• The ongoing development of Cultural Awareness as knowledge with understanding.
• The recognition of Aboriginal self-determination as the basis for engagement and respectful partnership building. 
• Cultural Respect ie. the attitude and values of individuals and organisations.
• Culturally responsiveness ie. the necessary ability and skills to interact effectively across-cultures
• Which leads to cultural safety which is concerned with whether or not Aboriginal clients feel 'safe' from covert or overt cultural abuse and
• Cross-cultural practice and care ie, is the lens of culture being applied to the delivery of services to Aboriginal children and youth.

In this presentation VACCA CEO Muriel Bamblett will outline the various ways in which CSOs can implement the framework to work towards creating a culturally safe environment for their Aboriginal workers and families.

Professor Nancy Dickinson

Partners in Retention: The Role of Supervisors and Managers in Retaining Child Welfare Staff - WORKSHOP

This workshop will present retention intervention strategies related to supervision, training and development, and organizational development. 

Dr. Marie Connolly

Building integrated service systems and making them work - WORKSHOP

This workshop develops the components of the New Zealand integrated service system in greater depth. It considers the ways in which the development of the knowledge framework, service model and practice package in particular impacts on practitioner knowledge, confidence and resilience. It then explores some of the additional resilience reinforces such as the creation of a strong operational policy platform, and the management of high profile case reviews and the media.

Integrated Service Systems: A pathway toward a resilient organisation - KEYNOTE

In order for an organisation to withstand the pressures inherent in any child welfare system, it needs to be clear about the ways in which components of an organisational practice system come together to build system resilience overall. This presentation discusses the development of an integrated service system aimed at strengthening organisation resilience across the following set of related components: The knowledge framework; the service model; the practice package; and the staffing design. Each of these components will be briefly described along with their contribution to organisational resilience.

Early home visitation services represent one of the most widely disseminated and studied before-the-fact prevention services for vulnerable families. The evidence base supporting the effectiveness for early home visitation services, while highly promising overall, is also somewhat mixed, and raises important questions about limitations in the design of such services, limitations in their implementation, and limitations in the degree to which these services adequately target key known risk factors for physical child abuse and neglect. This workshop will provide an overview of the current evidence base supporting early home visitation services, and the caveats identified in the evidence base. It will place special focus on points of match and mismatch between intervention strategies and key identified risk factors, particularly for physical child abuse and neglect, such as parental depression, social isolation, and domestic violence. The workshop will then examine emerging “second generation” home visitation strategies under study that are specifically designed to target these risk factors in ways “first generation” home visitation programs were not originally designed to address. It will examine the emerging evidence base supporting such enhancements, and introduce several new model strategies that hold particular promise for extending the impact of home visitation services for vulnerable families.

“Hope for Change”: Taking Stock of the Emerging Home Visitation Field - KEYNOTE

The emerging home visitation movement represents one of the most hopeful recent developments in addressing major challenges facing vulnerable families and children. This address will take a step back to consider the home visitation field, where it comes from, the supporting rationale and latest scientific findings, and future directions in home visiting services as they strive to deliver on their promise of promoting lasting positive child and family wellbeing.

Sandie de Wolf and Simon Schrapel

Where to from here? - The National Framework for protecting children and implications for family services

For the first time, Australia has a National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children.  The new Framework is significant because it brings Federal & State Governments and the CSO sector together, with a common understanding of the drivers of child abuse and neglect and action plans to reduce the number of children and young people subject to child abuse and neglect.  The development of the Framework broke new ground in its tripartite approach, which we expect to be continued through the ongoing monitoring and governance.

