The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare successfully delivered another thought-provoking and inspiring digital symposium this year.The theme for the OPEN Symposium 2021 which ran from 26 to 28 October, was ‘Working on what matters, sharing what works’. Over the past year of the global pandemic, services that work with children and families have had to reconfigure and reimagine the way they work, deliver services, implement programs, and engage with clients and communities. This has led to new ways of working and thinking about what matters. The symposium explored these ideas and innovations that are occurring across the Victorian child and family sector and other allied sectors. There were 27 presentations from 31 different organisations.
Don’t miss out – listen to those presentations you missed, or re-listen to those you found compelling. Please also feel free to promote OPEN to your friends and networks so they can keep up with new recording releases and other OPEN activities. They can become a member at this link
Also make sure you visit OPEN’s Youtube Channel to access more great video presentations from previous events.
Please note that each recording and presentation has been individually arranged according to the themes below.
Listen to Professor Sharon Goldfeld talk about impact of COVID on children; Jonathan Breckon’s discussion on lessons from UK’s evidence journey and Liz Weaver’s framework for collective impact. Also listen to a wrap up of the Symposium by Prof Cathy Humphreys, emphasising the power of combining lived experience, practitioner wisdom, research evidence and policy perspectives to inform contextual services.
Keywords: pandemic and children, evidence reform – what works, collective impact, collaboration
The presentations under this theme discuss strategies that different agencies used to support and provide therapeutic care to children and families during the pandemic. Presenters talked about the pros and cons of online program delivery, challenges that needed to be navigated and collaborations that were developed.
Presentations from: CASA Central Victoria, Queen Elizabeth Centre, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Wimmera Southern Mallee, Wimmera Development Association
Keywords: working with children, supporting families, collaboration, COVID
The presentation under this theme focuses on a coaching approach to practice which highlights the importance of building the capacity of adults who care for children as the most powerful way of promoting children’s development, wellbeing and safety.
Presentations from: Windermere and Parenting Research Centre
Keywords: child wellbeing, coaching, practice improvement, evidence-informed, integrated family services
This presentation focused on the initial stages of the Building the Aboriginal evidence base (BAEB) project, reflects on how early findings can be applied and how VACCA is building an Aboriginal evidence base for their programs and practice.
Presentation from: Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA), Victorian Aboriginal Children and Young People’s Alliance (the Alliance), Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) and Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI)
Keywords: Aboriginal evidence base, evaluation approaches, self-determination
Presentations under this theme focus on collaborative interventions approaches to family violence situations. They also highlight the importance of keeping children at the heart of the interventions and the impact of family violence or domestic homicide on children.
Presentations from: University of Melbourne, Sexual Assault and Family Violence Centre, Centre for Non-Violence (CNV) and North Central Victoria Family Services Alliance (NCVFSA) at Bendigo Community Health Services (BCHS)
Keywords: children’s voices, lived experiences, Safe and Together model, collaboration and integrated practice, COVID
Presentations under this theme focus on collaborative programs which use a system-based approach to support disengaged young people. These programs are striving to reconnect with community, education and to find find pathways out of homelessness through employment.
Presentations from: Brotherhood of St Laurence, Monterey Secondary College, Berry Street, For Change Co.
Keywords: young people’s voices, lived experiences, education, COVID, youth engagement, crime prevention, youth unemployment
Presentations under this theme focus on youth participatory models that privilege the voices of young people for meaningful connection and inclusion in planning and designing programs. It also includes lessons from these models as they that were transitioned to online delivery due to COVID.
Presentations from: Youth Affairs Council Victoria, Youth Disability Advocacy Service, Youth Action NSW and Thorne Harbour Country
Keywords: young people’s voices, lived experiences, education, COVID, youth engagement
Presentations under this theme focus on providing therapeutic models of care that enable young people to participate in the decisions related to safe relationships, improving residential services and transitioning from care. They also highlight the importance of culturally responsive models of care.
Presentations from: Monash University, CREATE, Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), Uniting and Verso Consulting, Mackillop and Settlement Services International
Keywords: young people’s voices, lived experiences, COVID, out-of-home care, foster care, multicultural communities
Presentations under this theme focus on programs that are listening to children, young people and parents with lived experiences to steer service delivery and policy decisions.
Presentations from: Family Life and the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
Keywords: children’s voices, lived experiences, child protection, parents’ voices
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open@cfecfw.asn.au
