Hope, Resilience and Persistence—ACWA’s Strategy to Action event explores opportunities to effect change from the ground up
On Wednesday 12th March, ACWA was pleased to welcome South Australian of the Year and Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection, Professor Leah Bromfield, as a key speaker at our first Strategy to Action event for 2025. Badged ‘Hope, Resilience and Persistence—Effecting Change from the Ground Up’, the event explored where the windows of opportunity lie for responding differently to the abuse and neglect of children.
The session opened with a rousing Welcome to Country by Binowee Bayles from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, who greeted us in the language of the Gadigal (Grass Tree People) and reminded us that “Our actions today determine the kind of ancestor we will be for the children of the future”.
The first part of the afternoon featured a presentation by Professor Leah Bromfield entitled ‘Preventing and Responding to child abuse and neglect—where are the opportunities for action?’ in which she urged us to challenge our thinking and assumptions about the need for a statutory response and look for levers to explore and trial new approaches at a local level.
This was followed by two ‘sector snapshot’ presentations that demonstrated what a more supportive response could look like.
In the first snapshot, Cat Gander, CEO of DV West, spoke about their Children and Young Person’s Framework for Supporting Families in Domestic and Family Violence. This framework is designed to support a partnering approach with mothers/carers and children that reduces risk factors and increases protective factors—by using creative and flexible responses across multiple domains—as well as empowering mothers with knowledge on ways to help their children recover from the impacts of DFV on their children.
Karitane CEO, Grainne O’Loughlin presented on ‘Navigating Early Intervention with Integrated Child and Family Hubs in the First 2000 Days’, highlighting Village Connect—a multi-disciplinary, culturally led, community designed, integrated ‘hub for parents’ support model that aims to maximise the overall safety, wellbeing, resilience and lifetime trajectories of children and families. Village Connect is made up of three main elements; Child and Family Hybrid Hub, Keyworker Model, and 24/7 health, wellbeing and safety support, delivered by Karitane, Uniting and Sonder in partnership under the one umbrella. The program continues to evolve based on input from parents, evidence-based research and learning from implementation.
Our three speakers then participated in a panel discussion and Q&A, which was followed by a workshop session for attendees to reflect on and discuss where opportunities might lie for them to take action at both a systems and practice level.
Watch the presentations and panel discussion
Download the presentation slides
The audience was asked to reflect on and discuss in groups the call to rethink our existing systems and approaches, and where opportunities might lie both at a systems level and in their own practice. Feedback was collected via Mentimeter and some key themes emerged:
Reflections and opportunities
- Transformation is needed, not just reform
- Change must be evidence-based, cross sector and truly collaborative
- A rethink is needed about mandatory reporting
- Consider a shift to responsive regulation—using the least coercive interaction to advance the regulatory goal
- We need to measure what matters and highlight relational outcomes
Shifting our own practice
- Empowering families should be a focus—listening, connecting meeting them where they are
- Pay attention to language we use with families—strengths based and jargon-free
- Sharing our knowledge and experience is important—make more opportunities within our organisations as well as within the sector e.g. Communities of Practice, forums, think tanks on practice and innovation
- Consider establishing a Child & Family Roundtable (like Health & Disability)
It was an inspiring kick-off to this year’s S2A event series, prompting a vibrant exchange of ideas and a reminder of the sector’s collective wisdom.
This event was followed by a sector ‘Farewell’ reception for our wonderful CEO, Maree Walk, who is retiring after more than 35 years working to improve the lives of children, young people and families experiencing vulnerability.
ACWA’s farewell reception for our CEO Maree Walk