Pauline Dixon and Dr Melinda Polimeni

Strategies that work in engaging families who are vulnerable – lessons from practice, a problem solving workshop

Workers who work with vulnerable families over a number of years need a range of supports from their organization to keep going and need opportunities to gain new knowledge and reflect on practice. . Wanslea Family Services has a staff group that works across a number of programs with vulnerable families in the community.  Supporting staff in this complex work is a priority for the agency.  The agency promotes the acquisition of new knowledge and looks for ways to build the resilience of staff.  Some years ago a number of staff identified a need to increase their knowledge and understanding of working with families headed by a parent with an intellectual disability.  Their manager was concerned about the impact of the work on staff and the outcomes for families.   Wanslea’s staff was offered the opportunity to engage with the Healthy start strategy, a joint initiative of the Parenting Research Centre and the Australian Families and Disabilities Studies Research Collaboration at the University of Sydney.  The aim of Healthy start is to translate research knowledge into practice and build the capacity across the human services sector to better meet the needs of families headed by a parent with an intellectual disability.  This strategy offered staff a number of new resources that they were able to use with families.  The process changed the way that staff work with families and helped to build resilience individually and as a staff group.  Many of the practice principles have been transferred to work with other vulnerable families.  This workshop will explore some of the lessons from practice and offers an opportunity for those to attend to apply it to their own work.

Angela Forbes and Gaye Mitchell

Working with vulnerable families with multiple and complex needs: challenges at practice, program, service system and policy levels.

This workshop will report on findings from a program evaluation conducted within South East Family Services, a family services program within Connections UnitingCare. Connections is an agency of the Uniting Church and provides services in the eastern and southern regions of Melbourne. The workshop will focus on understanding the extent of the complexity faced by some family services client families, what the evaluation findings were about effective intervention, and provide the basis for discussion within the workshop about remaining challenges at practice, program, service system and policy levels.

Howard Bath

Contemporary trauma and the development of Aboriginal children

This presentation focuses on the needs of Aboriginal children, mainly those in rural and remote communities across most States and Territories of Australia. It explores the developmental impact of the exposure of Aboriginal children to contemporary trauma in contrast to the historic trauma documented in reports such as ‘Bringing them Home’ and films/books such as ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’. It seeks to draw understanding from the burgeoning neuroscience research and the literature on the impact of trauma on the developing child to help us understand the complex needs, vulnerabilities, and behaviours of many Indigenous children and young people today. The trauma/neuroscience perspective adds a new layer of understanding to the much- explored historical, cultural, and political approaches to understanding the challenges faced by first Australian children and families.

Judith Gibbs

Managing to retain good people - an international perspective

The presentation will:

Andrew Lowth and Cyndi Grant

An integrated response to vulnerable families, child protection & family services working together - rural & metro perspective

A more Integrated child centred and family focused response to Vulnerable families is the policy and practice direction of the Victorian Child and Family Services sector.This has required a major shift in both funding and practice arrangements. The Child Protection program in Victoria set up Community Partnerships Positions to assist this process.

Andrew is presently in the position of the Community Partnerships Manager in the Grampians Region Child Protection Program and Cyndi is in the same position in the Eastern Metropolitan Region.

These positions are responsible for providing leadership in the development of collaborative practices and relationships between Child Protection and Family Services programs across the respective regions and play a key role in the continued implementation of the Children, Youth and Families Act. The focus is about building and strengthening the relationships that Child Protection has with relevant service providers to ensure that Child Protection becomes  part of a wider service network to children and families.

 

• This paper will explore both the strengths/gains and challenges of working in a more Integrated model with vulnerable families.
• The paper will also look at the impact of the policy reforms and what the translation of these reforms has meant for workers and children/families
• The paper will also explore the commonalities and differences between regional and metropolitan areas

Celia Verrall and Marie Stuart

“No Empty Promises” - A Model of Engagement and Holistic Service Delivery in Family Support

The Save The Children – Queensland Early Intervention Family Support Project is a therapeutic early intervention family support service that, in partnership with other Save the Children projects, engages with children, young people, and families residing in marginalised circumstances.

Through Action research methodology the Family Support Work team explored and developed a number of strategies for engaging and working with families who, for many reasons, have commonly avoided mainstream services, enabling a number of children and parents to improve their overall wellbeing and become hopeful about a sustainable future.  For many families this meant achieving long term stable housing, of which some families had spent intergenerational years in a transient and highly fearful lifestyle that impacted on children’s emotional, physical, social and psychological development.  For many this meant families achieving sustainable life together in a supportive community.  Ultimately this meant children and parents being hopeful about their future.
In this presentation we intend on providing the outcomes of this research and ongoing developments.

