AIM – To share with the audience the work Hester Hornbrook Academy are doing to implement trauma-informed practices that support and empower First Nations students.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT – We see the importance of leading in trauma-informed, healing-oriented education for our students in a Special Assistance School. This perspective recognises that healing, identity formation, and educational engagement are deeply interconnected, and that culturally safe environments are essential.
RELEVANCE – This presentation highlights the key features of trauma-informed practice that can support schools to engage First Nations students meaningfully and create connection.
CONTRIBUTION – Our strategic intent to put students first by designing every wellbeing and learning experience around their aspirations and life pathways is reflected in the healing-oriented approach, where ‘Wellbeing for Learning and Learning for Wellbeing’ is foundational. We share how cultural safety is created through ongoing consultation with First Nations communities, ensuring identity, connection, and self-determination are embedded in curriculum, pedagogy, and campus design.
DESCRIPTION – The First Nations Community Engagement Lead strengthens our healing-oriented approach, ensuring trauma-informed practice is grounded in First Nation ways of knowing, being, and doing. We will share how this role and targeted actions advance a model of education where cultural identity and healing are not peripheral but central, shaping wellbeing, strengthening community connection, and supporting lifelong learning pathways.
ENGAGEMENT – The audience will be engaged through an interactive workshop with activities to support understanding of the practices being implemented.

Aim: Side By Side (SBS) is a school-based early intervention program grounded in trauma-informed practice and genuine partnership to offer a culturally safe, non-stigmatising pathway to support vulnerable children and families. Our strengths-based approach asks educators and service providers to plan for the impacts of intergenerational trauma, and histories of institutional harm on families' capacity to engage with schools and external services.
Background/Context: Many vulnerable families carry deep mistrust of services arising from histories of over-surveillance, removal, and repeated system failures. First Nations families in particular, intergenerational experiences of institutional harm have shaped initial responses to support. When` cultural safety isn’t considered, families disengage. With 30% of participants in the program identifying as First Nations, cultural safety was foundational, not incidental.
Contribution: SBS, delivered by Berry Street Yooralla in partnership with the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency, supported approximately 300 students across nine Victorian schools — First Nations students and families, alongside refugee families, those experiencing intergenerational poverty, and families impacted by family violence. The program's three-tiered design integrated whole-school trauma-informed transformation, direct student literacy and social-emotional support, and meaningful family engagement. Trauma-informed professional development and termly consultations were sustained across the five-year pilot, embedding culturally safe practice as schoolwide norms.
Engagement: Participants will learn:
• How to work collaboratively with First Nations organisations to ensure cultural perspectives shape engagement from the ground up.
• How to build strengths-based partnerships with families experiencing disadvantage.
• How the three-tiered model improved student learning, wellbeing, and family connection.