Helen is responsible for leading the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health Partnership and Implementation strategy (Emerging Minds). She has vast knowledge of Human/Community Services with a combination of over 30 years executive management experience, identifying service gaps, developing community partnerships, advocating for quality training and systems support to improve knowledge skills and practice across service sectors. She has led Action research, community consultation, community development, co-design and workforce development capacity building initiatives. Helen has written and delivered course content and supported systems and implementation strategies to inform practice change to key audiences including ACT government and Queensland and New South Wales Health

Travis is an Engagement Officer within the Partnerships & Implementation team of Emerging Minds – a national initiative dedicated to advancing the mental health and social and emotional wellbeing of Australian infants, children, adolescents and their families. Over the last three years, Travis has been working to develop the Emerging Minds Focus platform that supports a systems approach to quality improvement within organisations. Emerging Minds Focus was developed in collaboration with the Early Intervention Research Directorate within the South Australian Department of Human Services, to support the implementation of the Trauma Responsive System Framework within the Child and Family Support System (CFSS). Through this process, Travis has become a passionate systems approach advocate who has worked with CFSS agencies to understand the barriers and facilitators to trauma responsiveness and organisational change in the post-COVID world. Travis is interested in addressing the complexities of organisations, leadership and change to build the capacity of all Australian services to support infant, child, adolescent and family mental health and social and emotional wellbeing.

Sean Lappin is the Managing Director of Connected Self, a South Australian agency that provides psychology and art therapy services, services to young people in schools, out of home care and disability services, training and consulting services. Sean has had over 30 years’ experience in policy, service design, implementation and delivery, research, systems reform (out of home care and responding to homelessness) and program delivery. Sean has a strong commitment to building community capacity and connection to assist those who are marginalised and vulnerable to experience feelings of belonging in community life. He continues to advocate for preventative and early intervention approaches, particularly for children and young people and their families. This includes developing trauma responsive practice approaches in conjunction with schools, community agencies and systems (e.g., the family support system). Sean has had a long-term commitment to supporting practitioners who work with children, young people, and their families, through youth justice programs (such as wilderness based programs for Aboriginal young people becoming involved in juvenile justice) policy and planning (including standards of care), working with children and young people (and their families) in out of home care and working with organisations who bring a trauma responsive approach to organisational culture. He works to integrate this placed-based restorative approach with trauma responsive practice, in conjunction with partners in communities across Australia. More recently Sean has worked with the Child and Family Support Services sector in South Australia, including consumers with lived experience of trauma, the CALD community and local First Nations people, to develop a Trauma Responsive Systems Framework. He has followed this work to broker a partnership with Emerging Minds to customise a software platform designed to support organisations, Government and non-government, as well as the Funding body (Department of Human Services) to implement the framework. This process is the first of its kind in Australia, and internationally, to transform complex systems to respond in a way that supports healing, and prevent further traumatisation, for children and their families; as well as all those involved in the administration and delivery of the services.

Dana is Aboriginal/Chinese and a descendant of the Ngarrindjeri people in South Australia. Dana has over 20 years’ experience working across the public and not for profit sectors in the areas of health, families and child protection and has worked as a consultant across multiple organisations & sectors in stakeholder engagement, planning, service design and systems change

Steph has been committed to the South Australian child protection and family support space for over thirty years. She is a qualified social worker with extensive practice experience working across child protection, kinship care, out of home and local and overseas adoptions programs. The latter half of Steph’s career has seen her lead a wide range of social policy developments and projects within the government sector specific to optimising the wellbeing and experiences for children and young people in out of home care and supporting the reform of the South Australian Child and Family Support System. For several years Steph has been engaged with the Department of Human Services - Early Intervention Research Directorate in the development of the Trauma Responsive System Framework – a whole of systems approach to building the capacity of the Child and Family Support System.