Family & Relationship Services Australia (FRSA) invites you to submit an abstract to present at the FRSA National Conference 2027, which will be held at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, 10-13 May.

The theme for the FRSA National Conference 2027 is Building Strong and Safe supports for children, families and communities. 

The opportunity to present as part of the Conference concurrent session program provides you with an opportunity to showcase your work and share your knowledge and experience with the sector.  In particular, we are looking for abstracts that demonstrate:

• the ways you are working to meet the needs of children, adults, families and communities
• the evidence underpinning and emerging from practice
• the impact that different practices and approaches generate for the people accessing services – and for your local communities.

We welcome abstracts that speak to the conference theme – Building Strong and Safe supports for children, families and communities

In preparing and making your submission, you are asked to select and position your abstract within one of the five following streams:

1. The early years
   (e.g. preconception to birth, the birth of a child, impact on family relationships and transitions into parenting, early child development, and school readiness).
2. Children and young people at the centre
   (e.g. child-focused and child-inclusive practice, supporting children and young people’s participation in policy development, service design and evaluation, school transitions, the safety and wellbeing of children and young people).
3. Relationship breakdown and re-partnering
   (e.g. family legal services, family dispute resolution, parenting after separation and sustaining the best interests and wellbeing of children, sole-parenting, tensions in extended family relationships).
4. Family Domestic Violence
   (e.g. identifying and managing family violence risk, child maltreatment, perpetrator interventions, adolescents using violence in the home, elder abuse).
5. Across the lifecourse
   (e.g. diverse and changing family structures, developing and maintaining respectful relationships, social connection, intersectionality and inclusion).

We are a rich and diverse society, and FRSA encourages presentations that show our sector’s work with different cohorts and communities – First Nations peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse peoples, people with disability and LGBTIQA+ people – and other cohorts who may face particular challenges in accessing safe and appropriate services.

To submit your Abstract, please review the Abstracts Guidelines & Assessment Criteria below which outlines all abstract information and assessment criteria and submit your Abstract via the button below.

For more information about submitting an abstract, please contact FRSA at events@frsa.org.au or (02) 6162 1811.

All Abstracts must be submitted online by 5.00pm AEDT, Wednesday 4 November 2026

Concurrent sessions are 30 minutes in length, including Q&A and can be interactive with the audience or with minimal interaction. Abstracts for a 30-minute presentation must be between 200 and 400 words in length.

Staying within the Abstract guidelines outlined above, you may team up with three to five others to submit an abstract for a symposium. A symposium comprises a series of presentations organised around a common theme to engage the audience in critical reflection on key issues and questions relevant to the topic area. The duration of a symposium is around 90 minutes to allow time for three to five presenters to share and for discussion among attendees.

We encourage symposiums in which presenters and moderators/discussants represent different perspectives, such as from policymakers, practitioners, and academics.

To submit an abstract for a symposium there is no need for each presenter to submit an abstract. Each symposium requires a primary organiser who is the chair and will serve as the single point of contact in the submission process. Submissions must detail who the primary organiser is and who the other presenters are. The primary organiser must collate and order the presenters’ ideas in a way that will best engage attendees, with the symposium abstracts being between 500 and 800 words.

4 November 2026– Call for abstracts close

14 December 2026 – Notification of acceptance begins.

10 February 2027 – Speaker registrations close – after this date speakers will need to pay the appropriate Early Bird or Standard rate.

1 March 2027 – Early bird registrations close.

Your abstract will be assessed based on the following criteria:

1. The extent to which the author demonstrates an understanding of the impact of service delivery on clients and/or service providers in the chosen conference stream.
2. The extent to which the presentation reflects the conference theme.
3. The extent to which the presentation will be engaging and informative.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent via e-mail to the submitting author from Monday 14 December 2026.

Accepted abstracts will be published on the FRSA Conference website and in the FRSA 2027 Conference App. 

• All abstracts must contain original work of the presenting author(s).
• A presenting author must submit the abstract.
• Presenters named in the abstract as speakers should have considerable presentation skills.
• Abstracts must be submitted online by 11:59pm AEDT, Wednesday 4 November 2026.
• Abstracts will not be accepted via fax, mail, email or USB/CD.
• All required fields on the online abstract submission form must be completed.
• Those submitting abstracts must ensure that they have the support of their organisation/employer.
• This is a face-to-face event; it is expected that presentations will be made in person.
• Acceptance of papers will be on the basis of blind peer review (i.e. your name and organisation will not be known to assessors).
• The Conference Managers will not be held responsible for abstract submissions not received via the website or for submission errors caused by Internet service outages, hardware or software delays, power outages or unforeseen events.
• Abstracts cannot be amended or replaced once the call for abstracts closes at 5:00pm AEDT, Wednesday 4 November 2026.
• Ensure that you DO NOT leave any abstracts in the Draft stage by the close date, abstracts left in the ‘Draft’ stage will not be reviewed.

Should your abstract be accepted, you will be invited to submit a longer paper for peer review. Should your longer paper be accepted, it will be published in the FRSA 2027 National Conference e-Journal. Previous e-Journals can be seen here.

For technical queries regarding the portal, please get in touch with our Conference Organiser at frsa@kaigi.com.au.