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Abstracts
Session
Session
11:30 am
20 August 2025
Room 206
Session Program
11:30 am
Thrive Together is Lutheran Care’s (LC) innovative, co-designed peer support initiative developed to meet the unique challenges and diverse needs of SA’s Foster Care Village. The program draws on the existing strengths of fostering families and their peers, equipping and empowering them to create organic and long-lasting peer connections independent of LC.
Listening and responding to the voices of carers who called for the facilitation of meaningful peer support activity, LC invited local carers on an 8-month journey led by The Australian Centre for Social Innovation to design and establish a peer support model specifically for South Australian’s, with plans to expand across agencies.
Unlike traditional models imported from overseas that do not meet the varied needs of a community of 250+ households dispersed by 186km and representing numerous cultures and backgrounds; local foster carers are integral to this approach. Drawing from unique strengths, lived experiences, and perspectives, Thrive Together is a strength-based peer program that is organic and uncomplicated.
The localised program is relevant, practical, and deeply rooted in nurturing shared participation and sustainable connections through peer-led support groups, niche workshops, and community-building events designed to enhance resilience and wellbeing among carers.
Supported by a full-time Family Engagement Worker with 10+ years of lived carer experience, Thrive Together is resonating with more families. Early feedback and outcomes have suggested that Thrive Together is setting a new standard for responsive, inclusive, and sustainable foster care support systems, reducing isolation and ultimately improving outcomes for carers and the children in their care.
12:00 pm
It is inherent for children in the out of home care system to experience loss, disconnection, and relational trauma. In planning for and managing the lives of children who do not live in their family of origin, the system demonstrates limited capacity to holistically consider, support and honour all but the key connections, usually that of immediate biological family members and siblings, and even then, this is often sterile in its approach. But removed children feel the ambiguous loss and severance of so much more, schools, friendships, pets and extended community networks. And in return those disconnected community members feel the loss of the child, that is often sudden, without context and potentially never reconnected.
What could it look like if we gave weight and support to the spectrum of relationships that exist for a child? How could we change the way we consider, resource and support those who hold a child through turbulent emotional experiences in a way that promotes and protects relational healing and growth?
As a foster carer of two children in long term care, I have lived experience of the desperate need for deeper and broader thinking when considering the fullness of a child's relational life; in the court system, in the Child Protection processes, in the supports available and in the weight these needs are given in the practice of professionals.
In this conversation, we discuss alternative ways of considering and mapping the relational life of a child and the potential healing that can be achieved.
12:30 pm
Relationships that can accompany young people throughout their life and provide them with social networks of support are a core component of success for those in out of home care.
This presentation will discuss the importance of ensuring sustainable relationships are nurtured for young people in care that can outlast the professionals involved in their lives and will focus on case studies that highlights positive outcomes from this approach from the perspectives of the young people, carers and workers.