Julie Boffa and Bernadette Burchell

Which components of family service intervention bring about positive change?

The North East Metro Child and Family Services   Alliance (NEMC&FSA)   is a partnership of nine community service agencies in the NE suburbs of Melbourne , including the Children's Protection Society, providing integrated family services to vulnerable children young people and their families. The Alliance was established as part of the Victorian legislative reform process to work alongside the Child Protection service to broaden responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children from a narrow child protection to a broader community approach.   For an agency like the Children's Protection Society, there is considerable alignment between the mandated responsibility for earlier intervention, our agency mission and values, and how this translates to a myriad of organisational strategies to promote a workforce enabled to bring positive change to families. These include the strategic plan, workforce development, key selection criteria when employing staff, and whole of agency approaches to early childhood development and support for the most vulnerable. This agency level foundation is met at the practice level through the NEMC&FS Alliance activities to support a thinking, reflective workforce and to understand and further develop intervention   models associated with positive change for families. Included in this is an innovative research proposal to develop in partnership with the Parenting Research Centre a knowledge-to-practice project to examine and implement evidence based interventions across the catchment. This workshop will describe the agency and Alliance level activities to develop interventions that bring about positive change for families, and work with you to consider how we can all further progress this objective to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

Dr Elizabeth Fernandez

Promoting Family Wellness and Child Wellbeing through Family Support: Tracking Service Interactions and Outcomes

International and Australian research have demonstrated that support for families in the parenting process helps to create a healthy environment that fosters children's life time development and reduces the risk of abuse and neglect (Hayward & Cameron, 2002; Macleod & Nelson, 2000, Whittaker, 1997). Critical of the residual focus of child protection interventions and reporting systems alternative discourses have emerged emphasizing responses that are child centered, family focused and neighbourhood based (Gibbons, 1995; Fernandez, 1996). In the light of research findings there have been noticeable shifts in policy to ‘refocus' services to locate child protection within the wider context of prevention and family support (Frost, 2000; Thompson, 1995)

This paper reports research carried out in NSW to capture evidence on the impact of family support interventions by comparing the views of families and their case workers with respect to the perceived benefits and outcomes of preventive interventions in the context of changes in family functioning, parent child relationships, and reduced involvement in protective services. 53 families participating in a family support program were monitored over a twelve month period using a pre- and post-test design, incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the methodology. Participant questionnaires and observational scales, including the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1995) and the North Carolina Family Assessment Scale (NCFAS) (Kirk and Reed Ashcraft, 1998) were used in the study.

Findings highlight the interactional nature of structural deficits and psychosocial difficulties encountered by families living in poverty, and parents perception of the efficacy of interventions in enhancing their coping abilities. In terms of post intervention impact, workers reported changes had been made by families in relationship behaviors, most frequently in emotional care of children and parental capabilities. There were significant correlations between child well being and numbers of home visits.

The implications of the findings for theory, policy and practice will be discussed. The paper will also discuss the implementation of an Assessment Framework SCARF trialed as part of this research.

Nancy Sweeney and Lisa Hillan

Working together to strengthen communities, children and young people

Since 2001 Save the Children has been working in partnership with Indigenous communities in Queensland and the Northern Territory . This journey has been driven by the primary purpose of building strong Aboriginal communities and community members to provide services for children and families. This presentation will explore the journey of a non-Indigenous agency in partnering with Indigenous agencies and communities and will seek to provide insight into:

Mick Naughton

Developing a Child Protection, Placement and Family Services Outcomes Framework

The presentation will provide an overview of:

The Child and Family Services Outcomes Survey and the Evaluation of the Child Protection and Family Services Service System and how the measurement of these outcomes may inform about progress in achieving child protection objectives and those of the wider Child Protection and Family Services service system

Paul Testro & John Adams

Foundations for effective Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and family support services

This workshop draws on the findings of a project commissioned by the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak Limited, which examined the provision of child and family support services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families in South East Queensland and to identify strategies to improve the delivery of these services.

The application of child and family support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families is considered through an examination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander demographic, family, social, economic and cultural contexts.

