The National Foster & Kinship Care Conference summary of the talks.

Day 1 | Friday 28 November

  • Day 1 Plenary Session 1 (Part A & B) | Sarah Naish
    Keynote: Therapeutic Parenting – Strategies and Solutions

    An overview of techniques and strategies used in Therapeutic Parenting and why this method is so effective when re-parenting children who have experienced trauma. Sarah will also highlight the innovative therapeutic technique of ‘naming the need’ and explain the importance of how unmet needs transform into tricky behaviours.

    Behaviour is the main form of communication for traumatised children. Sarah will help you to decipher that language and give strategies which help therapeutic parents to change their responses, thereby empowering our children to understand and change their behaviours.

  • Break Out Session Stream 1 | KAA Chrysalis
    Co-designing a model of care with kin carers and young people

    Key Assets Australia (KAA) is committed to centring the voices of lived experience in our work. Kinship carers play a critical role in ensuring children who are removed from families remain connected to family, culture and community, yet their voices are often missing from the design of services. Chrysalis, our transformation hub at KAA, will share our journey of developing an innovative model of care in genuine partnership with kinship carers and young people in kin care arrangements. By centring lived experience and listening deeply, we have co-designed a model that reflects the unique realities and complexities that kinship families navigate every day. We’ll share practical insights from the process, key principles that guided us—such as trauma-informed engagement, accountability to young people, and cultural practice—and early feedback from those involved.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Simone McKenry
    Empowering Carers: Practical Strategies for Supporting Children and Young People with FASD

    Children and young people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) often face unique challenges, including difficulties with emotional regulation, executive functioning, and adaptive life skills. These challenges can be misunderstood, leading to frustration for both the child and their carers. However, with the right knowledge, strategies, and support, carers can transform lives by creating environments where children with FASD can thrive.

    This presentation will equip foster and kinship carers with practical, evidence-based approaches to support children and young people with FASD. Drawing on NOFASD’s extensive experience working alongside families, we will explore strategies for navigating common challenges, promoting positive behaviours, and fostering resilience. Attendees will gain insights into how brain-based approaches can reframe behaviours often mistaken for defiance, instead recognising them as signs of underlying neurodevelopmental differences.

    Through real-world examples and interactive discussion, carers will leave with a toolkit of practical strategies to implement in their daily lives, including approaches to emotional regulation, sensory support, and communication. The session will also highlight available resources and supports to empower carers on their journey.

    By understanding the unique needs of children and young people with FASD, carers can build stronger relationships, reduce stress, and create environments where both they and the children they support can thrive.

  • Breakout Session 1 | Jasmine Perry
    When children leave: A Spotlight on Carers Grief and Loss

    MacKillop Family Services (MacKillop) provides a continuum of therapeutic, trauma-informed family, education, and out-of-home care services across Australia, employing over 2,200 staff. MacKillop provides Foster Care to approximately 450 children each day.

    In 2020, MacKillop undertook an internal review of our foster care programs, titled Foster Care Spotlight (Spotlight). The review utilised qualitative and quantitative information, including annual carer reviews, exit interview feedback, carer complaint insights, national carer survey feedback, international and sector reviews and focus group feedback (MacKillop staff and carers). Ten recommendations to improve carer wellbeing were endorsed by MacKillop’s CEO and are being implemented.

    Spotlight’s key learnings included:

    • the importance of a holistic relationship between carers and practitioners that have less transactional and more relational interactions;
    • more opportunities to receive carer feedback with systematic tracking of practical requests, and;
    • an increased focus on carer emotional and psychological needs.

    In addition to carer needs, Spotlight identified the need to improve the quality of practice through better systems, targeted training and support for a more skilled and stable workforce. Where workforce instability is unavoidable, MacKillop identified ways to invest in systems to mitigate the impact to carers.

    This presentation will focus on the Spotlight recommendation: ‘Carers receive increased emotional and psychological support during transitions’. This includes an overview of the research project undertaken by the University of Melbourne with MacKillop in 2024, ‘Impacts of providing care on foster carers and their children’, which examined the grief and loss carers, and their biological children, experience when a foster child leaves their care. The research is underpinned by the theoretical frameworks of ambiguous loss, dis-enfranchised grief and anticipatory grief and that under-acknowledged experiences of grief can be a barrier to healthy grieving.

