Family Voice Spotlight: Conference Reflections

Published

Monday, March 30, 2026 - 12:00 PM

This Family Voice Spotlight shares Jaimiee Mahoney's reflections on the 2025 National Child and Family Hubs Network Conference.

I am still carrying the feeling of the inaugural National Child and Family Hubs Network Conference.

It began on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country with a Welcome to Country from Elder Uncle Bill Nicholson. Moments like that do something important. They slow a room down and remind us that the work we are doing sits inside much older stories about land, responsibility and care for community.

From there the day unfolded in a way that felt thoughtful and, at times, unexpectedly moving.

I want to start by saying something that many people who work in lived experience spaces know well but do not always say out loud. Being invited into systems as a “lived experience voice” can sometimes feel complicated. Sometimes it is meaningful and genuinely valued. Other times it can feel like a story is being borrowed for a moment without the structures around it really shifting.

So when spaces do try to do this well, it matters.

The support to attend the conference through flights, accommodation and a participation fee made a very real difference to me. I say that openly. At the moment I am navigating unemployment while raising neurodivergent children as an autistic mother myself. Practical supports like that make it possible for people like me to actually be in the room rather than contributing from the margins. It signals that lived experience knowledge has value and deserves to be held with care.

One of the most surprising moments for me came during the plenary, when the Melbourne Playback Theatre Company invited audience members to share their stories, experiences and ideas. The company then performed these reflections live, bringing them to life in a unique way. They listened to my reflections of my childhood which was marred by violence and abuse. In a matter of minutes they captured something emotionally true about a journey that has taken me a lifetime to understand.

I have spent many years in therapy trying to make sense of my own story. Watching a group of artists hold that story with humour, tenderness and precision was something different altogether. It reminded me that healing and learning do not only happen through formal systems. Sometimes they happen through story, play and being witnessed by others.

That moment stayed with me.

It also reinforced something I keep coming back to in this work. Systems often focus heavily on information, policy and programs. Those things matter. But people rarely change simply because they receive more information. Change tends to happen when something reaches the heart as well as the head.

That is where story, culture and connection come in.

One of the questions I keep asking is how Child and Family Hubs can continue to grow into places where those elements are genuinely present. Not just service entry points, but spaces where families feel safe enough to arrive as they are. Where children, parents and carers can shape what the place becomes rather than simply receiving what has already been designed for them.

If we want services that work for families, families need to be involved in shaping them.

What stayed with me most from the conference was the sense that many people across the country are trying, in their own ways, to move systems in that direction. First Nations leaders, practitioners, researchers, parents, caregivers and lived experience advocates were all in the room together. Different forms of knowledge sitting side by side. Not always neatly aligned, but in conversation.

At one point I joked that the room felt a bit like a gathering of wombats. The collective noun for wombats is a wisdom. It felt strangely fitting. A room full of people digging away at complex problems, slowly and patiently trying to create something better for children and families.

The work ahead is not simple. Systems change rarely is.

But there was something encouraging about being in a space where people were willing to sit with complexity and continue the work together.

That feels like a place worth digging.

With gratitude,

Jaimee

Jaimee Mahony, Founder - Duty to Care, Lived Experience Advocate