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Invited SpeakersInternational Keynote Speakers
Crispin Day, Centre for Parent and Child Support, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Research Unit (funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charitable Foundation), Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London and the National Academy of Parenting Practitioners, UK. Crispin trained as a clinical psychologist after having worked for a range of health, social care and voluntary agencies. He has developed and evaluated the effectiveness and quality of children and young people’s preventative and community mental health services, as well as in trained health, social care and education professionals in the use of the Family Partnership Model within the UK and internationally. He is currently developing innovative approaches to meeting the needs of families with complex psychosocial needs, the dissemination of evidence based practices and its integration with parents and children’s values and priorities. He has published and lectured widely as well as provided advice to central and local government in the UK. He is currently a member of the Treasury/DCFS Review of CAMHS Expert Group for which he chairs the Monitoring, Evaluation and Accountability Sub-Group. 
Susan C. McDonough, PhD, MSW, is a social worker who specializes in treating relationship problems of parents and infants with special needs. She is an associate research scientist in the School of Social Work and the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan. Dr. McDonough directs the University of Michigan Post-Graduate Certificate Training Program in Clinical Work with Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families and is an international consultant for infant and family mental health programs. Her current research explores how environmental risk factors and parent-infant relationship problems mediate the connection between early behavior problems and later emotional, social, and cognitive functioning. She is also testing an intervention to prevent problems of physiological regulation in infants from becoming later mental health and learning problems. This preventive intervention to reduce parent-infant relationship problems in families is currently being evaluated in the U.S. and abroad. Other research examines parent-infant interactions of adolescent parents and their infants, cognitively-limited parents and their offspring, and substance-exposed infants and their caregivers, as an indicator of the parent-infant relationship. 
Mary Crowley was appointed Stakeholder Adviser to the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners when the Academy was launched in November 2007. Prior to that, Mary was Chief Executive of Parenting UK which led the development of the National Occupational Standards for Work with Parents. The Standards were approved for the UK by the QCA Approvals Board in April 2005. (http://www.parentinguk.org/2/standards) Earlier, Mary was Head of the Adult Education Service of the London Borough of Waltham Forest. In 2000 she received the MBE for services to parenting education and family learning. She was a Board member of Lifelong Learning UK, the Sector Skills Council for learning professionals. She is currently a member of the Council of City and Guilds and the Federation Internationale pour l’Education des Parents. She created the European Socrates “Dialogue” parenting education project with partners in six EU countries and directed Parenting in Europe in the 21st Century, an EU funded Leonardo da Vinci workforce project comprising a transnational network of organisations working with parents across Europe who are brought together to share expertise and consider the needs of the sector. In 2008 Mary was awarded the OBE for services to families and children. She has five children and two grandchildren. Australian Invited Speakers
Louise Newman is the Chair of Perinatal and Infant Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle and the previous Director of the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry. Professor Newman is a practicing infant psychiatrist with expertise in the area of disorders of early parenting and attachment difficulties in infants. She has undertaken research into the issues confronting parents with borderline personality disorder and histories of early trauma and the impact on infant development. Her current research is focusing on the evaluation of infant-parent interventions in high-risk populations. 
Paul Ban has social work qualifications and a background of working as a consultant with Torres Strait Islanders. He was the first to pilot family group conferences with child protection cases in both Melbourne and Australia in the early 1990s through philanthropic trust funding. He has since facilitated over two hundred family group conferences and provided training in this area to government and non-government services both nationally and internationally. As well as organizing national workshops on this topic in Australia, he has spoken at many international conferences on this topic and provided training in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the United States, including Hawaii. He has also published widely on family group conferencing, including chapters in two international books on this topic. He has worked in private practice mainly in the family law area for the past thirteen years and is currently undertaking a Master of Conflict Resolution degree with the aim of integrating family group conferences with the fields of mediation, negotiation and restorative practices. 
Leigh Gassner was until recently an Assistant Commissioner for Victoria Police. He is now a consultant working with private and public sector organisations involving cultural change, strategy development, and executive coaching and development. His main area of focus in his work is to bring multi-stakeholder groups together to achieve common outcomes, particularly across complex social systems. Leigh has managed significant cultural and organisational change processes in Victoria Police. Leigh’s otherwise extensive senior executive experience has included leading and managing two of the largest Regions in Victoria responsible for the wide range of services to the community that entails. In August 2001, Leigh undertook the review and subsequent formulation of the Victoria Police Force's Violence against Women strategy including child abuse. As a consequence, he chaired the State-wide Steering Committee to Reduce Family Violence and the State-wide Steering Committee to Reduce Sexual Assault, both of these initiatives involved the community and government sectors and were endorsed by State Cabinet. This work has been recognised as both extensive and leading edge reform in the delivery of government services involving these critical social issues, has contributed to Leigh’s work in social policy development, and integrated public sector service delivery. Leigh has worked with the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in north-western China delivering workshops on family violence as part of human rights. Leigh is a Member of the White Ribbon Day Foundation (Elimination of violence against women) and a Council member of the Australian Community Support Organisation. Leigh is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration of Australia (Victoria) and a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Leigh holds a Doctorate in Business Administration and a Master of Public Policy and Administration. 
Miss Lynore Geia was born on Palm Island, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island heritage. Academically prepared as Registered Nurse and Midwife, Master of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and is currently a PhD Candidate at James Cook University. Lynore has extensive experience in industries for better Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, social and emotional well being, education and child care. Lynore is skilled in the areas of qualitative research organisation, planning, community action research, and writing/analytical skills. Lynore’s PhD research is capturing the strengths child rearing practices of vulnerable families on Palm Island; particularly practices embedded in family and wider kinship groups. The contributions she brings to research emanates from her cultural life experience of being a fourth generation Palm Islander. Most of Lynore’s childhood was during the Qld. Government assimilationist period living under the Aboriginal Protection Act. Lynore heard many stories of Murris including her own mother, who as children were transported to Palm Island and her father and others like him who was born and raised under the punitive policies of the time on Palm Island. From a cultural perspective Lynore brings authority, credibility and cultural sensibility to bear in the emerging field of Indigenist Research. 
While serving his apprenticeship as a plumber Richard attended night school to gain entry to Sydney University to study science. He taught science in high schools in NSW, Kenya and the United States. After working for TAFE specialising in reaching marginalised groups, he was contracted to the Health Promotion Unit to examine domestic violence prevention. As a result he pioneered the development of Men's Health and Boys’ Health areas of study. In 1992 he founded a community-based group, Fathers Against Rape, to conduct workshops with teenage boys in schools. As a lecturer in Health Studies in the Discipline of Paediatrics, University of Newcastle and Team Leader of The Engaging fathers Project he has designed and delivered courses and seminars on Health Research, Boys’ development and Father involvement to teachers, nurses, occupational therapists, and medical students. He is currently completing his PhD on father’s attachment to infants and children. 
Robyn Miller is a social worker and family therapist with 25 years experience working in Community Sector, Local Government, Child Protection and Bouverie Centre. She is a member of Victorian Child Death Review Committee for the past 3 years and the recipient of inaugural Robin Clark memorial PhD scholarship. 
Mick is a qualified social worker. For the last 12 years Mick has worked in the Victorian child and family services policy environment. Prior to this he worked for six years in the Victorian child protection system and before that seven years in the UK in child and family services. Since 2002 he has led the expansion of Victoria’s earlier intervention services for vulnerable children and families through the Family Support Innovation Projects and more recently though the Child FIRST initiative. |
 
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