Family and Child Consultants

  This week, Pauline Hanson suggested that women experiencing domestic and family violence should simply leave. One of my clients did leave. She did not announce her departure, pack every possession, or walk away with financial security and a clear plan for the future. She quietly gathered what she could safely take and escaped with her infant child. That decision required courage, planning and an acceptance that she might have to leave most of her life behind. What she did not know at the time was that leaving the house would not mean escaping the abuse. After the separation, she discovered thousands of dollars in credit-card debt that had been accumulated in her name. She also found thousands of dollars in unpaid tolls, fines and other liabilities. Even after the relationship had ended, further debts and penalties continued to appear under her identity. Three years later, the abuse has still not ended. It has simply changed form. Her former partner contacts police and requests we...

  Working in supervised contact, you see families at some of the most difficult times in their lives. You witness heartbreak, conflict, healing, and resilience. You also see parents who will move mountains for their children, despite the challenges they face. But over the years, there is one behaviour that has stayed with me because of the damage it causes. It isn't the arguments between adults. It isn't the court proceedings. It isn't even the tears that sometimes accompany a goodbye. It's when a parent intentionally tries to make their child miserable before a visit—or when the visit ends—not because they are concerned about the child's wellbeing, but because they want to hurt the other parent. I've seen children questioned repeatedly before a visit: "You don't really want to go, do you?" "You don't have to have fun." "Remember what they did to us." I've seen children arrive carrying the emotional weight of one parent...

  By Niki Gent I had my grandson for the school holidays this week. Not for a few hours. Not for a sleepover. For the first time... Without Mum. Now, I like to think I'm a pretty capable person. I run a business, work with families every day, manage staff, write reports, solve problems and somehow keep all the balls in the air. So naturally, I thought, "How hard can this be?" Apparently... quite hard. I discovered that little boys have two speeds. Fast. And asleep. There doesn't appear to be an "in-between." Within ten minutes we'd read 3 books, negotiated over snacks, found three cars and somehow I'd already said, "Please don't climb on that," at least seventeen times. I honestly don't remember my own children having this much energy. I'm sure they did. I've probably just blocked it out. At one point, I stood up from the floor after playing cars for what felt like three days but was apparently only twenty-five minutes. Ever...

Resilience. It's become one of those words that sounds unquestionably positive. We celebrate resilient children. We admire resilient families. We fund resilience programs. We write policies about resilience. We train professionals to build resilience. And don't get me wrong—resilience matters. The ability to recover from setbacks, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward in difficult circumstances is an important life skill. But lately, I've been wondering if we've become a little too comfortable with the word. In fact, I wonder whether we have become so focused on teaching children to be resilient that we've stopped asking why they need to be so resilient in the first place. Because resilience was never meant to be a substitute for safety. It was never meant to excuse dysfunction. And it certainly was never meant to become the solution to systems that continue to fail children. The Child Who Keeps "Bouncing Back" In child protection, education, mental...

I know this is controversial. I know there are people who will read this and immediately become defensive. Some will say the NDIS is under attack. Others will insist the system is fine and only needs “minor improvements.” But honestly? That simply is not true. The NDIS changed lives. It gave many people with disability opportunities, choice, support, dignity, and independence they had never had before. For many families, it was life changing in the best possible way. But somewhere along the way, the conversation stopped being about people and started being about packages, hours, funding, and profit. And that should concern every single one of us. Because the NDIS was never supposed to become an industry. It was supposed to become a support system. Now before anyone twists this — yes, there are incredible providers doing extraordinary work. There are hardworking support workers, therapists, coordinators, advocates, and organisations genuinely changing lives every single day. But we also...