    Following the release of the research, MacKillop staff and carers synthesised findings and developed resources to better support carers, particularly the 54% of those the research revealed experienced a “negative or very negative social and emotional impact” when a child transitioned from their care. One carer stated, “this is one of the toughest parts of fostering. Falling in love then saying goodbye, but it’s all part of the job and doing the best job I can do for the child means letting my heart fall in love with them”.

    Key initiatives include the development of staff Practice Guides, establishment of a Peer Support program, podcasts and e-learns for carers, increased therapeutic supports pre-and-post transition, and strengthening practice tools.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Jane Rabie
    Healing Through Play: Supporting Attachment in Foster Care with Theraplay

    Children in the care system frequently carry complex attachment wounds stemming from trauma, loss and disrupted relationships. Building trust with a new caregiver can feel overwhelming for both child and carer. Theraplay®—a structured, attachment-based, play-centred intervention—offers concrete, developmentally reparative activities that cultivate attunement, co-regulation and shared joy.

    Grounded in attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology, Theraplay creates right-brain-to-right-brain experiences reminiscent of secure early relationships. These playful interactions gradually replace fear-based behaviours with openness, curiosity and felt safety. Carers learn to read non-verbal cues, meet early unmet attachment needs, scaffold emotional regulation and enhance their confidence whilst supporting the child’s optimal arousal.

    Participants will be introduced to the four core dimensions of Theraplay®—Structure, Engagement, Nurture, and Challenge—and learn how to integrate them into therapeutic parenting. Through hands-on, age-appropriate, sensory-rich activities, they will gain tools to strengthen attachment and deepen connection. The workshop will also explore practical ways to embed Theraplay® principles into daily routines, family life, and care team planning

  • Break Out Session 3 | Rachael Rogan
    Lighten Up Vibes: Mindfulness, Movement & Mental Health for Carers and Children

    Foster and kinship carers are often navigating the emotional complexities of supporting children impacted by trauma while simultaneously managing their own stress, overwhelm, and burnout risk. This workshop explores the transformative power of mindfulness and movement as accessible, evidence-informed tools to support the mental health and emotional regulation of both carers and the children in their care.

    Drawing on over two decades of experience in trauma-aware Yoga, mindfulness education, and community mental health recovery programs, this session introduces Lighten Up Vibes — a gentle, inclusive approach designed to reduce anxiety, enhance connection, and support emotional resilience. Participants will be guided through practical strategies to integrate mindfulness into daily routines, learn simple movement and breathwork practices to co-regulate with children, and understand how embodied self-care can strengthen capacity, compassion, and relational presence.

    Inspired by current thought leaders like Dr. Becky Kennedy and Brené Brown — who advocate for presence, emotional attunement, and resilience in caregiving — this workshop reflects the growing global momentum toward holistic and sustainable care. Whether in the home, in community settings, or during moments of emotional challenge, these tools offer a pathway to calm, connection, and renewal.

    This session invites carers to pause, reset, and reconnect — to themselves and to the children they support.

  • Break Out Session 3 | Rachel Chapman
    “Big Feelings, Little Words”: How communication challenges can drive behaviour in children and adolescents in care.

    When people can’t say what they feel or need, they often show it through their behaviour. For children and young people in care – many of whom have experienced trauma, disrupted attachment, or developmental delays – this can be especially true.

    In this presentation, Rachel explores the powerful link between language and behaviour in children and young people living in care. Drawing on examples, clinical insights, and trauma-informed approaches, she will help foster and kinship carers recognise when behaviours may be signs of underlying language and/or communication needs.

    The session will cover:

    • How language and communication difficulties may show up in behaviour
    • The impact of trauma on brain development and language/ communication skills
    • How to respond with connection not correction – identifying the behaviour function, staying calm and re-connecting
    • Practical strategies to respond and support in the moment
    • Tools you can implement to reduce the demands on language skills
    • Who can help and where to go next

    This session is an invaluable opportunity to understanding how communication challenges underpin behavior in children and young people in care. By recognising the signs of underlying communication needs, carers can shift their approach to foster stronger relationships and more effective support.

