DAN MOSS: Welcome everybody to today's webinar. My name is Dan Moss and I'm the manager of Practice Development here at Emerging Minds. It's great to be joined by all of you today.

Before we start we would like to recognise the lands on which we meet today. Pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Owners of the lands that we work, play and work alongside throughout this country. We acknowledge and respect the traditional connections to their lands, waters, culture, spirituality, family and community for the well-being of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.

Welcome. We've got some really interesting conversations to be had today, but before we jump in we have some housekeeping for you. Obviously today we will talk about parents of children who have experienced child sexual abuse and this can be a confronting topic, which our panellists today will be talking about, examples where children have gone through childhood sexual abuse and that can be confronting and we want to acknowledge that. And just encourage you to look after yourself and take care of yourself, take time if you need it.

These webinars are recorded and available in about two weeks on the AIFS and Emerging Minds website. So if you need to take a break you won't miss anything.

There is a live question and answer section at the end of this webinar, which we will try to get through as many of your fantastic questions as possible. Questions via the Questions in the GoTo webinar control panel can be received by us, so please keep the questions coming.

There are related readings referenced through this webinar and they are available in the Handouts tab in the Control Panel.

There is also a short feedback survey that we will open at the end of the webinar and we would love you to fill that out, give us some information about what's working well and what we could improve.

The webinar will be live-captioned. If you do require captions, please follow the link in the chat box for those captions.

I would also like to give a bit of a plug to a paper that AIFS have just released, a practice guide on responding to children and young people's disclosures of abuse. You can find this in the Handout tab of the GoTo webinar dashboard. It's a great resource and we hope that you find it useful.

In this webinar we will be talking to our wonderful panellists about ways we can help you build your understanding of the impact of child sexual abuse on parents, the parent-child relationship and children's mental health and well-being. We are going to help you to better support non-offending parents who are navigating their child's experience of child sexual abuse including making children's well-being central to conversations that you have with parents but in non-shaming ways. We want to help to improve practice skills that will allow you to support parents' well-being and parenting during the child recovery period after child sexual abuse.

As I said, we’ve got fantastic panellists today. Their bios are in the Resources tab, so if you want to have a look at that please do so. I won't go through all of them today.

Firstly, welcome to Alisa Hall from the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. Alisa, welcome. It's wonderful to have you here today. Tell us a bit about your work at the National Centre.

ALISA HALL: Thanks, Dan. It's lovely to be here with Sophie and Carmela. I'm looking forward to the conversation. My role at the National Centre - for those who don't know, the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse has only been around a couple of years, so it's a new kid on the block in many ways. We have a singular focus on child sexual abuse and... behaviour. We were involved, I guess, in some ways. We are a key recommendation of the Royal Commission in 2017. We were set up specifically to do a couple of things - raise awareness and understanding about child sexual abuse, support help seeking guide best practice and provide ongoing national leadership with others collaboratively, ultimately to improve responses but also to prevent child sexual abuse.

The National Centre is a partnership between three organisations that many of you will know. They have strong histories of leadership and responding in child sexual abuse, and that is the Australian Foundation, Blue Knot Foundation and the Healing Foundation. We are fortunate to have that strong foundation at the National Centre.

I guess the things that we do in terms of activities of the national centre are - the couple to highlight. Generating and building and using evidence. So that looks like both commissioned and in-house research. We also have a focus on evaluating... evaluating what is and isn't working in service.

When we talk about evidence, we define it really broadly, and knowledge broadly, in terms of expertise, experience and evidence and really from multiple knowledge sources including most importantly people with lived experience.

We then mobilise that knowledge into trying to build capability - of a broad range of workers and community, and that looks like lots of different things. Webinars, workshops, online courses, practical guides, blogs, those kinds of things.

The other thing to note is that we work collaboratively with other partners trying to change things at a more systemic level because we acknowledge we are standing on the shoulders of many advocates, organisations and individuals who have been in this space a long time.

So that's us, really. I'm a social worker, practitioner by background. I've worked in service delivery as well as delivering capability-delivering services. I think that's enough from me and I'm looking forward to the chat.

DAN MOSS: Thanks for joining us. Next I will introduce Sophie McEvoy, who does some wonderful work at Relationships Australia SA dealing with children and their parents before and after disclosures of child sexual abuse.

Sophie, I wonder if you can tell us about what's important to you about your work with non-offending parents.

SOPHIE McEVOY: Absolutely. Thanks, Dan and everyone, for having me here today. As Dan said, I am the team leader for the child sexual abuse counselling service and victims of crime counselling service here at Relationships Australia South Australia.

We work primarily with victims but also their families ? that might be caregivers, siblings, a range of family members that we might see.

What we might notice when people first come through the door, when they make contact, is that they have minimal support. They have not had a base of people around them in these moments. Often disclosures of child sexual abuse lead to isolation, families pulling back, not having the connection that they might need in those moments. So we want to step in and not only support the victim but provide support to the parent.

