protection, or intensive therapeutic settings.
• Knowledge of, or training in, trauma-informed frameworks (e.g. PACE, Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, ARC model).
• Understanding of the Australian Intensive Therapeutic Care (ITC) model or equivalent.
• Experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, with cultural competency.
• Knowledge of the Window of Tolerance, attachment theory, and neurobiological impacts of trauma.
How to Apply
We don't just want a resume. We want to understand who you are and why this work matters to you.
Please apply via seek or send the following to *****@reconnectsupportservices.com
• Your current resume.
• A cover letter (no more than two pages) that addresses the following: Why do you want to work with children and young people who have experienced trauma? Describe a time you supported someone through a difficult moment — what did you do and what did you learn from it?
Applications that do not include a cover letter will not be considered. We read every one.
Reconnect Support Services Tasmania
Hobart, Tasmania | *****@reconnectsupportservices.com | 03 6118 2***
reconnectsupportservices.com