    This presentation will equip attendees with tools they can implement immediately to enhance communication and promote emotional regulation. Whether you’re caring for a toddler or a teenager, this presentation will offer new insights into how to connect with the person behind the behaviour.

    Topic Areas:

    • Practical Therapies to Support Children and Young People
    • Understanding Neurodivergence
  • Plenary Session | Shannon Kendrick
    From Trauma to Triumph: The Impact of Therapeutic Life Story Work on Wellbeing and Identity

    Caring With Carers, in collaboration with Western Sydney University, presents a powerful short documentary and presentation that bring together research, advocacy, and lived experience. This session explores how Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) supports young people in out-of-home care by helping them navigate trauma, strengthen identity, and build resilience.

    TLSW is a structured therapeutic intervention designed to help children and young people understand and integrate their personal histories—particularly those impacted by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as abuse, neglect, and placement breakdowns. Through collaborative storytelling with a therapist or caregiver, young people construct a coherent life narrative that allows them to process difficult emotions, understand their journey, and move forward with clarity and confidence.

    Grounded in attachment theory and trauma-informed practice, TLSW not only addresses the psychological impacts of early trauma but also fosters a stronger sense of cultural identity and belonging. For young people whose sense of self has been fragmented by repeated disruption, TLSW offers a way to reconnect the past with the present and future.

    Through the lens of Hannah’s lived experience, this presentation offers a moving and practical example of how TLSW can restore emotional wellbeing, affirm identity, and support long-term healing. It is ideal for carers, practitioners, and policy leaders seeking effective, compassionate approaches to therapeutic care.

    Join us as we explore how telling one’s story—when done safely and supportively—can become a powerful act of healing and self-discovery.

Day 2 | Saturday 29 November

  • Plenary Session | Dr Brenda Hayworth
    That’s Jungle!

    When children and teenagers don’t know how to handle big emotions, their instincts take over. It’s the call of the wild that says: If in Doubt, Come out Fighting! Without thinking, they release their inner monkey. They enter the Jungle and sometimes we feel like we’re swinging through the trees with them!

    • What kind of behaviour have you seen?
    • Do your kids argue with you about every detail and tangle you up in your own words?
    • If they don’t like your answer, will they pout and cry until you change your mind?
    • Do they shock you with a choice swear word then stomp off and slam the bedroom door?
    • Are they perfectly behaved at school, then let it all loose once they get home?
    • Do they shout, break furniture and kick a hole in the wall?
    • Do your kids argue and insult each other, until they finally explode into punches and screaming?

    In this keynote, Dr Heyworth brings warmth, humour and a practical perspective to the serious issue of externalised behaviour. She draws an important link between emotions and behaviour, and applies concepts from her popular parenting book, ‘It’s a Jungle’. It’s about recognising the physiological fight response for what it really is, a survival instinct for times of danger which also misfires from emotional overload. This is especially relevant for kids in care, when past experiences have primed the intensity of their emotions and survival instinct.

    With enormous empathy for carers, Dr Heyworth takes on the reality of dealing with kids in overload and offers sincere thanks to the very special people who step forward to do what it takes to help kids in care.

  • Break Out Session 1 | Sarah Naish
    Kinship Care – Survive and Thrive

    Kinship Carers face a unique set of challenges. Often, they are managing complex extended family dynamics, as well as facing the day-to-day challenges of helping a child to overcome trauma.

    Sarah will guide you through some practical responses and methods you can use in your circumstances, which will help Kinship Carers to navigate issues such as family visits, the child’s story,  managing guilt and grief, dealing with overwhelm, and signposting to resources for you.

  • Break Out Session 1 | Sarah Naish
    Compassion Fatigue – The Route back to Connection

    When I experienced compassion fatigue, (sometimes referred to as ‘blocked care’) I didn’t know it had a name. I just thought I had turned into a bad parent!

    We learnt a lot from the first ever worldwide research we carried out in 2016.