The other reason is important - and we will go through this more today, I'm sure - but the parent is really essential person for that child. The parent will be there day after day and we might be there fortnightly or once every three or four weeks depending on how often we see the child. But the parent is the main support and are providing feedback in moments of distress or emotional upset, when there are further disclosures. These are things we need to help parents manage as they go forward on this journey. We can help them and their child.

DAN MOSS: Thanks, Sophie.

Next I would like to introduce Dr Carmela Bastian, who has worked for a long time in child protection and academia and now directs her own consultancy service. Carmela, welcome.

In your work with parents, how do you enact child focused practice in a way which is supportive of the parent as well as the child?

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: Thanks Dan. Firstly I would like to see is a privilege to be here today with Sophie and Alisa. I would like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the lands of the Peramangk people in Adelaide Hills and pay my respects to Elders past and present and emerging.

As Dan said, in my practice I have predominantly been working over 20 years in frontline child protection in both South Australia and the Northern Territory. In the last 10 years involved in academia research and teaching. And now in private practice.

So, really important - I think it's critically important that we work with parents. As Sophie said, the parent is central to ensuring that children engage in healing and recovery. So in the context of child sexual abuse - and any other form of maltreatment - we need to be working with parents.

So when we think about practice that's child-centred or child aware, it is entering the child in all aspects of our work when working with parents, but holding their experiences, their voices and views of children in our conversations with parents in all aspects of assessment and developing interventions to make sure that they are safe and that their developmental, cultural and well-being needs are met.

So even though working with parents is important, it's important to make sure that we bring the voice of the child into all those conversations. We need to work closely with parents to make sure that they have the resources, that they are strengthened and empowered to meet the complex needs of children.

We know from research and experience, and many of you out there know this and experience this, that parents who are attuned, supportive and responsive to their child's needs within a context of child maltreatment, they can achieve positive outcomes for the child and also the parent-child relationship.

And I'm sure we'll explore that much further today.

DAN MOSS: Thank you to our three panellists. And thank you again to all of the questions that have come in prior to this webinar. There was really - actually, all of the questions we are going to ask our panellists today have come from you. There was hundreds of really insightful and sophisticated questions that came through, so thank you for that. We're going to do our best to get through a few of them now.

A lot of the questions talked about the practices that actually support parents to describe their shock, anger, guilt that can follow or even come before a disclosure of child sexual abuse. So how do we support parents to do that? As Carmela said, while still maintaining a focus on what the child needs from them.

Sophie, I might start with you, in terms of your own practice in being able to do that.

SOPHIE McEVOY: For sure. I think what Carmela was saying is important - obviously the child needs to stay at the centre. But one of the pitfalls we see parents fall into is thinking that, if I'm going to get support for my child, it means I don't need or can't get support for myself, and we will use that oxygen mask metaphor. We need to put our own mask on first - think clearly, breathe, have the knowledge on-board ourselves before we can do that for our child, or alongside.

One of the practical ways we do that is have a parent-only session first. We don't have the parent and child together in the first session. We are still centring what has happened for the child, what's gone on, the reactions you are concerned about, but how are you as a parent? This is huge and has probably impacted every aspect of your life at this point. So we are validating and normalising their responses, alongside also getting some information about how the child's going.

Moving forward we might then offer individual sessions for the parent, also individual sessions for the child, and there is a lot of conversation around how that works for that individual family - is it with the same counsellor or separate counsellors? Depending on the age of the child, is the parent in the room or not? It is very much up to what the individual family needs first. I think that's how we start here.

DAN MOSS: Alisa, what about for you in terms of what you have learned?

ALISA HALL: I couldn't agree more. Picking up on the point Sophie has made, we know through both experiences that people have had in through the literature that feeling believed by a parent and feeling well supported by a parent is one of the strongest protective factors against long-term mental health impacts, we know that.

I guess underscoring the importance around that balance and supporting a parent to understand their own health needs in their own care needs in that period of time so that they in fact can care for their child and put the child first. Again, to remember that disclosure from a child is most often not a linear, one-off neat and tidy situation where a child will come, we disclose and then we move on. All situations are unique but it is often messy and over time it is often little bits of information and I guess, understanding for a parent can be really confusing.

It is a crisis situation. The consequences once a disclosure happens are enormous. They are ongoing and they turn a family upside down. They can be public with court processes and they can be isolating. Really helping a parent to understand the impact and normalise those feelings of shock and anger and guilt and confusion and disbelief. There is increased recognition in the literature that non-offending parents are secondary victims of child sexual abuse and thinking about that when we are working with the family unit.

I guess they are some of the key things. I suppose thinking about some practical things, Sophie talked about some of those in terms of the approach and how you might work with children separately and then with parents together, I think some of the things around managing, helping parents to manage their feelings in a healthy way and helping parents to understand what trauma looks like, the impact of trauma on the child and what that means for parenting.

There is support and education around what does this mean, this trauma, this betrayal? What impact will happen for my child and for my parenting and my family? And how they navigate those challenges together. And I suppose recognising it is a long journey together. I will pause there because I know Carmela has a lot to add as well.

