Later this month, I’ll be attending the International Childhood Trauma Conference hosted by the Australian Childhood Foundation.
It’s one of the biggest gatherings of its kind in the world, and I feel incredibly honoured to be attending not just as a participant, but as someone actively contributing to the program.
Over three mornings, I’ll be guiding breathwork sessions, offering a moment of stillness before long, emotionally charged days. I’ll be presenting on behalf of INSupport Community, sharing what we’ve learned about peer support and its role in the healing journey of adult survivors of child sexual abuse. And I’ll also be speaking on a panel as part of Our Collective Experience Project, alongside fellow survivors who are courageously showing up and speaking out.
Every part of this work is personal.
Sometimes I’m asked why I keep sharing, why I continue to speak publicly about something so painful, why I don’t just move on to other topics of work that are easier to share.
The truth is, I’ve asked myself those same questions, especially on the hard days.
The days when telling my story scratches at old wounds. The days when the emotional cost feels high. The days when silence would be so much easier.
But I keep sharing because lived experience matters.
It matters in the way we design services. It matters in how we train professionals. It matters when we’re trying to shift systems that were never built with survivors in mind.
It matters because someone once shared their story, and it made me feel less alone. And now, I do the same in the hope that it might help someone else.
But I also keep sharing because we need change.
We need real, structural change to how we protect children and support survivors, and that includes national reform of the Working with Children Check process.
My abuser didn’t need a Working with Children Check to access me, as he was a family member. And at the time, in the early 1990’s the check did not exist.
Though if you applied that same situation today, many of the adults in my life back then would need one. Teachers, Coaches, and after-school care staff, who all interacted with me day in, day out. But even if they passed the check, would they have known what to look for? Would they have known how to support me if they did?
That’s the part we’re still missing.
A background check alone doesn’t prevent abuse. Policies without proper training don’t keep children safe. And systems that ignore the voices of those who’ve lived it are doomed to keep repeating the same failures.
We need more than checks; we need change led by survivors.
Through Our Collective Experience Project, survivors from across Australia are coming together to drive that change. We’re calling for a national shift in how we engage with and prioritise lived experience, not as an afterthought, but as an essential form of expertise.
We’re asking for:
- National reform of the Working with Children Check process
- Improved training and support for adults in positions of trust
- Investment in peer-led support services
- Survivor voices to be embedded in system design and reform
This work is hard. It’s confronting. And it often asks more of us than we’d like to give. But it’s also powerful. It’s necessary. And I believe it’s how we begin to create a future that’s safer for children, and more supportive for survivors.
You can learn more about the campaign and add your voice to the call for change here: www.childhood.org.au/our-collective-experience
As always, thank you for reading. For seeing this work. For standing with me and so many others who keep showing up.
Even on the hard days.
Because change is possible. Because our stories matter. And because we’re stronger when we share them – together.
