Using disaster recovery principles to support families through complex and compounding challenges
About this webinar
For practitioners who work with children and families, disasters are not only immediate emergencies. While public information often focuses on physical safety, public health and economic impacts, the emotional, relational and developmental effects can continue long after the immediate danger has passed.
Disasters can affect children and families in both regional and urban communities and they often don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. In Australia, things such as droughts can unfold slowly and last for months or years; while floods, fires and storms can overlap and accumulate. Families may still be recovering from one event as the next one begins.
In addition, secondary stressors such as housing, financial and food insecurity; disruptions to work and learning; social isolation and ongoing media exposure can build over time. These pressures can compound with the experience of disasters and emergencies and disrupt family relationships and the spaces in which children live, learn, play and connect.
This webinar will explore how practitioners can respond to the cumulative stress that families often face. Drawing on the principles of disaster recovery, trauma-informed practice, as well as lived experience insights, it will share practical strategies to guide support across different events, settings and timelines.
This webinar will support you to:
- understand how disasters and secondary stressors can compound and accumulate, affecting parents' ability to respond, family functioning and infants’ and children’s mental health and development
- apply trauma-informed and psychological first aid principles to support children and families across different disaster challenges and contexts
- respond to the cumulative stress in families without overwhelming children, families or yourself
- identify opportunities to strengthen coordination across services and systems.
Target Audience
This webinar is intended for practitioners and leaders working with children, parents and families. This can include workers, organisation leaders and volunteers in health services, social and community services, education, first response and emergency services, government, non-government organisations and community-led initiatives.
This webinar is co-produced by CFCA and Emerging Minds in a series focusing on children’s mental health. They are working together as part of the Emerging Minds: National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, which is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.
Presenters
Manager, Mental Health Disaster Programs, Queensland Health.
Dr Andrea Baldwin is a psychologist specialising in disaster mental health. Until 2025 Andrea co-ordinated the Birdie’s Tree initiative at Queensland Centre for Perinatal and Infant Mental Health, Children’s Health Queensland, supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of babies, young children and families through natural hazards and disruptive events. Andrea wrote 7 of the 11 Birdie storybooks and led the team implementing the first waves of Birdie’s Tree resources, programs and training.
Andrea is currently seconded to Queensland Health’s Mental Health Alcohol and Other Drugs Strategy and Planning Branch, managing mental health disaster recovery programs statewide. With all 77 of Queensland’s Local Government Areas currently in the response or recovery phases of cyclones, flooding, bushfires or drought, programs support whole communities while maintaining focus on groups at greater risk of mental health impacts, including expectant and new parents, infants and children.
Nationally, Andrea serves on the National Infant and Child Disaster Mental Health Advisory Committee (NICDAC), has been active in AIDR’s Disaster Resilience Education Strategy Group and Disaster Resilient Australia-New Zealand School Education Network, participates in the Children and Disasters Community of Practice led by the University of Melbourne, and feels privileged to contribute her expertise to the work of Emerging Minds.
Program Director, Emerging Minds.
Brad Morgan is the Director of Emerging Minds and leads the delivery of national infant, child, adolescent and family mental health strategies. His leadership is focused on bringing together practice and lived experience expertise together with international and Australian research to support the design and delivery of national mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention strategies that improve the mental health of infants, children, young people and their families. Brad has extensive experience in strategy, implementation and systems change, with a particular focus on supporting services and workforces to respond to adversity, complexity and the cumulative impacts of significant challenges, including disasters, on children, families and communities.
Child and family partner, Emerging Minds and Queensland Manager, NAPCAN.
Sarnia Ralston is the Executive Manager Queensland / Northern Territory for NAPCAN (National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect) and a passionate advocate for child safety and wellbeing. With over two decades of experience in the community sector, she leads projects across Queensland and the Territory focused on prevention of abuse and harm, reducing risk and increasing wellbeing factors for children, families and communities. Sarnia brings not only professional expertise but lived experience to the conversation. Her unique perspective strengthens her commitment to workforce wellbeing and trauma aware approaches that protect both children and the people who support them. A mum of three, she relocated to Cairns after experiencing the devastating NSW bushfires in Batemans Bay, only to face another disaster during Cyclone Jasper and the subsequent Far North Queensland floods. Her unique perspective strengthens her commitment to workforce wellbeing and trauma aware approaches that protect both children and the people who support them.
Facilitator
Psychologist and Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the National Infant & Child Disaster Mental Health Advisory Committee (NICDAC).
Michelle Roberts is a psychologist, teacher and child disaster consultant. She began her teaching career at a school directly impacted by the Ash Wednesday bushfires, and has continued to work with children, families, schools, communities and leadership teams to promote disaster preparedness and recovery. Michelle is the former Director of the Australian Child and Adolescent Trauma Loss and Grief Network (ACATLGN) at the Australian National University (ANU) and the Co-Founder/Co-Chair of the National Infant and Child Disaster Mental Health Advisory Committee (NICDAC). In her role as CEO and psychologist at ROBSET Consulting, she is dedicated to supporting the wellbeing of infants, children, young people and the adults around them through critical incidents, emergencies and disasters.
11 November 2026, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm (AEDT)
Andrea Baldwin, Brad Morgan, Sarnia Ralston, Michelle Roberts
Online