DAN MOSS: I'd love to hear your thoughts, Carmela particularly from a child protection perspective.

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: I agree with everything Sophie and Alisa have said. From a child protection perspective, many child protection workers can relate to having to break the news to parents that a disclosure has been made. Right at that very moment, it is a significant event when this happens. It is a huge crisis. It is traumatic.

How a parent behaves or responds is very difficult to predict. In that child protection context, we have to be ready for a variety of responses. Not every parent is going to respond the same. Because there are so many complexities that impact on the response. The challenge in these situations, as Sophie and Alisa have said, is you need to respond to the parents or carers, you need to really engage with them, engage with their reaction and their trauma and their emotion at that time.

But simultaneously you need to also make sure that you can, that the child is going to be safe, because you don't know how the parent or carer will respond. How in terms of their investment in the relationship with the perpetrator, there is all those considerations to go through.

During the conversations, there needs to be a trauma-informed approach. It needs to be compassionate response, understanding that response and also making plans to ensure safety and those practical considerations for children so that they are not propelled into this blaming atmosphere, really trying to make sure that the situation is protective for them as well.

DAN MOSS: Thanks, Carmela.

ALISA HALL: Can I add to that? To pick up on what Carmela said, we know from research and experience, certainly some if not many non-offending parents have their own trauma history. And there are other things may be circling around in the family context or the family environment that impact both the response but also how you support that family.

I think understanding all those other contextual pieces, whether it is history of child sexual abuse for the parent or a current family violence or coercive control or some other factor that impacts in the family unit and the support that can be offered, I think that is a really important component to add in.

DAN MOSS: Carmela, if I could go back to you. Given your experience in child protection, a few questions around working with parents who are still in a relationship with the perpetrator, whether it be a family member or a partner. Can you provide us with some insights into how you cope with that?

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: Thanks, it's a different situation and very challenging responding to these situations. In my experience, and I want to highlight Alisa's point she made, the parent who continues a relationship with the perpetrator is really torn between their relationship needs, the loyalty to their partner if it is their partner or whoever the perpetrator is, and also the other complexities in that family.

And their own experience about if they have experienced childhood trauma as well, that all comes into play. As I said previously, there is no one size fits all approach. Every situation is going to be unique. However, there are some guiding principles I have always used in my practice.

Always child safety and best interest must come first. It's important to build an alliance with the non-offending parent to understand the position, their position but also ensure they are aware or in tune with what the child's situation and all of them engaging in healing and recovery in a therapeutic response.

I want to talk through, I remember a particular situation, a young woman who was 13 years of age and had been raped by her stepfather and her mother totally rejected her. Did not believe it had happened. Despite the clear evidence that it had. There was no extended family, the young woman was placed in out-of-home care, she didn't do well initially and she developed quite severe depression and was suicidal.

In circumstances of rejection, my first priority was to ensure that this young woman was safe and supported. But I continued to work with the parents because her initial reaction was of rejection, but I needed to work with her around practical arrangements and also try to promote connection between them because you always want to think about the long-term parent/child relationship.

In that moment the reaction can be one of rejection or minimising, which we will talk about, but you need to think about long-term. My approach was not to judge the mother. I spent time with her to understand where she was coming from. I took a curious and compassionate stance and in doing that, sitting with her, listening to her, I found that she herself had experienced childhood trauma and childhood sexual abuse and she was rejected by her family.

The decision to continue our relationship with the perpetrator was her need to feel supported in that moment. And she didn't have the strength at that time to deal with the triggering again or reliving her experiences. So it was a very complex situation. We ended up having conversations, the daughter and the mother were engaged in therapeutic intervention, and they developed a relationship, they were able to continue their connection.

In the end, the perpetrator left the family home. They were able to build relationships and in the longer term were able to live together again. This was a positive outcome, even though it didn't start out as positive. But it's about really listening, understanding and taking the trauma-informed approach.

DAN MOSS: Wonderful case in point, thank you. Sophie, I wonder for you in the course of your work, when you are working with parents who do continue a relationship with the perpetrator, what sort of conversations you have in the therapeutic sense?

SOPHIE McEVOY: Yeah, it's a very different setting. For us, not the most usual, that is something to point out here. The majority of parents and caregivers do respond and believe the child and act on that. In situations, say, whether that is not the case, like Carmela said, the first step is to hold judgement and not respond from a place of judgement and assumptions about where the parent is coming from.

We need to take a few steps back and step into curiosity, understand what is going on with the parent in that family. Alisa was talking about context. We don't know the history, we have just met these people and we want to understand that. One of the ways we think about that is the analogy of the parent and the family landing in a deep hole, they are at the bottom of the hole and they are overwhelmed and they can't find a way out. As a practitioner we looked down the deep hole and think it looks pretty bad and don't ask ? how did you get there, what were the thoughts that led to staying with that person? What is the financial situation that has led you to these decisions, what factors have continued to you being here now? We need to get to the bottom and look around with them and find the way out.

