Family and Child Consultants

  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...

  There are moments when the world should fall silent. Not because there is nothing to say, but because what has happened is so devastating, so deeply wrong, that the usual noise of politics, blame, opinions, and outrage feels almost obscene. The death of five-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby is one of those moments. A little girl. Five years old. At five, a child should be learning, laughing, playing, asking questions, making mess, being cheeky, being cuddled, being loved. At five, the world should still feel safe. Instead, a family is grieving something no family should ever have to survive. A community is hurting. And a little girl who deserved a whole lifetime has become a headline. As a grandmother, I cannot sit with that lightly. I cannot read her name and move on. Because every child is somebody’s baby. Somebody held her. Somebody loved her. Somebody imagined her growing up. There should have been birthdays. There should have been school photos. There should have been scraped ...

  There’s a point in life where you think you’ve seen enough of the world to understand it. You’ve raised children, held families together, worked hard, paid your dues, and believed—maybe quietly, maybe stubbornly—that people are, at their core, decent. That even when things get hard, we find our way back to kindness. And yet here I am. Angry. Not a passing frustration or a fleeting irritation, but a deep, bone-tired anger that sits heavy in my chest. Because this is not how the world is supposed to be. Somewhere along the way, it feels like things have tipped. Conversations have turned into arguments. Differences have turned into divisions. And truth… well, truth feels harder and harder to find. I wake up in the morning and there’s this strange pull—half dread, half compulsion—to turn on the news. To see what’s happened overnight. What’s been said. What’s been done. And too often, it feels like the people who should know better—the ones trusted to lead, to protect, to think beyond...

  I Miss the Footy, the Washing, the Oranges — All of It This week in Adelaide,   Gather Round   has brought the city alive. Everywhere you look, there are families in scarves and guernseys, kids with painted faces, parents carrying snacks and jumpers and drink bottles, and that familiar rush of people all heading somewhere together. There is noise, excitement, complaints about parking, children asking for chips, and parents pretending not to calculate exactly how much the day is costing them. And as I watch it all, I find myself smiling. Because I miss it. I miss taking my kids to the footy. I miss weekend sport. I miss weekday sport. I miss being on the sidelines. I miss being in the stands. I miss being the one yelling encouragement, carrying bags, hunting for missing drink bottles, and somehow holding everyone together while pretending I was not completely exhausted. I miss being their biggest cheerleader. Not just in the big life moments. In the small ones too. The r...