    We may all be familiar with that feeling of disconnect and negativity, but what do we do about it? I will explain how we avoid getting into compassion fatigue in the first place and give you, (and supporting professionals), help to recognise the signs, feel better and reconnect with your child.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Ursula Elisara
    Workshop: Empowering – A Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) Approach to Scaffolding our Children for Success

    Think of a time when you were safe, but you didn’t feel that way. The goal of the TBRI® Empowering Principles is to prepare young bodies and brains for success, by meeting the environmental and physical needs of our children and youth. During this fun and interactive workshop, you will gain the tools needed to ensure children and young people are best positioned to use their brains, bodies, and the environment to keep their internal states regulated and balanced.

    Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) is a care model designed to help meet the relational and developmental needs of children and youth impacted by trauma. TBRI® considers the whole child—their brain, biology, behaviour, body, and beliefs—and provides caregivers with practical tools and insight to help their child(ren) reach their highest potential.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Anthony Raitman
    Co-designing the Foster Care Journey with Diverse Expertise and Evidence

    Children in care, foster carers, and families with children in care possess deep lived experience of care services, yet their perspectives are often underutilised in shaping these services. This presentation explores an innovative approach to foster care reform that centres care innovation on the views of those with lived expertise, coupled with academic knowledge and practice wisdom, undertaken by Life Without Barriers.

    The Innovating the Foster Care Journey project employed a diverse design process, drawing on insights from foster carers, children in care, academics, industry leaders, and LWB’s frontline staff and leadership team. This comprehensive review of the organisation’s carer attraction, recruitment, and retention practices also incorporated analysis of administrative data and published and grey literature.

    Through collaborative workshops, data analysis, and ongoing consultation, the project generated evidence-based recommendations across the carer journey, which have guided LWB’s new Carer Strategy. The voices of those with lived experience, including children in care, foster carers, and parents of children in care, were elevated throughout the analysis and strategy design process

    This presentation will outline the lived-experience centred design methodology, key learnings, and resulting practice changes, highlighting the power of diverse evidence in informing and leading design processes in the child and family sector. Members of the project’s expert advisory group with lived experience will co-present, sharing their experience of contributing to this system-level change. The resulting carer strategy and emerging outcomes flowing from its implementation will be discussed.

    By sharing our experience, we aim to demonstrate how drawing on the voices of those with lived experience can meaningfully shape innovative approaches to service design and delivery. We will outline strategies for embedding lived experience perspectives across service design and delivery into policy and practice development. A lived experience representative from our project will share insights on being part of this process.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Jake Iaria
    Delving into Disenfranchised Grief – Unpacking the Impact on Carer Wellbeing

    The experience of grief and loss for carers within the OoHC sector is one that is often overlooked, misunderstood, or minimised. Despite recent conversation in the sector around recognising the legitimacy of grief and loss for carers, it remains an under-acknowledged part of the overall care experience.

    In contrast, ‘traditional’ grief experiences, such as passing of a loved one, are often recognised as legitimate experiences of loss with enduring impact. As such, the bereaved are frequently met with sympathy, support, and compassion, validating their continuous and meaningful bond with the departed.

    The experience that many carers reflect on tells a different story – one of little acknowledgement of the enduring attachment/bond with the child/young person, beyond the provision of direct care. As such, this grief experience is often minimised, devalued, or not seen as legitimate (systematically and/or within personal relationships). This can lead to isolation, burnout, and a diminished sense of purpose, which may manifest physiologically, psychologically, and socially. For these carers, recognising this as Disenfranchised Grief is a critical first step in identifying and understanding how best to respond to this loss.

    Whilst there are a number of systemic issues that need attention in terms of enhancing support to carers in this space, this presentation will focus on the ways in which Disenfranchised Grief, if given no recognition, can significantly impact a carer’s mental health and wellbeing.

    Through the use of case examples, we will explore different circumstances which may result in Disenfranchised Grief (relinquishment/sudden removal/planned reunification), as well as the unique complexities and layers of loss for carers. Though there may be some similarities in shared grief experiences, navigating Disenfranchised Grief is not about embracing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, but identifying and tailoring support that is meaningful to the individual and builds on the foundation of self-compassion and validation.

  • Break Out Session 3 | Dr Brenda Heyworth
    Growing Up with Big Emotions

    Emotions are messy and self-control is complicated, so it helps to imagine how each child or
    adolescent is trying to carry their own personalised bundle of emotions. Sometimes they manage
    and sometimes they don’t. This workshop looks at the nature of emotional overload for young
    people in care, as we help them grow from childhood into adolescence and beyond.