Seven key themes are identified that should underpin the development, organisation and delivery of child and family support services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families at both the local and whole of service system levels. These are:

• Culture as protection
• Cultural safety and respect
• Community development
• Community control
• Holistic approach
• Partnership, and
• Sustainability. 

The practical application of these themes within the development and operation of the Early Childhood Program is also discussed. The Early Childhood Program is operated by the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs .

Participants will have an opportunity to consider the implications of the foundations for effective child and family support services within their own practice and service context.

Janet Williams-Smith

Priority of access to early years education & care

This workshop will examine issues of access, participation and social inclusion into early year's education and care services for highly vulnerable children living in circumstances of risk, neglect, poverty and multiple disadvantage.

Many of these children are sitting just outside the doors of the Child Protection System and they are also outside the playrooms of mainstream universal early year's services. So where are they?

Do we have adequate resources and investments in early year's services to accommodate these children?

Judy Wookey

Building a Resilient Workforce at glastonbusy Child and Family Services – A Case Study

During Judy Wookey’s time as chief executive officer of Glastonbury Child and Family Services in Geelong, Victoria, the leadership team has developed a particularly strong, stable, high quality and resilient workforce.  This presentation will look at how this was achieved, including the workforce strategy itself and the specific steps that were taken over several years.  With the guidance of staff, the leadership group created an organisation which was an ‘employer of choice’ in the region by placing a high priority on work/life and work/family balance and meeting the wishes and needs of the staff both within and outside the workplace.  More recently, Glastonbury has taken on board international research about the experience of trauma by both clients and staff and has taken steps to become a ‘trauma informed’ organisation operating within a therapeutic service provision context utilising the Sanctuary Model.  This presentation will provide an overview of how this therapeutic model is being rolled out within the staff group and the impact that this is having on developing a strong and resilient workforce.

Annette Michaux

Evidence Informed Practice in Community Services: Stories of trial, error and breakthrough from the Australian coalface

Following overseas developments and trends in fields such as health, Australian community service workers are increasingly introducing evidence-informed approaches to tackling the social problems experienced by service users.

Embraced by many in a quest to achieve better results for the children and families, some have been disappointed to find that what works overseas and in other sectors can get lost in translation to Australia and the community services sector.

Annette will present some insights into why this is, what can be done about it and what works at the coalface of Australian child and family services.

Sue Couper

Creating an Environment for Success: Supporting change at QEC

The nature of work with families has changed at QEC over the past decade with a shift to provide secondary and tertiary level services to high risk infants and their families. Staff involved in intensive work with families who are balancing the challenges of complex social emotional issues and parenting their young children, are often working under extreme pressure. Families can be hard to reach, slow to engage and resistant to change. Guided by current evidence, QEC have taken steps to strengthen staff members' reflective relationships to better support the relationships between caregivers and children. Our continuing priority is to create and maintain an environment that is responsive to the needs of staff as well as clients. We focus on the key supportive elements of staff safety, orientation and continuing professional development, reflective practice, employee and family assistance, regular team debriefing and critical incident debriefing, staff recognition and relationship building program.

The integration and inclusion of all the key elements has provided significant outcomes for staff and clients. QEC's service quality is highly respected and we are an employer of choice in the sector.

Di Lawson

Building a Resilient Workforce

Workforce reform within the social care sector is critical to the growth and professionalisation of the sector. Key challenges faced by the sector include, restrictive funding models, increasing demand on service delivery, ongoing staff vacancies and organisational structures that do not necessarily support skills growth. Traditionally seen as a ‘cottage industry’ supporting the vulnerable the sector experiences lower levels of participation rates in higher education and Vocational Education and Training (VET) have created barriers for the sector.

The Community Services Training Package (CHC08) provides a national framework for addressing complex needs through the articulation of national standards as well as identifying emerging work roles. The introduction of national qualifications in the Family Relationship sector in 2007 was seen as a vehicle to support the professionalisation of the sector and as a means of providing the sector with a sense of self, worth and resilience. The family relationship qualifications span across different service models with a focus on early intervention and prevention.

