Pre-conference Workshops will be held on Monday, 16 May 2022, commencing at 10am. This years National Conference will comprise of four workshops. More details on each workshop below:

This is a specifically tailored, one day workshop presented by Bianca and Tod from the team at We Al-li.

This workshop begins to unpack ‘Symptom as History’, by examining constructs of collective, historical, complex, developmental, and generational trauma evident in many Indigenous (and other) populations. The workshop places emphasis on developing skills to create culturally safe healing environments, through building culturally competent professionals. It presents tools for developing safe story work through geno-grams or story maps to help map generational stories that provide insight for both client and worker care into traumatic distress and generational resilience in healing or recovery from trauma. Using the construct of circle work or yarning’ circle, it opens opportunity to establish ‘what’s in the field’ in the client group, as well as what’s in the workplace. Vicarious trauma can be a possible outcome of working with distressed clients so the concept of the intersection between communities of care and communities of practice in responding to vicarious trauma, across the organisation, in the workforce and in communities is considered.

The Communities for Children Facilitating Partner (CfC FP) Workshop has been designed by CfC Facilitating Partners for CfC Facilitating Partners.

The Communities for Children Facilitating Partner Program has been in operation since 2004 to help young children, their families and the broader community. The Program facilitates a whole-of-community approach to support early childhood development and wellbeing with a focus on children from birth to 12 years, and can include children up to 18 years and their families.

This workshop provides an opportunity for Facilitating Partners to come together to:

• take stock of what the program has achieved to-date
• discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on the program and on the needs of the respective communities in which the program operates
• explore pressing issues for the program as identified by participants on the day
• network with colleagues and share ideas.

Participants will also have the opportunity to hear about the resources and support available to the family and relationships services sector by two leaders in program design and evaluation, and working with children and their mental health and wellbeing respectively:

• The Australian Institute of Family Studies – Dr Stewart Muir, Executive Manager, Family Policy and Service Systems Research
• Emerging Minds – Katharine Mclean, Senior Child Mental Health Advisor – Social Services.

The workshop will be facilitated by Sue Christophers, Head of Social and Economic Wellbeing, Anglicare SA, and promises to be a thought-provoking and exciting day for workshop participants.

The Family Law Workshop will include external presentations/training on key topics as well as plenty of opportunity for participants to discuss current and emerging issues for Family Law services and professionals.

We are excited to announce that a two-hour interactive workshop, delivered by the eSafety Commissioner’s office, will be held during the morning session on technology facilitated abuse and its impact in domestic and family violence. Technology-facilitated abuse is a growing and insidious form of control – and one that program managers and frontline workers need to keep abreast with. The session will explore technology use, risks and abuse and help participants to improve safety online and work with clients to build protective strategies.

FRSA members report an ever-increasing number of clients presenting with complex issues, including mental health issues. After lunch, Emerging Minds – an organisation dedicated to advancing the mental health and emotional wellbeing of Australian infants, children, adolescents and their families – will give a short presentation on the resources and training they have available to support professionals in their work.

The afternoon session will continue with a facilitated discussion on current and emerging issues for Family Law Services, within the context of COVID-19 impacts and the ending of grants on 30 June 2024. Representatives of the Attorney-General’s Department will attend for a short Q&A session.

Presenters: Stewart Muir, Sharnee Moore & Kat Goldsworthy

This workshop will be delivered by members of the Evidence and Evaluation Support team at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS). The Evidence and Evaluation Support team works with the Families and Children Activity sector to build their capacity to use evidence and evaluate their programs.

As services continue to adapt and find new ways of working and engaging with families, evaluation can be a powerful tool for helping services respond to that changing environment and to gather evidence to support further innovation. This workshop will draw out the key elements of making the most of existing data and evaluation evidence in planning service transformation. The session will also consider how to maximise the value of existing reporting processes (such as the DSS Data Exchange and SCORE reporting) to help services understand client needs and strengthen their programs.

This full day workshop will help build and embed practical skills. In particular, the workshop will focus on:

• How to use existing data and evaluation evidence to strengthen programs
• How to make the most of your existing reporting obligations
• How to develop a framework for using the data for program evaluation
• How to build a culture of evaluation.

Ultimately, the focus will be on how services can make what they already do work for them, and how to build on that work.

The session will be interactive and will involve practical exercises and discussion. Service providers will be asked to consider their own program logic and existing data collections and will work through a case study. It will be particularly useful for Families and Children Activity service providers who are interested in building on what they already do, as well as those Families and Children Activity providers who are collecting data about their programs but may not have a clear purpose or framework for using that data.