I think that curiosity has to extend then to the child and keeping the child in the room even when they are not there. With the parent in a gentle nonjudgemental way, asking, "OK, you've chosen to stay with so-and-so, what does that look like for your child? How might that look going forward? What impact might that have?" We might come back to what we know, we might say what we know is children who are believed and have those disclosures acted upon in a straight forward way to have better outcomes and we see that, we might go back to what we know about children and telling the truth in these situations, a vast majority of children tell us what has really happened in their lives, they don't have the knowledge to make it up out of nowhere.

We might rely on some of our knowledge but we also want to approach that in a gentle and curious way with parents. We don't want to push them away and have them not telling us what is really going on.

DAN MOSS: Great, thanks, Sophie. Alisa, I want to move to the research you have done at the National Centre and what it tells us about community understanding about child sexual abuse. How might these understandings be helpful or in some cases not so helpful for parents and what does this mean for specialists or nonspecialist practitioners?

ALISA HALL: It's interesting. We commissioned a program of research but we've also undertaking a community attitude study to really - Australian-based - to really understand the community's attitude which helps us understand awareness and stigma and related components which we've talked about.

I want to come back to your question about specialist versus generalist or other practitioners. But really some of the things we've learned from that is that interestingly there is some indication from that data that Australians have a pretty reasonable knowledge around the prevalence of child sexual abuse, common perpetrator types, risky settings. There is a reasonable level of awareness.

What's interesting is what's underneath that, and what's next. From a data perspective we learned that less than 10% of Australian adults had received a disclosure from a child or discovered child sexual abuse. And of those, less than half have reported having a supportive conversation or notifying authorities. So we're talking very small numbers of people who are receiving, discovering or acting on disclosures.

There is very clearly a low level of confidence within this kind of context. So 1/4 of people reported not being confident at all to identify child sexual abuse indicators or to start to have a conversation where they are concerned and think a child might be being harmed.

So there's a pretty low baseline level of confidence around having conversations and also then acting. So that's in a broad community population base, of which we all exist. And as practitioners we sit in that.

There are also some interesting and concerning findings and reinforcement of messages around myths, including victim blaming, particularly for adolescents. And also around a child's lack of credibility - so a child not being believed. We know there are things that sit around that, as Sophie and Carmela have talked about, but the evidence tells us right now that these harmful attitudes still exist and still have an impact on the way that we as a community protect children and respond to harm that they might be experiencing.

So in terms of thinking about the implications, I think there is clearly an issue about confidence in having conversations - that this is reinforced by the data. It also reinforces the importance of safety planning. Not necessarily in a clinical safety planning, but understanding the basics about safety, how to as a parent think about basic safety mechanisms and a safety plan with your child, walking home from school. What does that mean? What does that look like? Very basic safety.

And risk identification. How do we help parents to understand, hone in where they think there is risk and then do something about it?

So there are a few things that are clear around the population base. Prevalence is not the concern. It's the confidence and knowing then how to act. They are where we need to prioritise and focus our efforts.

And I suppose I wanted to make a comment about the specialist versus generalist. I think we have to really remember that it's incumbent and necessary and required and there is no other way to prevent harm on children unless we all have an active response, and we are activated in this. It's not just for specialist workers. It's not just a role for specialist clinicians.

For the generalist worker, volunteers at sport clubs, GPs seeing families and children, teachers, childcare workers, for all of us collectively, there are different responsibilities of course but there is absolutely - this data is clear and I think we know from these conversations we are happening, it's really important that as a generalist worker, a nonspecialist worker, that we don't go, "That will be picked up by a specialist." That we refer on or we don't do anything because we hope or think someone else will pick it up. Because we are negating the responsibility and not protecting children.

So I think it's really important to remember that this is a shared responsibility.

DAN MOSS: Thank you.

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: I was just going to say, the adage about "It takes a village" is really true, isn't it? We hear it a lot but it's very accurate about - it's the whole of society's responsibility to make sure children are safe.

SOPHIE McEVOY: Yeah, and I think what you said, Alisa, about someone else picking it up if we refer it on. That's well and good, but if we think about the client's experience of that, about the child or parent who has chosen to disclose in that moment to a trusted practitioner in a generalist service, perhaps, the experience is one of safety in that moment. They feel enough safety to disclose what happened.

And if we move immediately to referral, the message we are giving is almost, "That wasn't the right decision." And what we want people to walk away with after disclosure is "I have been believed. I've been heard. A medical decision telling that person about what has happened in my life and they will take actions that will either keep us safe or moving with us towards recovery."

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: And I think I want to pick up on Sophie's point. Even though we think about child protection and a therapeutic response, I think we need to look at it as, it should always be therapeutic, and trauma-informed across the whole continuum. And I know it's not always the case but we really, we need to think about, what can we do to make it the best experience possible for the family and child?

DAN MOSS: Some really wonderful points, thank you all. Sophie, I'm going to move on to you now in the context of your own work.