The addition of higher level qualifications and competencies in the CHC08 will enable the sector opportunities to grow their leaders of tomorrow and provide an environment of greater flexibility to design and extend specific work roles, functions, career pathways and generate appropriate skills development that will meet the sector’s needs.

The implementation of these national standards will not be without challenge as the sector continues to experience ‘training tensions’ where funding for service delivery competes with planned training effort. As well as limited access to funded training particularly for the much needed higher level qualifications and ongoing tension between the VET and higher education sector in terms of articulation.

Leah Bromfield

Specialist Practice Guides: Getting research into practice in family services, child protection and out-of-home care

Child and family welfare practice is extremely challenging and practitioners are faced with tremendous time constraints. In this environment, the sheer volume of research being released can swamp practitioners. They frequently have neither the time nor the research background to sift through all the research on a specific issue to determine its quality or what it means for practice. At the same time, when they have a specific practice question they frequently find that research has not caught up with practice or is not concrete enough to inform specific practice dilemmas.

The Specialist Practice Guides are an exciting project being undertaken by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in collaboration with the Victorian Department of Human Services. The guides take a research informed approach and apply the latest research evidence, combined with the practice wisdom of experienced family services, child protection and placement services practitioners to provide concrete guidance on common practice issues.

In this presentation, Dr Leah Bromfield talks about the Specialist Practice Guides project – how the Guides are being developed, the practice issues they address, when they will be available and from where. She demonstrates the research-informed approach to the guides by giving an overview of the Cumulative Harm Guide: what is cumulative harm, how does it impact children, and messages can we take from research to better identify and respond to cumulative harm.

Fiona Arney

Building evidence-informed practice in child protection

In this presentation Fiona Arney from the Australian Centre for Child Protection will talk about the barriers and facilitators to evidence-informed practice in child protection. This will include details of work undertaken with the National Child Protection Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies examining documented strategies to enhance the translation of research into practice and policy in a range of fields, and the examination of models of research use in interviews with policy makers and practitioners working in the field of child protection. The workshop component of this presentation will include sharing ideas about successful and challenging research-to-practice and practice-to-research initiatives in which participants have been involved.

Kevin Zibell

Transition to school for vulnerable children

Late in 2008, CAFS received funding to provide a pilot project working with a small number of children from targeted families who were due to transition into Grade Prep in 2009.

This presentation outlines the program provided, the rationale for such a service and the outcomes of the pilot which concluded in March 2009.

Children came from families referred from family services; child protection and foster care.

The presentation will discuss engagement with families, especially with parents who may have been reluctant or did not see the need to participate in their child’s transition and subsequent schooling. It will also outline recommendations for further work during this critical development phase in a child’s life.

Luke Rumbold

Integrated responses for complex and vulnerable families

Wodonga is one of two sites selected for a study to examine the potential for greater collaboration between the Child FIRST and Family Relationship Centre programs. This ambition supports the public health model for child protection services advocated by two recent publications, the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children 2009 – 2020 and Inverting the Pyramid: Enhancing Systems for Protecting Children.

This presentation will describe the pilot, the implications of adopting a public health model, and issues to be addressed in attempting an integrated response for complex and vulnerable families.

David Clements

Integrated responses to families with mental health and/or substance abuse issues

Vulnerable families where parents have a mental illness and/or substance abuse issues do not readily access universal services, but are massively over represented in our secondary and tertiary child and family services system. The importance of mental health, drugs and child and family services working closely together is clear.

The Victorian Government has recently released Because mental health matters- the Victorian Mental Health Reform Strategy 2009-2019 which embraces the roles of many sectors and services across the community through a whole-of-government approach, emphasising that mental health is everyone's business.

This presentation will outline the challenges facing all of us as we work towards this vision. Details will be provided regarding the strategic planning and funded initiatives that target complex and vulnerable families within the mental health and alcohol and other drug sectors, in partnership with primary health care services, early childhood services, family services and child protection, emergency services, schools and youth services.

A number of current policy and service initiatives will be presented – but we also want to explore potential opportunities for greater collaboration between mental health, alcohol and other drugs, child protection, out of home care and family services.

