The Children Australia Special Issue featuring conference reports from the OPEN Symposium 2025 has now been published, showcasing collaborative practice from across the child and family services sector.
Held online in October 2025, the OPEN Symposium brought together more than 200 researchers, practitioners and policy makers from across Australia to explore the theme Collaborative practice: Working in partnership with children and families. The Symposium created space to share diverse forms of knowledge and practical experience, strengthening how evidence and learning are used in practice.
This Special Issue reflects that collective learning. It includes conference reports from a selection of Symposium presentations, spanning place-based partnerships, Aboriginal-led approaches, prevention and early intervention, embedding lived experience, and integrated responses to complex needs. Together, the reports demonstrate how collaboration across organisations, disciplines, communities and systems can reduce fragmentation and improve outcomes for children and families.
Common threads across the contributions include the importance of strong relationships and trust, clarity of purpose and roles, valuing different forms of expertise, and creating enabling structures that support collaboration in practice.
OPEN extends its thanks to all presenters, authors and symposium participants for their generosity in sharing their work. We are proud to partner with Children Australia to publish these insights and contribute to a connected learning system across the sector.
The full OPEN Symposium 2025 recordings are also available and can be found here.
The learning continues through OPEN’s Mini Symposium series. Join OPEN and YACVic’s Youth Participation Practice Network online on 15 October, 11.00 am–1.00 pm, for Learning Together for Better Outcomes, exploring how youth participation, evidence and evaluation can strengthen outcomes-focused practice.
