Thank you to all of the delegates and speakers who attended the Resilient Families need Resilient Workers Symposium, participating in presentations and workshops across the six key themes. With resilient workers serving Australia's most vulnerable families at its focus, this Symposium tackled issues around Learning from Indigenous Families, Supporting Resilient Workers, Early Intervention and Placement Prevention, Improving outcomes for Vulnerable Families and Children, Integrated Responses for Complex and Vulnerable families, and Research into Practice .

The Symposium was a great success and certainly achieved its goals with more than 420 attendees and terrific feedback from both presenters and participants.

The contribution from our international speakers, Professor Neil Guterman, and Professor Nancy Dickinson from USA, and Dr Marie Connolly from NZ, combined with the input from researchers and practitioners from around Australia, provided excellent ideas from research and practice.

Professor Guterman gave us hope for change, demonstrating the successes of early home visitation in reducing the rates of child maltreatment in the US.

Professor Dickinson's realistic demography of those in the child and family welfare workforce helped us to understand the desire, passion and commitment that attracts staff to social work, the emergence of ‘Millennial Workers', and the organisational mechanisms that need to be put in place to satisfy and retain them in a climate of skills shortages.

Dr Connolly drew on the New Zealand experience to demonstrate how organisations and practitioners there, have been able to meet statutory accountability requirements and better integrate services, while building capacity and confidence through staff access to knowledge and resources.

These presentations and many others can be read in full at http://www.cwav.asn.au/news/Symposium%202009/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Thank you to The Meeting Planners and the Centre Staff Team for their ongoing effort leading up to, and during the event, and to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for such a wonderful backdrop to this unique Symposium.

Stay in contact with the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare and our national body CAFWAA Child and Family Welfare Associations of Australia for details of the next conference, due in 2011. Meanwhile watch the ACWA Associations of Child Welfare Agencies NSW for their big event next year. With my departure from the Centre next month, I look forward to participating in these conferences in a different capacity!

Coleen Clare
Chief Executive Officer
The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare.

Symposium Dates
22 - 24 June 2009