Keynote speakers
Professor Chris Goddard
Monash University
The Silence Continues
Professor Chris Goddard's research career started at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne where he undertook some of the earliest work connecting child abuse and other forms of family violence. His research into child deaths led to a series in The Age and a Four Corners investigation into child protection in Victoria.
He was head of Social Work at Monash University from 1998-2007. He established Child Abuse Research Australia, a joint initiative with the Australian Childhood Foundation and Monash University 2004, and is now full-time Director.
He has published more than 50 opinion pieces in major Australian newspapers, including The Age and The Australian, in the last five years on issues concerning family violence, child abuse, child protection and children's rights, including children in detention centres and abuse in churches. He has also written more than 50 refereed journal articles and many government and non-government reports. With Dr Neerosh Mudaly he wrote The Truth is Longer than a Lie: Children's experiences of abuse and intervention which was published in May 2006 in the US and UK. This is the first book to reveal what children and young people have to say about abuse, its effects on their lives, and their experiences when disclosing the abuse.
His latest book, with Linda Briskman and Susie Latham, is entitled Human Rights Overboard: Seeking asylum in Australia, and is published by Scribe.
Dr Howard Bath
Northern Territory Government
Neuroscience research and the transformation of child welfare
Dr Howard Bath is the recently-appointed children's commissioner in the Northern Territory. He has a long-standing interest in child welfare having worked as a youth worker, house parent, coordinator and agency director. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Howard has a particular interest in the pervasive impact of complex trauma and the development of policy and practice that promotes healing and growth. He is a co-author of the 'Transforming Care' training program for care providers.
Professor Cathy Humphreys
University of Melbourne
Joining the dots for babies in out of home care
Professor Cathy Humphreys is the Alfred Felton Chair of Child and Family Welfare, a professorship established in collaboration with Social Work at University of Melbourne and The Centre for Excellence for Child and Family Welfare in Victoria, the peak body for 98 child and family welfare agencies in Victoria and the Alfred Felton Trust. She worked as a social work practitioner in the mental health and child and family welfare sector for 16 years before becoming a social work academic with a specialty in research and research utilisation in the family violence and child and family welfare area. She has worked at both University of New South Wales and University of Warwick in the UK prior to taking up the Chair at University of Melbourne. The Alfred Felton Research Program has now attracted more than $2 million worth of grants across 9 projects in the areas of domestic and family violence, out of home care and research utilization.
Dr Melisah Feeney (Sub keynote)
Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
Early Childhood: Building the evidence base
Dr Melisah Feeney is a psychologist who has worked on the development on the 'Longitudinal study of indigenous children' for the past fours years. In addition to working as a principal researcher with the study she is currently lecturing at the University of Canberra's Centre for Applied Psychology lecturing in 'Developmental psychology and psychological assessment'. She has previously worked in the child protection area in NSW and is president of the ACT Family Inclusion Network which aims to develop better therapeutic support for parents who are at risk of having their children removed.
Dr Clare Tilbury (Sub keynote)
Griffith University
Multiple stakeholder perspective on permanency planning
Dr Clare Tilbury is a senior lecturer in the School of Human Services at Griffith University, where she convenes the Bachelor of Social Work. Clare undertakes research on the outcomes, quality and effectiveness of child protection and family support programs. She has many years of direct practice and policy experience in child and family services, both in government and in the community sector. Her first social work job was at the Black Community Housing Service in 1982, and since then, she has worked at the Young Parents Program, Legal Aid, the Human Rights Commission, the University of Queensland and the predecessors of the Department of Child Safety.
Dr James Scott (Sub keynote)
Evolve, Queensland Health
Use of medication in children for emotional and behavioural problems
Dr James Scott is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who works with Evolve Therapeutic services - Brisbane North. He is a staff specialist at the Royal children's Hospital and a senior lecturer at The University of Queensland. He has extensive experience in providing therapeutic interventions to children in care. His experience includes inpatient psychiatry, public and private practice, school consultations, youth detention centres and rural outreach services.
trauma and aggression in children. He maintains therapeutic involvement with children who have been exposed to traumatic events, children with developmental delays and children with challenging behaviours. His interventions are systemically focused and involve both the child and the important adults in the child's life.
Dr Philip Mendes (Sub keynote)
Monash University
Transitioning from care
Dr Philip Mendes is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Work at Monash University. He has authored and co-author 6 books including most recently Australia's Welfare Wars Revisited, and is currently a lead researcher on two leaving care projects funded respectively by the Helen McPherson Smith Trust and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
Professor Judy Cashmore (Sub keynote)
Southern Cross University
Out-of-home Care
Biography details coming soon.
Professor Kevin Ronan (Sub keynote)
Central Queensland University
Therapeutic Care and Interventions. The Cycle of Violence in Families: Mechanisms and Interventions
Since mid-2005, Kevin Ronan has been in the position of Chair and Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Behavioural and Social Sciences at Central Queensland University.
Kevin has previously held the position of Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Training at Massey University in New Zealand. Prior to the 10 years he and his family spent in beautiful New Zealand, Kevin held the position of Facility Director of the Butner Adolescent Treatment Centre in North Carolina (USA), a program for youth with severe forms of antisocial behaviour. Prior to that, he was a Staff Clinical Psychologist at the Napa State Hospital, Napa (California) where he helped develop a program for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other more enduring problems based on the principles of psychosocial recovery.
In his position at Massey and his current position at Central Queensland University, Kevin does research in a variety of areas. He has helped to develop several interventions for anxiety, trauma and maltreatment in children, recovery from natural disasters, antisocial behaviour and conduct disorder in youth and early psychoeducational intervention in severe mental illness. He has published research in a number of areas including in relation to these intervention approaches.
- Last updated
- 5 November 2008