Sepi Weerasinghe and Belinda Fry

Integrated family service model for Indigenous families

VACCA provides a range of family support services which sit across the continuum of support available to families from universal, secondary and tertiary services. In delivering this range of services and through work with vulnerable Aboriginal families, Sepi Weerasinghe and Belinda Fry will discuss how the team learnt about their role and where improvements could be made.

In order to address some of the gaps and deficits, VACCA identified a significant remodeling of its service structure. Over the past four years VACCA has implemented an integrated model of service delivery to support vulnerable Aboriginal families and staff believe that this has significantly improved the ability to provide more responsive and targeted interventions.

This workshop will explore the journey towards an integrated model of service delivery and the benefits and strengths of this model. This model of service delivery is particularly beneficial within Aboriginal organisations and in supporting Aboriginal families.

Diana Smart

School readiness and vulnerable children

This paper presents findings from Growing up in Australia, a large national longitudinal study of children and families initiated and funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and conducted in partnership with the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This unique study enabled an exploration of the child capacities, family resources and climate, child-care, pre-school and community experiences that promote or impede school readiness among children from financially disadvantaged families. Also explored was whether a differing set of risk and protective factors would be found when these children were compared with children from better-off families. Child, family, child-care and community factors were all found to be important influences, but differed for learning/cognitive and social/emotional aspects of school readiness. Additionally, many more risks were present within financially disadvantaged families, with 40% of these families experiencing five or more risks compared with only 14% of better-off families. Findings support family stress explanations of links between family financial disadvantage and children’s school readiness (low income impacts on family relationships, parents’ emotional health, marital relationships and parenting practices) as well as family resources explanations (financial strain limits parents’ ability to provide a cognitively stimulating home environment and high quality childcare). The intervention implications of the findings will be discussed.

 

Robyn Mildon

Practice into evidence: Supporting services to use the evidence and generate new evidence

The paper will focus on new approaches to bridging the research to practice gap. To set the scene, findings will be shared from a national dissemination and capacity building strategy for workers in the child and family welfare sector which is being lead by the Parenting Research Centre (PRC) and the University of Sydney. This paper will then focus on new methodologies for bridging the research to practice and practice to research gap which have been developed as a result. A collaborative process being used by the PRC to facilitate and support the two way translation of research into practice and practice into research will be discussed. This approach allows for a full consideration and inclusion of the evidence and knowledge from research and practice, a contextual and flexible approach to intervention selection, development and implementation and a two-way transfer of knowledge between researchers, program developers, managers and practitioners. Practical examples of how this approach is used and challenges involved and what outcomes can result from it will be provided.

Aileen Ashford

Integrated Service Delivery across Family Services, Child Protection and Disability Services –the Tasmanian Experience

The Tasmanian Government has undertaken a challenging and innovative approach to developing an integrated service response for vulnerable children, young people and families as well as individuals with disability.

The bringing together of family support and disability services is not only breaking new ground in service delivery models but shifting two distinct yet interrelated cultures.

During 2007 and 2008, comprehensive reviews were undertaken of the Tasmanian Child and Family Services System ( including family services, out of home care and child protection) and the Disability Services System.

The review process highlighted a requirement for significant and sustained reform across both sectors. Importantly a number of the identified opportunities for change were common, with this commonality providing the basis for an integrated approach to the implementation of the reforms.

This presentation will focus on the journey to date in developing an integrated service delivery framework for child and family services and disability services. It will outline the context of Tasmanian service system, the challenges in creating an integrated service system within Government and the Community Sector, overview of the difference and uniqueness of the Gateway model, interrelated new services being developed and the review process of the new service system.

Annette Jackson

'Calmer Classrooms' Supporting children with trauma in an educational setting

Children and young people who have experienced forms of abuse, neglect and disrupted attachment are disadvantaged when it comes to school participation. The impacts of trauma leave many children with cognitive difficulties or behavioural problems that impede academic engagement.

Moreover issues of shame and low self esteem, coupled together with various styles of insecure attachment , have the negative effect on the child's social engagement or classroom participation.

Whilst children and young people with insecure attachment styles and experiences of trauma benefit from social connectedness, the trauma often gets in the way. The Take-Two Calmer Classrooms approach is based upon the "Calmer Classrooms" booklet published by the Office of Child Safety Commissioner.