I imagine lots of the parent and probably often particularly mums who visit with you have got long histories of being invited into shame or stigma. How do you work with these people in collaborative and respectful ways that centres the needs of the child but also avoids the reproduction of the shame?

SOPHIE McEVOY: For sure. I think you are echoing a little bit what Alisa and Carmela said earlier, that parents come with their own histories of potentially child sexual abuse but also violence and other forms of abuse that may have happened in their life. So these things sit with them and they have absorbed those ideas in society. We are all sitting in these ideas that society provides us about why abuse happens and who it happens to and who perpetrates it.

And so one thing we can do, to begin with, is to start to make that stuff really visible in the room. We want to have a conversation around it. You can do that in many different ways. One way we talk about it in the service is talking about the book of myths, lies and bullshit that happens within child sexual abuse. And that's really just a slang way of saying, "A lot of the things we have heard in society about why this stuff happens is not true." It is victim blaming. It comes back to the responsibility being with the individual who was abused.

The first thing is us being aware of it, and then we can start to listen and ask more into it in the room to make those ideas visible.

We want people to come in and express those ideas to us and then leave thinking, "Maybe it didn't really matter that the curfew was 9:30 PM, not 8:30 PM. Perhaps that was not the reason that happened that night. Maybe if that person was a safe person for them to be around, this abuse would not have occurred."

The one thing we can do is make those things visible. And linked to that is really making perpetrator tactics clear. We often talk about what happened and the impact on the victim. I think most of us are more comfortable sitting in that space and processing in that way. But we can also really make clear what the perpetrator did over time that led to the abuse occurring - and also for the parents that led to the abuse not being seen.

Because parents come in with shame and blame about "Why didn't I see this? Why didn't I pick up earlier?" And we want to ask into that. There are real reasons things can be hidden. Maybe mum was working two jobs, a lot of overtime with a partner who didn't work and had offered to stay home and look after the children. We can really ask into some of the factors that led to this stuff not being seen. And in those ways, rather than saying "This wasn't your fault," we are saying, "This wasn't your fault because of XYZ." And we can do the same for the blame that lies on the children.

If they are holding ideas about their children having done things to lead to these things having happened, we can also break down those ideas.

DAN MOSS: Thanks Sophie. Carmela, I wanted to ask you, how important is it for you to understand what parents are doing or have done to support their children in ways that might go against these myths or lies that Sophie was describing?

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: I think one of the things that happens when you are working in a child protection sector and with child abuse and neglect is that we can be really focused on risk and also have a very deficit approach in our thinking.

And it's really important to recognise that there are strengths in families that we work with. And some of them have the most incredible strength that I've been in awe of. So it's a really important question, to recognise and validate what parents are already doing to support their children.

It might be something that we hadn't expected or wasn't visible to us, but we need to ask the question and really engage with the parents. Even in situations where there is ambivalence about the disclosures, parents are still providing that support.

So, building alliance with parents or the carer and understanding what they are doing to support the child is really reflective of taking a strengths-based approach and building that alliance is also empowering and gives them the confidence to keep doing what they are doing, or building on what they are doing to keep the child safe.

So it's not only trying to support the child but it's also, in this context where there's been disclosures, parents lose their confidence and they question their own parenting, what they did and what they did wrong. But in fact, in many circumstances they were not aware of that real subtle - the grooming behaviour and the taking of opportunities that were there to harm children.

So it's really important to engage with parents, that they are doing some - that they have strengths and to build on those strengths and strengthen their role as a parent.

DAN MOSS: Thanks so much, Carmela. Alisa, I know at the Centre you do quite a bit of research on grooming. How do we talk to parents about the grooming process that has so often occurred for their child, in ways that might help them to support their child and themselves?

ALISA HALL: Thanks, Dan. And I think it links to what Sophie and Carmela have been talking about as well. I will reiterate that importance - particularly from Carmela - building on the strengths of a parent. Because actually protective factors and trying to understand what that looks like within the context of that family, which is different - families are different - and trying to rebuild the parent's sense of confidence and agency, really, which they may have lost depending on the context of the environment they are in.

Moving into the grooming area, I think it picks up on Sophie's point around - I suppose, there's an education piece for parents around understanding what grooming is. Understanding that it is purposeful. It is intentional. It is tactical. It is manipulative.

So I think those things are really important. And often that the grooming is not only targeting the child but also the parent, a unit, a whole collective. And that's how it is so tactical.

So I think there's a real education piece to understand it, to arm people with an understanding. And that then helps combat some of these feelings and concerns and normal feelings and concerns of guilt and "How did I miss it? How did I not pick up the signs?" And the level of shame that people feel around that. There is an education piece around what it means and what it looks like, there is an education piece around helping people to understand as parents they were part of the agreement, part of that tactic, and the strategic element, the strategic approach.

In some ways I suppose normalising because of that, because of the tactical approach to grooming. Normalising missed warning signs. Normalising why that didn't ring an alarm bell. We often have parents who might say, "I had a gut feel about something," there are all sorts of other reasons to combat that suspicion. I think there is a lot of work to do, not just for non-offending parents but also broadly about grooming because when you are talking about a protective network and a protective system and community around that child, even outside of the family unit, we all have to understand grooming.

