about this site
This website is for all those working with families in need of support: community / child and family health nurses, allied health professionals, general practitioners, paediatricians, professionals in childcare, domestic and family violence, child protection services, among others.
The content of this site is based on research conducted in Australia, in collaboration with diverse services and partners.
The site describes the key findings and explains how linked tools and resources can be used to reflect on practice, and help to make every moment a practitioner has with a family count.
If you prefer to work offline and have everything accessible in one place, the resources and associated worksheets can be downloaded as a Handbook.
Further information is available about the research team, the research itself, and our partners.
Please note our acknowledgement below.
This website is the outcome of a three-year research project, called Creating Better Futures. It reflects the voices of over 170 people involved in services for families with young children. Parents, practitioners and volunteers generously allowed us to observe what happens in different services and to talk to them about their work or their experience as parents.
All the key findings from the project are presented. These describe features of practice that are already occurring and that we found are important in making positive change happen for families. Our explanations, reflective questions, and questions to explore with parents are intended to enable helpers and parents to enhance outcomes by fine tuning what is already working most effectively.
Our analysis constantly focused on the ingredients of impactful partnership between helpers and families. By impactful, we mean processes that are purposeful and lead to positive changes in families. By partnership, we mean relationships founded on mutual respect. Our particular perspective is that partnership is a purposeful relationship that involves different people coming together, using what they all know to produce something new. This could be new insights, new understandings, new knowledge, new solutions, and new relationships.
The resources are divided into five sections. Readers can go straight to the sections that seem most relevant to them – they don’t have to be read in sequence. However, there is special value in the whole story that is presented, and we encourage you to briefly visit the key findings from each section and the overview page to help inform decisions about which parts will be most useful.
Each section describes relevant findings and concepts, and has a related worksheet. Reading through each section and completing its worksheet may be recognised as contributing to required professional learning or professional development hours if documented appropriately. We suggest confirming this with your manager or supervisor. If you would like a Certificate of Completion, please email Nick on betterfutureswebsite@gmail.com. Scans or photos of completed worksheets would normally be sufficient evidence.
acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) now stands. We pay respects to Elders past and present as traditional custodians of knowledge in this place.
We offer the same acknowledgement and pay the same respects to Aboriginal Peoples and Elders from the areas where fieldwork for the Creating Better Futures study was conducted:
- The Darug and Guringai Peoples of what is now Hornsby
- The Wallumedegal People of what is now Ryde
- The Cammeraygal People of what is now North Sydney
- The Cabrogal People of the Darug Nation of what is now Fairfield
- The Daruk and Eora People of what is now Canterbury-Bankstown and Sydney Eastern Suburbs
- The Kaurna people of what is now the Adelaide region
- The Palawa and Pakana Peoples of Lutruwita, what is now Tasmania