    Expanding on methods mentioned in Dr Heyworth’s keynote, this workshop will help participants
    identify the range of sensory and emotional factors that can contribute to a young person’s
    experience of overload (e.g. anxiety, frustration, boredom and even sock seams). Ways to read the
    signs of a simmering emotional state will be covered, along with techniques for carers to anticipate
    the accumulation of overload factors before they get too big. With a practical focus on what carers
    can do to help, the techniques will then be demonstrated as they apply to complex scenarios
    involving comorbid diagnoses, development, attachment, trauma and stress.

    Emotions and behaviour are just two out of the 7 areas that impact a young person’s wellbeing and
    the other areas (of language, social, learning, physical and executive function skills) are often a
    factor in exacerbating a young person’s distress. Carers will be encouraged to think wholistically
    about the interplay of these factors and scaffold their support around the areas that their young
    person finds hard. Given the long waiting times to see a medical specialist, this approach also
    explores how an earlier appointment with an allied health professional could potentially help along
    the way.

  • Break Out Session 3

    Break Out Session 3

  • Break Out Session 3 | John Cardamone
    Body Safety Cards Workshop – Empowering Conversations That Protect children

    Over 90% of sexual abuse against children is perpetrated by someone the child knows and trusts. Tragically, I was one of those children. Through my own lived experience and supported by evidence-based research, I have developed the Body Safety Cards – a tool designed to break down the barriers that often prevent these critical conversations from happening.

    These cards are carefully created to support families, carers, and educators in speaking openly with children about body safety in a way that feels natural, empowering, and age-appropriate. The earlier we teach children how to be body safe, the more confident, in control, and protected they will be as they grow.

    In this interactive workshop, we will explore:

    • Sentence starters to help you initiate conversations about body safety
    • The private body part that is often overlooked – and why it’s essential we don’t leave it out
    • The importance of teaching children to recognise strange behaviours, not just “stranger danger”
    • Visual and engaging activities that make learning about body safety approachable and memorable
    • Why using correct anatomical names for private body parts is so important
    • How children can begin to identify their own early warning signs
    • Using age-appropriate language that children understand and respond to

    This session is designed to equip you with practical tools, confidence, and clarity in your role as a protector and educator in a child’s life. Together, we can change the conversation and keep our children safer.

  • Break Out Session 4 | Christopher Smith
    Life of Me with ASD

    Enthusiastic, engaging and at times funny, Chris takes you into a world of different thinking allowing participants to come into his world and the life of people who see the world in their own unique way. Chris, like most people with ASD has an amazing ability to capture and store information. In Chris’s case it’s “Survivor” and participants will have the opportunity to test Chris’s memory while allowing those attending to understand that people with ASD have this extraordinary ability.

  • Plenary Session | Sara Scott-Hitchcock
    From File to my Voice: My Journey of Lived Experience and Advocacy

    At 12 years old, I entered the care system carrying more than just a garbage bag of belongings. I carried trauma, silence, and a file full of labels that didn’t tell my whole story. Words like ‘aggressive’, ‘non-compliant’ and ‘disruptive’ followed me from placement to placement, shaping how professionals, and carers, saw me before they ever met me. But behind those behaviours was a child in pain, trying to survive.

    This presentation shares my journey through out-of-home care. Including foster homes, kinship placements, and residential care, not just as a former young person in care, but now as a lived experience advocate working alongside the very system that once held me. I will explore how misinterpretation of behaviour, poor documentation, and lack of trauma-informed practice can impact a young person’s trajectory. And how the opposite can change a life.

    Central to my story are my carers: the foster and kinship carers who opened their homes and hearts, sometimes without all the information they needed, and often without the support they deserved. I’ll reflect on the carers who made me feel safe, seen, and valued. And how their compassion, consistency, and willingness to understand the child behind the behaviour became turning points in my life. I’ll also acknowledge the challenges carers face when navigating complex systems, and how better communication, training, and support can empower them to be the anchors young people need.

    Through personal storytelling, I’ll highlight the moments that made a difference: the professionals who saw me, the carers who believed in me, the caseworkers who documented with care, and the advocates who stood beside me. I’ll speak to the power of being heard, and how turning lived experience into advocacy has helped me reclaim my story and use it to drive change.