A trauma-informed, whole school approach can greatly assist children with trauma histories as well as allowing teachers to better enjoy their role.

Robyn Miller

'Calmer Classrooms' Supporting children with trauma in an educational setting

This presentation will focus on the challenges and experience of the Victorian system as the cultural and practice reforms are embedded across the state.  Walking the talk of the 'every child every chance' reforms and the Best Interests Principles is a journey that has excited many people to reclaim relationship based practice and to hold the voice of the child and the engagement of the family as central to any decision making.  Building a system that is more responsive to families in need earlier, and supporting practitioners to reflect on the complexity they encounter, is critical to developing better outcomes for children. 

Innovative practice and reforms across the state will be explored alongside a realistic appraisal of the challenging demand and workforce issues that can so easily dominate the landscape.   The Best Intersests Case Practice Model will be discussed as framework for good practice that has been accepted across sectors in Victoria .

Cathy Humphreys

Family violence and children's services: challenges, cultural differences and capacity building

The provision of appropriate intervention for children living with domestic and family violence remains a significant problem in the Australian social policy and practice landscape. These children are ubiquitous within our service systems, yet they tend to fall into a social policy vacuum caught between adult services supporting women living with, or escaping from domestic and family violence and the child protection system. The failure of child protection intake systems to deal with the problems for these children through mandatory reporting has been writ large in those states with the broadest definition of mandated referrers. New routes to community based intake services are now being explored. There remain however problems about managing and understanding the issues of severity. Tragically, some children die. Flagging these children for attention within the child protection system, while simultaneously opening up services within community sector organisations which attend to the separate but related issues of children, men and women is a significant challenge. In this presentation some issues in the Victorian service system will be discussed highlighting the challenges, cultural differences and capacity building which is required to build a service system which is significantly more responsive to children living with domestic and family violence.

Holly Reid

Case Studies in Supporting Resilient Workers: From Pilot, Farm to Radio

When does the day-to-day provide something new, and how can innovative activities support your staff with learning experiences to enhance both skills and motivation?

Menzies Inc is a small player but one of the oldest in the field of youth and family services in the Melbourne area. Branching out from traditional residential services to day programs including Creative Arts Animal Assisted Therapy in the unique setting of Sages Cottage Farm, Menzies continues to offer staff innovative programs such as the new Pilot in Therapeutic Residential Care for young people with a mild intellectual disability. Along with direct service to our young people, Menzies is also branching out in the world of community radio to give the staff, supporters and ultimately the children a voice in the local community.

Hear how these three programs have supported the Menzies' workers who have embraced innovation and how their approach to working with our young people has changed in ways to encourage resilience for all.

Bruce du Vergier

Literacy Development for Vulnerable Children

Over time Community Connections (Vic) Ltd. has established a practice called ‘Social Inclusion and Emotional Development Strategies’ (SIEDS). The practice consists of a series of early intervention activities aimed at vulnerable families with pre school children. The activities are known as ‘Reading Discovery’, ‘Beyond the Rainbow’ and ‘Beyond the Rainbow and into The Dreamtime’. The program is part of a longitudinal research study with Deakin University. The practice model which engages families from ‘Child FIRST’ and Out of Home Care service areas builds on families’ capacities by strengthening social inclusiveness and emotional capital which are the foundations of healthy autonomy and lifelong learning.

All components of SIEDS are entertaining, fun, and embrace cultural diversity. All practitioners have early childhood qualifications and experience and enjoy being on the floor with children.

The presentation will discuss engagement with families and children and it will also include case studies.

Lynden Baxter

Workshop: "Engaging with the Indigenous Community to support Women & Children who have Experienced Family Violence".

WRISC's Indigenous Family Violence program operates in regional Victoria. The program has been developed within a mainstream Family Violence service in partnership with the Ballarat & District Aboriginal Cooperative. The collaborative practice model involves WRISC staff working in teams within both organisations.

The workshop will explore the WRISC practice model, the historical context of why Indigenous communities do not engage with mainstream services and our learnings about developing collaborative partnerships with the Indigenous community.