I think it is incredibly important to healing and recovery and to a parent's ability to support the healing and recovery of their child to understand what happened, what grooming looked like and how it was connected to them, not just to their child. They are just a couple of comments, I suppose.

SOPHIE McEVOY: Not just the individual but the family, and extending that out to the community, we work statewide in South Australia, rural and regional communities, we start working with one client where there has been a recent disclosure and it will bleed out into many families in the community who are all interlinked in some way and that offender has done a good job of grooming the community.

They might be very involved in the school or sports clubs and they are trusted in a way. Highlighting how that comes into play is important. And parents then can join together and having that peer connection is important for parents. They can come together and say, "We didn't see this, it must mean it is purposeful and targeted." They can find support in that way, peer support can't be underestimated.

DAN MOSS: Thanks, Sophie. You have all made great points today about best practice being important not just for specialist practice and is but nonspecialists as well. Carmela, what are the supervision implications for this? What is important for specialists or nonspecialists having these conversations with parents? What is important for them to know about supervision?

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: This is a really big question, I will try to be brief. Talk about supervision, anyone working in the sector or is critically important, I don't think we can underestimate the importance of having, receiving supervision. I am of the firm belief that if the child protection workforce or any workforce, we are talking in the context of working with families and children who experience child maltreatment, if the workforce feels safe, trusted and nurtured, those feelings and that culture transfers into the work we do with children and families.

So supervision needs to be trauma-informed. Workers need to be able to sit in a space where they feel safe, where they feel they can trust the person who is their supervisor and they can reflect, question and be in tune not only with their own emotions, but also working through some of the situation in a reflective and trusted way.

Supervision needs to be neutrally beneficial. And it also needs to be an opportunity to share information and knowledge so that they also, like children, like parents, they feel empowered. I think if we have a culture within organisations where supervision and people feel safe I think we have better outcomes for children and families.

DAN MOSS: Wonderful, Carmela. Sophie, I'm wondering if in your practice you have something you would like to add?

SOPHIE McEVOY: I think Carmela has covered a lot of it. We do individual and group supervision where we can reflect openly and ask questions that we wouldn't ask in other settings. I think to be part of this, having nonspecialist practitioners joining the space and being comfortable, we all have a role in de-stigmatising talking about child sexual abuse. When I started in this role andpeople asked what I did I would hesitate because I knew what was coming ? "Oh, OK..." Now I am really open about it and I want to have those conversations and that is all our responsibility to be out there talking about this, making sure everyone is aware that this is going on. One in three girls and one in five boys, we know the stats, let's do something about it.

ALISA HALL: I couldn't agree more, Sophie. It links back to what we have had reinforced through the community attitude study, but to have the conversation to have the conversation, all of us. How we as workers support parents to have the conversation. Parents are often fearful that they will say something to make it worse or say the wrong thing and that stops us from saying anything.

Having the confidence to have the conversation is important. I wanted to add a couple of things around supervision and support for practitioners and one is that we need to think about the culture of the organisation, that it cannot just be on the individual practitioner and absolutely there needs to be individual supervision, whether group or different settings.

I think there also is a requirement for us to think about the culture and context of the organisation, the leadership, how it is a safe and supported organisation. One of the reasons ? there are many reasons to enable good practice and reflection and learning, all the things we know are important ? to cope with very difficult situations but the other is to remember that as workers we are part of the Australian community. We know that workers themselves are also victims and survivors, a high proportion.

We did a learning and development survey a couple of years ago, 1400 responses, 33% of people identified as having a lived experience with 11% not responding. We know that one third more probably of workers in the space have their own lived experience. There is supervision about the way you do your work but there is also supervision and support of you as a human and everything you bring to that as well.

It is important to think about the workforce and what is made up, who we are made up of that workforce and the organisation's responsibility therefore in supporting that workforce.

DAN MOSS: Interesting, Alisa about the nonspecialist workforce and the workforce more generally. This idea that you touched on before about the strongest response we can provide disbelieving children or parents or just listening. In your work at the Centre, how useful is that kind of information for practitioners to help them to develop confidence in having these conversations?

ALISA HALL:

There are a couple of things, one is to help everyone to understand they have a responsibility regardless of the role they play. Everyone that interacts with young people, whether they are a specialist or an educator, they are part of the response and protection we need for children. There is no way children are protected only through a specialist lens. We have also learned, how do we build that confidence? What does it look like? One of the things I think is about normalising that this is tricky, it is OK to feel fearful.

It is OK to feel a level of anxiety. We need to work out how you are not paralysed and do nothing and therefore create a safe environment for a child to talk to you. If a child tells you a little bit and then they shut down and don't tell you the rest and they don't get the help they need. How do we normalise that this is uncomfortable and build enough confidence to not be paralysed by that?

