A Professional Community
Welcome to the Australian Childhood Foundation’s Professional Community. We’re glad you’re here!
Learn moreAbout the Community
We are deeply committed to supporting professionals to end the trauma of abuse, exploitation and neglect suffered by children and young people.
We do that by mobilising knowledge in practical and evidence-based ways that help you to better support children and young people. Our training, tools and resources draw on the Foundation’s rich history of over 30 years working with children and young people, as well as working with leading thinkers in the fields of neuroscience, trauma and safeguarding. We also integrate cultural wisdom, lived experience and the voices of children and young people through innovative, co-designed initiatives.
International Childhood Trauma Conference 2025
17 August - 22 August 2025
Melbourne Convention Centre
Register now for super early bird
We have new and returning speakers: Judy Atkinson, Jon Baylin, Deb Dana, Bethany Brand, Cathy Malchiodi, Fiona Cornforth, Anita Gibbs, Paul Gilbert, Kim Golding, Dan Hughes, Ruth Lanius, Wenn Lawson, Arielle Schwartz, Dan Siegel, Caroline Welch and Rachel Yehuda + many more to come.
Register nowApril–June 2025 Professional learning and training brochure
Our April–June 2025 Professional learning and training brochure is here! It’s filled with training opportunities to help professionals, carers, and educators build trauma-aware, relationship-focused practice in their work with children and young people.
Why learn with Australian Childhood Foundation?
- Decades of experience supporting trauma-impacted children and young people
- Training grounded in neuroscience and child development
- Practical, reflective, and designed for real-world impact
- Profits reinvested to help children and young people heal from trauma
From understanding complex trauma and attachment to navigating consent and online safety in out-of-home care, our workshops are shaped by research and real-world experience. We also offer dedicated sessions to support professional wellbeing and strengthen reflective supervision.
Trauma Responsive Practice in Education
Trauma Responsive Practice in Education is a self-paced online course, bringing together our experience over the past 20 years in training and supporting teachers, other school personnel and early years professionals to engage in trauma responsive practice with vulnerable children and young people in a range of settings.
Join our Childhood Professionals Newsletter
Register to receive regular newsletters and free resources about working with children, young people, families and their networks. It is the easiest way to not miss out on news, training, tools, blogs and research from the Foundation.
Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care
The Centre for Excellence in Therapeutic Care (CETC) is a division of Australian Childhood Foundation that mobilises knowledge about “what works” in out-of-home care. The CETC integrates research evidence with cultural knowledge, practice wisdom and the voices of young people in care to produce reports, practice resources and training to support the provision of high-quality, evidence-informed therapeutic care.
The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse
The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse (the National Centre) is a partnership between three leading national organisations – Blue Knot Foundation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation and Australian Childhood Foundation. Established in 2021, following a recommendation by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the National Centre will commission critical research, build the capability of practitioners and organisations, raise community awareness and reduce stigma. Central to all the National Centre’s work is drawing from and elevating the voices of victims and survivors of all ages, life stages and communities.
What are the overarching principles underpinning our practice with children and families?
Learn moreWe believe that safety is an intrinsic right that can never be diminished.
We believe that wisdom about child development is at the core of effective practice.
We believe that loving, secure and strong relationships hold the essential resources that children and young people need.
We believe that the nature of children’s experience of violence sets the parameters for how they give meaning to it.
We believe that children and young people’s experience of culture is the way they know their place in their family, their family and their community.
We believe that knowledge drawn from interpersonal neurobiology is a critical lens through which support for children, families and communities needs to be framed.