Kinship Carers Victoria podcast series Kinship Carers Victoria

Children and young people spend significant amounts of their lives online in the cyber world, but how do we ensure that their online experiences are safe? There are so many issues to consider: how do you tackle cyber bullying, deal with the threat of grooming of children, what is the right amount of screen time, how do you create a safe gaming environment?
In this podcast Susan McLean of Cybersafety Solutions answers these and many other questions around helping children and young people to navigate the online world safely. Susan is acknowledged as Australia’s foremost expert in the area of cyber safety and young people.  

What is neurodiversity? This is a term describing the idea that people experience and interact with the world in many varied ways but there is no one ‘right’ way of thinking, learning, or behaving, with these differences not viewed as deficits.
Nikki Valentini, Clinical Nutritionist, functional medicine practitioner, and director of SuperNature Nutrition, joined Kinship Carers Victoria again to speak in depth about the effect of diet and nutrition on children with autism, ADHD, OCD and other manifestations of neurodiversity.

In this podcast we speak with Victoria’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, Liana Buchanan, about the Commission’s ‘Let Us Learn’ inquiry report, tabled in the Victorian parliament in November 2023.
The report shows that the education engagement and outcomes for children and young people in out-of-home care trail significantly behind those of their peers.
Liana explains why the Commission conducted the report and outlines its reaction to the findings. She also discusses some of the Commission’s most pressing recommendations resulting from the inquiry.

Throughout our lives, grief is an unavoidable and essential part of what it is to be human. When individuals and families experience a loss, every member of the family can feel and process their grief in different ways. Grandparents, parents or carers face the difficulty of managing their caring role while knowing how to help children understand their grief – all whilst also trying to accept and deal with their own feelings.
In this podcast we speak with Janice Butera, specialist grief practitioner with Grief Australia, who shares with us her knowledge about grief and loss and the challenges that can occur for families when faced with loss. Janice also offers some strategies for families to use in navigating their way through these difficult periods.

Access or contact visits are where children in kinship care can spend time and engage with members of their biological or extended family. The visits can be formal or informal, and sometimes they are supervised by a professional, such as a child protection worker or agency worker, or even by the kinship carer themselves.
In this podcast, we spoke with Adam Lyons, Managing Director of Lancaster Consulting, who addressed some of the more common issues carers face in preparing the children in their care for access visits and outlined strategies for debriefing children afterwards.

What does the latest research tell us about the benefits of play for the wellbeing of children and young people? The February 2023 edition of the Royal Children’s Hospital National Child Health Poll – Australian Families: How we play – has produced some findings of great interest to kinship carers.In this podcast we speak with paediatrician, researcher and child health advocate Dr Anthea Rhodes, the founding director of the poll. Anthea has clinical interests in the health needs of the vulnerable child, with expertise in child behaviour and development.