Journey Mapping is one way to capture the lived experience of people who use services in depth, including both their practical experience of interactions with services, and its emotional impact. Findings are recorded as maps or charts in order to make these experiences vivid and accessible to policy makers and service developers. For example, the Victorian Family Violence Action Plan used perpetrator journey mapping to capture the risks posed by perpetrators, and where doors to accountability across the whole system are needed, and ANROWS has mapped the journeys of Victim-Survivors and perpetrators of intimate partner and sexual violence. Olivia Jarvis and Morag MacSween developed Olivia's Journey, mapping Olivia's experience of harmful sexual behaviour and sexual assault in Tasmania as it was, and as it should have been and could be for other Victim-Survivors. Ophelia’s Journey includes two maps:

Our presentation has two main aims:

- to share our learning on how to pace and scaffold the process of Journey Mapping so that it embodies trauma-informed principles of safety, trust, choice, collaboration and empowerment, and is a genuinely co-designed product; and

- to share how the Journey Map has been used to support the Child Sexual Abuse Reform Strategy and Action Plan recommended by the Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse. 

Effective trauma-informed care requires collaboration across disciplines, yet speech pathologists are often overlooked as key contributors to these teams. This presentation aims to raise awareness of the critical role speech pathologists play in supporting individuals with trauma, emphasising the need for greater collaboration and communication between professionals.

Speech pathologists are often perceived as focusing solely on speech sounds or stuttering, but their expertise in language and communication is much broader, especially when working with trauma survivors. Trauma can significantly impact communication abilities, including language comprehension, expressive language, and social interaction. By understanding these impacts, professionals from all disciplines—whether educators, psychologists, or allied health practitioners—can better identify when to involve a speech pathologist and how this collaboration enhances care outcomes.

This session will explore how trauma affects communication and language skills, highlighting real-world examples of how speech pathologists bring specialised tools to support recovery. Attendees will gain strategies for working together with speech pathologists to create more comprehensive, trauma-informed care plans for children, young people, and adults.

Key Takeaways:

The range of problems, challenges, and disorders among children and young people in the out of home care system (OOHC) is well-documented and spans virtually every domain of functioning. Sleep, however, has received minimal attention among this vulnerable group. Given the myriad ways sleep is both impacted by and affects children’s development, health, and behaviour; this is both notable and concerning.

Due to the crucial role of restorative sleep in regulating neurobiological stress response activity implicated in trauma exposure, better understanding of the nature of children’s sleep experiences and environments in the aftermath of trauma is an essential element in the trauma recovery process for children and young people in OOHC.

This paper will explore the ways in which children experience sleep in the context of their social and physical sleep environments following exposure to violence and trauma. It will examine how children experience their social and physical sleep environments to facilitate or impede restful sleep. Thie paper will describe the lived experiences of trauma -exposed children and young people navigating sleep and sleep environments in the aftermath of trauma and propose interventions to address the impact of this issue.