ACF Professionals
Transforming Childhood Together

A Professional Community

Welcome to the Australian Childhood Foundation’s Professional Community. We’re glad you’re here!

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Who we are

About the Community

We are deeply committed to ensuring that approaches that are drawn from and translate critical areas of knowledge and evidence, in particular, the neuroscience of trauma and attachment, cultural wisdom and research about what works. For almost 20 years, we have joined you in forming a community of professionals that share a similar view about the value of such knowledge to a range of sectors involved with children and young people.

Like you, we believe that children benefit when those who work with them are well resourced. That is why we offer opportunities to professionals to connect with us and each other in order to learn, build evidence, interpret knowledge, partner with us to transform practice and be inspired to continue to evolve the services that vulnerable children, young people and their carers and families need.

Training and Development

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Resources for Professionals

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Centre for Transformational Practice

Coming Soon!

Safeguarding Children Services

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We are a

looking to partner with the Australian Childhood Foundation and support our work with vulnerable children and young people.
looking for support to empower our staff, engage our students and strengthen our community
considering evidenced-based options to support reform
wanting to access specialised and exclusive content and resources
Show me how we can work together

Community in action

Transforming practice through learning

Our Professional Education Services

Learn about the wide variety of ways we offer professional development

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Transforming practice in partnership

Our Partnerships

Working together, matching knowledge with local expertise

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Diverse projects all focused on improving outcomes for children

Our Projects

Learn about our projects around Australia. Each as individual as the context from which they originate.

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Specialist support for children, young people and families

Our Therapeutic Services

Discover the impact of our work

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Training and Development Opportunities

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Face-to-Face Course

10462NAT Graduate Certificate in Developmental Trauma

A course designed for professionals, by professionals in the child trauma field. Learn about the impacts of trauma on development, models of intervention, assessment and systems for support.

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1-Day Workshop

Making Space for Learning: Trauma Sensitive Practice in Schools

The goal is to enhance the capacity of schools to meet the needs of children and young people who have experienced trauma, significant disruption and disadvantage.

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1-Day workshop

Bringing Up Great Kids: Foundational Workshops for Facilitators

This practical one day workshop provides participants with the opportunity to learn how to successfully establish and run the Bringing Up Great Kids Parenting Program.

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our principles

What are the overarching principles underpinning our practice with children and families?

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1

We believe that safety is an intrinsic right that can never be diminished.

Safety creates the conditions in which the experience of being human is given the time and potency to flourish.
2

We believe that wisdom about child development is at the core of effective practice.

The needs of children and young people should be the driver of the services that are delivered to them and their carers and/or families.
3

We believe that loving, secure and strong relationships hold the essential resources that children and young people need.

Children’s experiences of relationships shape their physiology, their identity and what they know to be possible.
4

We believe that the nature of children’s experience of violence sets the parameters for how they give meaning to it.

When we talk about children and their experiences of violation, we respect their unique  ways of knowing and changing.
5

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.

Children’s connection to culture is essential to their wellbeing and development.
6

We believe that knowledge drawn from interpersonal neurobiology is a critical lens through which support for children, families and communities needs to be framed.

The realisation of trust, connection and care occurs in the deep synchronisation of neuronal activity shared between children and young people and the important network of relationships around them.

The Australian Childhood Foundation acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians and owners of this land and waters. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and to the children who are their leaders of tomorrow. We acknowledge their history and living culture and the many thousands of years in which they have raised their children to be safe and strong.