    This session will challenge professionals and carers to reflect on their role in young people’s lives, not just as workers or caregivers, but as potential lifelines. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of the importance of language, consistency, and connection in practice when caring for young people. And a reminder that when we do the work properly, and when carers are supported to truly care, good things happen. I am one of them.

  • Plenary Session | Rebecca Whips
    Proof in the pudding- how my carer transformed my life

    Sharing my own story of being taken into foster care at 7 years old. Removed from an environment that involved domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse and neglect; where all roads led to a grim future. My carer Robyn, a than 50 something year old women took me in. She didn’t have much- a community housing unit, got by on a disability pension and yet I had everything I needed and was so loved. She found love to give a child that wasn’t hers, after raising 3 grown kids of her own. She didn’t get to attend university as I went on to, or hold a fancy job title. Without the foundation she provided me, I wouldn’t have been able to build the life I have now. I wanted to share my story as proof you don’t need to be of a certain economic class, age or stage in your life to be the carer someone needs- all carers look different and she was the perfect one for me. I hope that inspires someone to take the leap and explore caring- because they could transform someone’s life, as she did mine.

Day 3 | Sunday 30 November

  • Plenary Session | Ursula Elisara
    Understanding Ourselves, to Best Serve Our Children

    “You cannot lead a child to a place of healing, if you do not know the way yourself.”
    – Dr Karyn Purvis

    Imagine walking away with a fresh perspective, a spark of inspiration, and powerful insights that could change the way you think and provide care. This isn’t just another talk—it’s an opportunity to challenge assumptions, ignite curiosity, and uncover insights that could shift the way you see caregiving. Ursula has captivated audiences across New Zealand and Australia with fresh insights, game-changing ideas, and stories that resonate.

    From the time you were an infant, you relied on your parents and other close caregivers to help you make sense of the world. Your experience shaped how you regulate your emotions, and how you attach, respond, and connect with others. Understanding your attachment history can play an incredibly important role in helping you to identify the emotional needs of yourself and others, recognise relationship patterns, heal from attachment injuries and trauma, and improve mental health. This is your chance to be part of something truly special—where experience and wisdom meets enthusiasm, and learning becomes an experience

  • Break Out Session 1 | Ursula Elisara
    Workshop: Correcting – A Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) Approach to Correcting Behaviours

    “It is better to err and repair than to have never erred at all.” — Dr. David Cross

    Foundational to TBRI® is the premise that most behaviour is driven by unmet needs. The goal of the Correcting Principles is to help children and young people learn appropriate strategies for getting their needs met. Solving behavioural challenges quickly and effectively, while building connection between the caregiver and child is a primary feature of TBRI®. During this fun and interactive workshop, you will learn how to shape beliefs and behaviours effectively, so children feel safe and able to navigate successful interactions throughout their day.

    Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) is a care model designed to help meet the relational and developmental needs of children and youth impacted by trauma. TBRI® considers the whole child—their brain, biology, behaviour, body, and beliefs—and provides caregivers with practical tools and insight to help their child(ren) reach their highest potential.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Danielle Murphy

    How do I keep going when my Heart Keeps Breaking?
    Foster care is often framed as a selfless act of love, but rarely do we speak openly about the
    emotional toll it takes on carers—the grief, the goodbyes, the unanswered questions, and the
    quiet courage it requires to continue showing up. In this session, I share my personal journey
    as a long-term foster carer navigating love and loss, systemic challenges, and the ever-present tension between reunification and permanency.

    Drawing from my memoir Hearts in Transition and the launch of The Hope and
    Transformation Initiative, a grassroots non-profit aimed at reforming carer support and child
    wellbeing in NSW, this presentation will explore:

    • The unseen layers of grief in foster care
    • Why carers often feel silenced or dismissed in decisions that affect the children they
      love
    • The risk of burnout, and how peer connection can be part of the solution
    • Practical, lived-experience-informed ideas for transforming the foster care landscape

    This talk is for anyone who has ever asked, “How do I keep going when my heart keeps
    breaking?” It’s a call for honesty, community, and reform—because foster care shouldn’t be
    survived in isolation.

