OPEN Symposium 2021 – Working on what matters, sharing what works

OPEN Symposium 2021

THEME: ‘Working on what matters, sharing what works’

The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare organised the OPEN Symposium 2021 from 26 to 28 October.

Over the past year of the global pandemic, services that work with children and families have had to reconfigure and reimagine the way they work, deliver services, implement programs, and engage with clients and communities. This has led to new ways of working and thinking about what matters.

This year’s OPEN Symposium will explored these ideas and innovations that are occurring across the Victorian child and family sector and other allied sectors.

To watch the recordings, click here!

Keynote Speakers

SUB-THEMES

• Early help, early in life – have you made a difference in a child’s life trajectory or improved outcomes working early with a family? What difference have you made and what contributed to this?
• Collaboration and connection – have you worked successfully with one or more partners to provide a more integrated service? Are you working in a successful interdisciplinary team and want to share what’s worked and why? Do you have a successful research-practice collaboration you want to share?
• Practice approaches that have worked in uncertain times – what changes has your organisation or team made during COVID that have contributed to better client outcomes and how do you know?
• Learning from innovation – have you learnt from the innovative work of others? What adaptations did you make to these approaches and with what success?
• Learning from what didn’t work – are you willing to share what’s been learned from something that didn’t work in the way you intended? What would you do differently and why?
• Keeping the client at the centre of practice – how are you making sure that children, young people, and families are heard, that their perspectives are informing and shaping your service delivery model? How are you embedding this in a whole of organisation approach?
• Recognising and responding to diversity – how does knowledge of intersectionality help shape your work in practice?  Can you share examples of working with different cohorts of clients where approaches have worked well and why?

Our 3-day symposium was held via Zoom platforms.

Presentations and recordings will be launched soon – stay tuned!

If you attended the symposium, please take a few minutes to fill out the feedback survey which will inform OPEN’s direction for future events and activities.