I think there are practical things. We and many others have done work around practical prompts, people say, "What do I say?" What do I actually say in the conversation? Asking a direct question, I am concerned, I have noticed... Lots of things we can provide practical help to build their confidence.

It is also to remember we are not trying to turn everybody into specialist practitioners. We are not trying to turn everybody into therapeutic experts. It is not people's job to collect the evidence. It is not a person's job, and adults job to find the evidence in order to believe. Their job is to believe and act and respond. It is not to know you have enough evidence to do that, that is not the job of most generally, I am talking outside the context of particular contexts around child protection and investigation roles.

Practical things around normalising practical conversations, giving people language to open up the discussion, giving people an avenue to talk to others and to learn, how do we keep building and learning from the experiences we are having? I think there are lots of things. The reality is, children talk to people they trust. That is who they tell.

It is often a mum, it could be a friend, but it may be a good teacher. And many others. So thinking about the people in a child's life who are trusted, they are not specialist workers. That is not who it is. It's not that that doesn't get there but we have to arm this workforce and normalise how challenging it is and provide practical resources for that.

DAN MOSS: Thanks, Alisa. I reckon we will have to finish the Q&A session now. I'm sure you will agree with me that the information and insights that Dr Carmela Bastian and Sophie McEvoy and Alisa Hall have been valuable and I hope that specialist and nonspecialist practitioners among you have enjoyed listening. Thank you Carmela, Sophie and Alisa. I would also like to thank the audience, we have had many registrants for this webinar, thousands, and the questions you have provided us helped us to sit down and think critically about the most useful discussion in the past hour and in our post webinar Q&A session. Thank you for that.

They reflected the sophistication of what has been thought about out there amongst practitioners to support parents and to bring these issues into the open. Particularly, to have non-stigmatising and non-shaming conversations, those conversations that still support the best interests of children's mental health.

Thanks to those members of the AIFS Communications team. Please subscribe to the AIFS of the Emerging Minds websites and newsletters to be notified about the recording of this webinar if you are interested. A reminder to everyone, please fill out the feedback survey at the end of the webinar in a few seconds time. We have really enjoyed meeting with you all today. Thank you so much, we look forward to the next webinar in the series on infant and child mental health, from Emerging Minds, take care and we will see you again soon.

ALL: Thanks, bye. 

DAN MOSS: Welcome back, everybody, to this extended panel Q&A session where we're talking about supporting parents of children who have disclosed child sexual abuse. We have had a plethora of questions come through before and during the webinar, which we're very grateful for, and we're going to try to get to some of those now, including lots of questions pertaining to supporting parents who are going through legal processes, throughout our courts. I was just recognizing that this is a very big area and a very nuanced area. I wonder, Alyssa, if you would like to, respond to this question that we have. 

ALISA HALL: Yeah. Look, I'm happy to Dan, just make a general comment, really, I think just to pick up on your comment there, it's obviously a pretty complex, area and all situations are, you know, incredibly different with different kinds of contexts and variables that are sitting in that, that make a huge impact. I think one of the things, you know, we know from working with victims and survivors and parents of victims and survivors is how challenging the family court family law system is and the judicial system in general, how challenging it is for victims and survivors and for families, in terms of the way that it operates in every possible facet of the way that it operates. I guess one of the things that I would probably say, so I wouldn't necessarily think it's something for us to talk about in terms of giving direct advice, but I think one of the things that I would just flag when we're talking about non-offending parents in particular, and we're thinking about the consequences and the intersection with family law courts is, you know, the real challenges, risks, dangers, for parents, particularly women, around what can face them in a family law context around not keeping children safe, not being a protective parent, not acting protectively, and other risks that actually are very real in terms of the consequences that may then occur, and then further consequences on children when parents are actually, you know, pulled into different, these different kind of elements about being a non-protective parent. So, and I guess just the discrimination, you know, kind of that that kind of sits in, in that, in that kind of system and acknowledged by the system I think quite often when interacting with particularly with different population groups. So, we're talking about First Nations communities and other cultural groups. These are not systems. Family court is not necessarily a system that understands the needs of different cultural groups or different groups, you know, in any way. So, I guess I would just acknowledge it's really fraught, really challenging, and it can have an impact on non-offending parents response. And you know how they behave because of the risks and the dangers that exist there. But I think other than that, you know, I think we're getting into the territory of talking in more kind of specifics. But I do think the intersection is important to acknowledge and the impact that that might have on the way a non-offending parent behaves.

DAN MOSS: Yeah, really interesting. Thank you. It's a great answer. Thanks, Alyssa. Sophie. We've had quite a few questions on the subject of sexual abuse that occurs by siblings. And whether you had some practice advice on how you might talk to, families or parents about that. 