  • Break Out Session 2 | Angela Bontea

    Kinship carer support package: Recognising early placement support needs

    Children and young people entering out-of-home care (OOHC) require a secure home with loving, dependable adults to care for them. This is often provided by family members, or kin, who also ‘enter’ the statutory OOHC system as they become kinship carers. This means visits from caseworkers to their homes, planning meetings to attend and facilitating visits by children and young people with their parents, who are also family members. The latter is one of the complex differences that, along with others, has received insufficient attention in our OOHC system.

    For this presentation we describe a kin carer support package recently developed by CASPA staff, drawing on research, practice experience, and most importantly, the insights of kinship carers. They told us there are some clear differences between kin and non-kin care roles, placement experiences and support needs, particularly in the early stages of a placement. Kinship placements often begin at short notice, before there is an opportunity to attend training, access a support network and gain an understanding of the broader OOHC system. Experienced kinship carers let us know what they wished they’d known early on.

    The focal point of the support package is a series of 10 short animation videos containing practical information in a user friendly format to support kinship carers and their families through the initial period of a placement. A key element of element of the package includes explaining the range of ways our agency can support them to navigate the OOHC system.

  • Break Out Session 3 | Brittany Lennon

    Bridging Lived Experience & Practice
    This presentation explores the power of lived experience in driving systemic change and advocacy within the out-of-home care system. As both a case manager and a person with lived experience in care, I offer a dual perspective. At 16, I was removed from my mother and placed in kinship care alongside my three younger siblings. Our experience was complex and painful but also shaped by moments of resilience and deep sibling connection. Two years ago, I accessed my Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) file, reading how my life had been documented by the system often inaccurately or incompletely challenged what I thought I understood about my story, my trauma, and the power of voice. In this session, I will reflect on the process of accessing personal records and how it has informed my practice with children, young people, and carers. The presentation will focus on how organisations can centre lived experience in policy and advocacy through co-design, peer-led training, and inclusive recruitment strategies. It will challenge participants to consider how lived experience can move beyond just a narrative and become a driving force for real transformation in the care system.

    The session will cover:

    • The emotional journey of accessing personal records and how that reshaped my approach to documentation, empathy, and advocacy.
    • How organisations can go beyond tokenism to meaningfully embed lived experience into workforce, policy, and service design.
    • Why lived experience must be positioned not as a “bonus perspective,” but as expertise that can challenge, transform, and humanise our systems. Acknowledging how my care experience informs my current practice.
    • The importance of carers documenting their interpretation of the young person in their life so that young people have a multitude of descriptors of their lives, so that they can choose the narrative that best represents their care experience

    I believe this presentation will offer valuable insights to the conference audience and contribute meaningfully to the discussion on empowering carers and improving outcomes for children and young people in care while also challenging the system that we currently accept.

  • Break Out Session 3 | Ghassan Noujaim
    Empowering CALD communities to become foster carers

    Settlement Services International (SSI), in collaboration with Cultural Verse, initiated a project to better understand foster care and community perceptions in New South Wales. A Multicultural Advisory Panel (MAP) discussion was held, bringing together religious and community leaders from Turkish, Arabic-speaking, Chinese, and Vietnamese communities.

    While the project primarily focused on Western Sydney, it engaged influential leaders from across the state. To ensure grassroots perspectives were represented, participants were selected based on criteria such as balanced representation, cultural insights, and strategies for increasing foster care participation among CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) families. The discussion explored challenges in recruiting foster carers and ways to support families with culturally tailored services.

    Following the findings of Stage 1, SSI moved to Stage 2: the co-design of foster care initiatives within CALD communities. A workshop was conducted with religious and community leaders alongside existing foster carers. During this collaborative session, participants identified essential elements of strong partnerships, defined potential structures, mapped suitable partner organizations, and developed strategies to promote foster care.

    Additionally, the workshop focused on setting clear partnership goals and evaluating existing promotional materials to ensure they effectively reach grassroots communities. These insights informed a structured approach to fostering greater engagement among CALD families.

    The upcoming presentation will highlight key findings and strategies from the consultation process, emphasizing community-driven solutions for empowering CALD families to become foster carers.