Seen as Risk, Not as Women: Re-centring First Nations Women’s Mental Health in Child Protection
Tracks
Ballroom 1
| Monday, August 31, 2026 |
| 1:50 PM - 2:10 PM |
| JW Grand Ballroom |
Overview
Georgina Ambrum, Heart-Based
Three Key Learnings
1. Delegates will learn to understand mothers’ emotional responses within the context of complex trauma, cumulative harm, and systemic pressures, differentiating context-driven distress from pathology.
2. They will explore how to interpret trauma-triggered distress while maintaining responsibility and safety, ensuring professional responses are accurate without excusing harmful behaviour.
3. Delegates will gain strategies to make protective capacities visible, support emotional regulation, and foster collaborative engagement with women, while recognising the impact of systemic stress on practitioners, including First Nations workers in mainstream environments, promoting reflexivity, cultural responsiveness, and wellbeing in professional practice.
Speaker
Ms Georgina Ambrum
Founder and Lead Trainer
Heart-based
Seen as Risk, Not as Women: Re-centring First Nations Women’s Mental Health in Child Protection
Abstract
This presentation explores the concept of distress as a contextual and relational response rather than an inherent pathology. Drawing on frontline family intervention practice within statutory child protection systems, the session examines how parents—particularly mothers—are often labelled as resistant, dysregulated, or unmotivated without sufficient consideration of the complex trauma histories and cumulative harms that shape their responses.
Using de-identified composite case examples, the presentation will illustrate how repeated exposure to interpersonal violence, chronic system involvement, poverty-related stressors, family fragmentation, and intergenerational trauma can compound over time. These cumulative experiences frequently erode trust, safety, and relational stability. When layered with statutory scrutiny, placement disruptions, and shifting professional relationships, emotional reactions may reflect trauma activation rather than pathology.
The session will differentiate emotional dysregulation from trauma-triggered distress and examine how systems can inadvertently replicate dynamics of powerlessness and silencing. It will consider how risk assessment and documentation practices may obscure protective capacity when trauma responses are misinterpreted as resistance.
The presentation will also briefly explore the cumulative impacts on practitioners working within these systems, including the emotional labour and moral distress experienced when navigating dominant institutional frameworks. Particular reflection will be offered on the experience of First Nations practitioners working within predominantly non-Indigenous environments, and how systemic dynamics can shape professional identity, cultural load, and wellbeing.
Through a trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and strengths-based lens, this session invites critical reflection on how distress is interpreted in contexts of cumulative harm, with the aim of supporting both safety and dignity while reducing the risk of re-traumatisation for families and practitioners alike.
Using de-identified composite case examples, the presentation will illustrate how repeated exposure to interpersonal violence, chronic system involvement, poverty-related stressors, family fragmentation, and intergenerational trauma can compound over time. These cumulative experiences frequently erode trust, safety, and relational stability. When layered with statutory scrutiny, placement disruptions, and shifting professional relationships, emotional reactions may reflect trauma activation rather than pathology.
The session will differentiate emotional dysregulation from trauma-triggered distress and examine how systems can inadvertently replicate dynamics of powerlessness and silencing. It will consider how risk assessment and documentation practices may obscure protective capacity when trauma responses are misinterpreted as resistance.
The presentation will also briefly explore the cumulative impacts on practitioners working within these systems, including the emotional labour and moral distress experienced when navigating dominant institutional frameworks. Particular reflection will be offered on the experience of First Nations practitioners working within predominantly non-Indigenous environments, and how systemic dynamics can shape professional identity, cultural load, and wellbeing.
Through a trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and strengths-based lens, this session invites critical reflection on how distress is interpreted in contexts of cumulative harm, with the aim of supporting both safety and dignity while reducing the risk of re-traumatisation for families and practitioners alike.
Biography
Georgina Ambrum is a Torres Strait Islander social worker from Babinda, Far North Queensland, whose lived experience guides her work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. She holds a Bachelor of Social Work and a Master’s in Mental Health Practice. Georgina has supported children who have experienced trauma and adult women survivors of childhood sexual assault using culturally safe and trauma-informed approaches. She is a Safe & Together Institute trainer and facilitates evidence-based parenting programs — Circle of Security, Triple P, Bringing Up Great Kids, Engaging Adolescents — and empowering, strengths-based Shark Cage programs for young and adult women.