SOPHIE McEVOY: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks everyone for asking into this area. I think, you know, perhaps if not working in a specialist service, it's something that you wouldn't see all that often, but actually I think it is more common than we know. And we do see it quite often within the service, and it just adds another layer of complexity. Parents are already responding to a very difficult situation. They're already thinking about how to support their child and experiencing that shock. But now, layered on top of that, there's also perhaps more shame. You know that that is their child. There's a grief and loss around the family structure as it was. Often a recognition that it can't continue in that moment in the same way as it has been. And there are lots of practical difficulties that all of a sudden arise for parents. You know, there are safety concerns. And as Carmela has said throughout today, placing the safety of the victim at the centre is really our priority. And so, if we place them at the centre here, then we're needing to make adjustments in that household and in how that household functions, that mean the other sibling might have to live elsewhere or arrangements might need to be made and support needs to be in place for both children obviously as well going forward. 

And I was thinking about a family I'd worked with where the child who had been perpetrating the abuse had been located outside of the home after the disclosure with the dad, who was not a particularly safe person. And so, this actually just added to the non-offending parent's, worries and concerns. You know, what they were managing because they were torn, really, between their safety concerns for one child and the need for healing and recovery for the other child. And so, there was a lot of work there around what are the practical things we can get in place to ensure that the perpetrating sibling is in a safe space. They're still a child. Their safety needs to be placed at the centre as well. They also need support. They need to be able to access the right service. But then we need to come back to the child who's been victimized here, because they still need to feel like what happened to them was not okay, that they're believed, that they're heard, and that their needs are really prioritized here, and they can't be asked to prioritize the needs of the offending sibling ahead of their own. 

So, it's a really tricky space. And we talked earlier about holding your judgment. That's again really important here. And we talked about curiosity and just asking into it. It's a strange space. You might not have had a situation like this before, but if you can ask gentle, caring, open questions to parents about what's happening here and how they're feeling, how they've responded so far, that probably put a lot of safety things in place already. We can start to build structure from there and go forward, and we never want them to think that we want them to distance that other child from their own heart or, you know, from their mind, but they do need to react in the safety interests of the victim.

DAN MOSS: Thanks for that, Sophie, and such great answer. Carmela, we obviously spoke a lot about, grooming throughout the webinar. Just some follow-up questions about that, in particular, about how can parents and community members provide protection for children where grooming has been identified? 

DR CARMELA BASTIAN: It's a really good question. I just want to reiterate what Alisa said earlier in the webinar is that perpetrators who engage in quite specific strategic grooming practices are very skilled people. Certainly, in my practice, it takes a lot of investigation or understanding about those tactics. And sometimes it is very hard to pinpoint. So there's lots of different tactics that are used. I mean, children can be fearful, careful, or you have an adult who might actually be incredibly friendly with the child or children. There's always secrecy that's attached to those behaviours as well. You know very embedded secrecy. And I think these days, obviously, there's always the online, groomers that you know people are really worried about. If you know, children might say things like they feel uncomfortable or they're not sure of someone. We really need to listen to those comments of children. I mean it might be that they don't know why they feel uncomfortable, but you know, they might just pretend they don't feel safe with that person. So, if there is, you know, if you're in the community, a community member or a teacher or a parent who is worried that their child or children are being groomed, they need to talk to someone. So very important to, you know, have a conversation with authority in these areas. Just look up, you know, what is grooming and Alisa already, I'm sure will make available some information about what is grooming. And if those signs are there and you really still feel concerned, then you can ring the police or you can ring the child protection authorities. Or if they're concerned about someone's child in particular, then have a talk to those parents. But I think the important thing is don't ignore it. If you're feeling uncomfortable or you're worried, then you've got to, also think, how does that child actually feel with that person? So, really, you know, engage with those feelings, those suspicions and don't ignore them. I don't know if you want to add anything to that?

ALISA HALL: No, I think I would completely agree. I mean, I think, you know, it's something we all need to understand more. And I think, you know, we talk quite a lot about, you know, being alert, being curious, you know, paying attention actually, and really kind of leaning in to what's, happening because actually paying attention, you know, is, is a really, really, really useful way for you to, I guess, you know, gather the information and kind of process it and understand it. One of the reasons I'm emphasizing that is because often if we're not sure, we'll turn away, we don't know the answer, we're not quite sure and we'll turn away. So, I think, you know, one of the most simple things that we can do is be curious and pay attention. And if we pay attention, we will see things. We will see things if we're concerned. So I think, you know, you can kind of strip it back to kind of paying attention and being curious, I think. And then, you know, then it is, I think. I guess just to take your point around, get advice, you know, talk to somebody and get some advice and, you know, what a child needs is you to do something. That's what a child needs you to do. Just do something, not nothing. And that something might be get advice and do the next thing. It might not be you do everything, but you do the next thing. So I think, you know, kind of there is some fear around it that comes back to you. That you need to kind of manage this situation. But if you pay attention and then you get some advice, you know, I think they're good kind of basic foundations that we can think about for all community members.

DAN MOSS: Yeah. Thank you, thank you. Please join me in thanking our panellists today. It's been such a rich and insightful conversation. So, to Dr Carmela Bastian, Alisa Hall and Sophie McEvoy, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for your insights. We've really enjoyed talking with you all today and we'll see you next time. Thank you.