Pre-conference Workshops will be held on Monday, 13 May 2024, commencing at 10am. This years National Conference will comprise of five workshops. More details on each workshop coming soon. Please note all Pre-Conference Workshops are for FRSA Members only.

The main aim of this workshop is to locate the ancient Aboriginal tradition of mindfulness within the work of trauma recovery in Australia and elsewhere.

The workshop objectives is to introduce participants to and build capacity towards using mindfulness in self-care and in the development of communities of care, and communities of practice in all trauma recovery work.

On completion of this workshop participants should be able to:

1. Learn the fundamentals of the practice of Dadirri as an Ancient Mindfulness tradition essential in all trauma recovery – community healing work.
2. Recognize the importance of cultural fitness in all community work.
3. Use the cultural tradition of mindfulness in self-care and care practice while undertaking trauma recovery work.
4. Identify issues of self-awareness and demonstrate the skills of journaling or story mapping as a conscious and cognitive record of the self-awareness, self-reflective process.
5. Begin developing the skills and knowledge necessary to enable effective communication in trauma recovery work using symbols, art, and music in storytelling and story-mapping.
6. Define and support the development of communities of care.
7. Begin developing the skills and knowledge required to implement community development processes for building community-healing networks.

*Please note spaces are limited for this workshop if you are not pre-registered, you will NOT be able to register or attend on the day.

Presenters: Karen Field, CEO, Drummond Street Services, Elliott McMahon, Queerspace Program Manager, Mengrui Li, Queerspace Family Violence Manager and Nicole Dowling, Family Practice Manager Queerspace

The workshop will provide participants with a deep understanding of the multiple risk and protective factors impacting on the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ families, current research and evidence-based practice, designing and delivering effective whole of family approaches and the importance of an inclusive whole of service response. The facilitators will also present our recent research that suggests that when individuals face discrimination related solely to their LGBT identity without additional forms of discrimination, their well-being remained relatively unaffected. This was not the case for individuals who experienced discrimination across a greater number of settings. This indicates the need to apply an intersectional lens for targeted interventions to mitigate the negative effects of discrimination on well-being. The pervasive nature of intersectional discrimination has a profound impact on LGBTIQA+ individuals’ mental health, social connectedness, and financial wellbeing.

The workshop will cover the following:

• Organisational readiness and implementation support: informed by implementation science and organisational readiness literature, and our own evaluative management frameworks.
• Centring of lived experience perspectives: Drummond Street’s team of highly experienced LGBTIQA+ trainers and consultants, who offer their personal and professional experience in service provision and training.
• Whole of Service response: to create not only inclusive processes but also an inclusive family service environment, collective understandings, attitudes, and specialist practice wisdom and models.
• Intersectional person-centred approach: Recognition that people may experience multiple intersecting forms of discrimination, oppression and disadvantage, and that while their gender or sexual orientation are significant, there are other diverse and important parts of a person’s identity to be acknowledged, seen, heard and understood to ensure a positive, safe and effective support service.
• Whole-of-family approaches: Our approach to practice recognises a diverse and inclusive definition of families, and uses the term broadly, as determined by the person themselves. This may include loved ones that are biologically related, ‘family of choice’, parents or other caregivers, partners, children, grandparents and/or other significant relationships in the person’s life. Social networks and friends are also critically important, and are often defined as ‘family’, so it is important that close social relationships are included in considerations when adopting a ‘whole-of-family’ and ‘family as a system’ approaches.

Presenters: Kat Goldsworthy, Anagha Joshi, Sharnee Moore and Melissa Willoughby, Child and Family Evidence, Australian Institute of Family Studies

This full day workshop will focus on building skills that will help services to identify, assess, interrogate and draw meaning from ‘evidence’ as it relates to the delivery of services and programs. While there are many forms of evidence, in this workshop we will focus on the skills needed to effectively harness external research evidence that is relevant to family and relationship services as well as the data and information that organisations collect about their own programs and services.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to:

• Harness the power of the established body of research evidence, including how to find, appraise and use research evidence for program and service design or re-design.
• Best use of the information collected in their services and programs and how to interrogate and draw meaning from that data to highlight program strengths and identify opportunities for learning, improvement and growth.
• Integrate relevant research evidence and program/client data to paint a detailed picture of a program or service’s value and opportunities for improvement.

The workshop will be interactive and will involve practical elements and discussion.

Why should you attend?

The service delivery environment calls on services to invest time and resources to innovate, explore new ideas and demonstrate they are delivering real benefits to the children and families they serve. Drawing on both existing research evidence and current service information can create powerful opportunities to:

• better understand and showcase a program’s strengths
• support the design or re-design of services and programs
• promote learning and lead to opportunities for service or program growth.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop will be particularly useful for people who have some oversight of family and relationship services or programs. Their role may require them to create, deliver, adapt or refine programs or services. They may also need to describe the value of their program and service to seek funding and support, or they may need to assess the value of activities that they fund. For example, this workshop may be of interest to team leaders, senior practitioners, clinical supervisors and program managers in child and family services.

Who is this not for?

This workshop is not designed for those who have a lot of research and evaluation experience.

This workshop provides a space for Communities for Children Facilitating Partners to reach a shared understanding of the role of the facilitating partner and identify core and measurable community outcomes for the facilitating partner role.

Why is this important? The articulation of the role of the Facilitating Partner (FP) has shifted over time with an emphasis in the program’s guiding documentation on the contract management role of the FP and less focus on the community engagement, connecting and capacity-building dimensions of the FP role. At the same time, external reporting is limited to client-level outcomes. Yet it is this capacity to reach into, make connections and work with communities that is integral to the success of CfC FP as a place-based program.  As a national network of CfC FP service providers, there is a need to clearly articulate and build a mechanism for demonstrating and reporting on these outcomes.

The CfC FP National Forum, initiated and lead by the Facilitating Partners National Forum Working Group in Adelaide earlier this year, asked delegates to reflect on refreshing how we communicate what we do and the results we achieve for children and families across Australia. This workshop builds on those conversations.

What you can expect from the workshop:

• An overview of the outcomes of the CfC FP National Forum, shared by Facilitating Partners National Forum Working Group members.
• An understanding of the Department of Social Services’ (DSS) takeaways from the National Forum, as well as an overview of early outcomes from DSS consultative CfC FP discussions, held over April-early May.
• An opportunity to contribute to re-articulating the role of the FP and identifying measurable community outcomes that can demonstrate to government and to CfC FP communities the value of the FP role and the benefits generated in community.

With the Family and Relationships Service Program in the midst of the most significant review since it was first established in 2006, family law workshop delegates will have an opportunity to provide input directly to the FRSP Lead Reviewer, Mr Andrew Metcalfe AO, who will be in attendance.  Mr Metcalfe has indicated he will be presenting some high level thinking and reflections on the Family law services as part of the workshop but is also keen to hear from participants on the day.  With the Review delivery date of 30 June 2024, this workshop provides a prime opportunity to engage, inform and influence.

In the afternoon, the Family Law team from the Attorney General’s Department has assembled a panel to present on the amendments to the Family Law Act which came into effect on 6 May 2024, with particular emphasis on the impact for family law services.  The panellists include:

• Kathleen Denley, Assistant Secretary, Family Law Branch, Attorney-General’s Department (facilitator)
• Clare Moran, Senior Advisor Family Law, Relationships Australia Victoria
• Anne Marie-Rice, Senior Judicial Registrar, Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia
• The Hon John Faulks, Family Law Council

Following the panel discussion, workshop delegates will have the opportunity to share learnings and plans for implementation and integration of the amendments into daily practice.