Conor Pall invites us to “sit in the knot” - the messy, both/and truths of childhood family violence. Through storytelling, he highlights how risk is misread when children and young people's voices are absent, and offers shifts in practice to make disclosures safe, restore choice and agency, and centre children and young people as victim-survivors in their own right. You’ll leave with practical prompts and system nudges to use the next time a child’s experience of distress reaches you. 

Because if we don't change our practice to centre children and young people, who will?

(Content note: family violence.)

First contact between Aboriginal families and child protection systems sets trajectories for generations. Drawing from Yoorrook Justice Commission evidence, this plenary examines how bias becomes action in those crucial first moments - from child protection workers in birthing suites to risk assessments that mistake culture for deficit.

Aboriginal mothers face surveillance instead of support, with poverty pathologized and trauma responses criminalized. Yet when Aboriginal organizations lead the first response, family preservation rates triple. This presentation offers practical transformation strategies for practitioners, demonstrating how to change that first question from "What's wrong?" to "How can I help?" can break cycles of intergenerational trauma.