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Our recent youth-led forum was big. Big in the way that matters. Big because young people in that room spoke and this sector had the opportunity to listen.
On Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th of May, AbSec hosted our youth-led quarterly sector forum. Over 2 days, young people, ACCOs, community members, and sector partners came together to name what’s broken, share what’s working and push for what our mob deserve.
We want to take a moment to hold everything that was shared because it deserves to be carried forward.
Tuesday 19 May
We opened with a welcome to Bidjigal Country from Aunty Lola, before our young people and Sherry-Ann Toomey, AbSec’s Director of Sector Engagement, set the scene for the day.
Then came the session that set the tone for everything that followed. A panel of Aboriginal young people with lived experience of child protection and out-of-home care told us plainly that the current system is not working. It is harming young people, and the money — $1.9 billion spent by DCJ on out-of-home care in 2023, and $1,182 per child per day in interim residential care in 2026 — needs to be spent differently.
One young person put it this way:
“When I hear the word protection, the emotions that come up are confusion, disappointment, and uncertainty.”
Because protection became something systems managed, and children ended up paying the price for what wasn’t prevented. They asked us: what if more of that investment went into housing, healing, mental health, cultural connections, and keeping families safely together? What if prevention was protection?
After morning tea, attendees broke into working groups on out-of-home care: what needs to change? The answers were consistent — more accountability, stronger community-led supports for families, and a genuine role for the Child Safety and Wellbeing Commission and the NSW Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People.
We then turned to cultural care planning, including grief, loss, and Sorry Business. We heard about the gap between rural and urban experiences. In rural communities, mob often know who children are — their lineage, their country, their connections. But in cities, that cultural knowledge can be lost across generations of displacement. Too many children are placed outside of their communities, cut off from the very identity that sustains them. That is why cultural care plans that are genuinely implemented matter so much.
We also need to name Sorry Business directly. So many young people in care miss funerals because workers and services don’t understand how significant that is. Sorry Business is culture. It is connection. It is 500 threads of belonging that a young person in care is being denied when they are not there to farewell their family.
We then heard from Eliza Munro of MacKillop, who introduced us to Seasons of Healing — a grief and loss education program that supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to build resilience and keep spirits strong through change and loss. And from Lauren Stracey, CEO of Youth Action, on the work they’re doing to amplify the voices of young people.
After lunch, we moved into the afternoon session on aftercare. A lived experience panel spoke about what it feels like to exit care — before you leave, systems are involved in every part of your life: meetings, reports, decisions, placements. People are constantly involved. And then you leave, and the quiet is deafening.
One young person told us:
“Everything about me is written down somewhere, but when I actually needed aftercare, there was nothing there to hold me through it.”
Young people were clear about what real change looks like — aftercare that is legally enforceable, automatic and trackable, triggered the moment a young person leaves care, with real consequences when services don’t follow through. Aftercare is ensuring that every young person leaving care has a right to safe, accessible housing that supports them to build their life.
We then heard from Katherine McKernan, NSW Advocate for Children and Young People, and from Rachel Ardler from Thirriwirri on the Office for Youth Strategic Planning. Their workshops supported young people to lead the change the Advocate will champion. We thank them for taking the time to work with us.
The day closed beautifully with a performance by Dhinawan Yarn, Kobie Dee, and Boney Brothers.
Wednesday 20 May
Wednesday was for ACCOs and mob. It was just as rich.
We opened with a Know Your Rights workshop led by Associate Professor BJ Newton from UNSW’s Social Policy Research Centre. Young people engaged directly with research that will shape a resource to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people understand and assert their rights.
DCJ then provided updates to the ACCO sector on the Out-of-Home Care Strategy and on the organisational restructure, including changes to the Transforming Aboriginal Outcomes Division, the new Child and Family Framework, and the centralisation of commissioning and planning. AbSec will continue to engage closely with what these changes mean for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people, and communities, and ACCOs on the ground.
After morning tea, our team led a session on housing solutions for young people exiting care, co-designing and testing resources to address one of the most urgent gaps young people face when they leave the system.
And then, one of the most grounding moments of the two days — a yarning circle of intergenerational advocacy. Community coming together to share knowledge, to honour what has been passed down, and to think about what we are building for those who come after us. Thank you to Aunty Deb and Aunty Jen Swan, to Dan Daylight, to Kobie Dee, and to Bubba for creating that space, and to all of the young mob who came, who stayed, and who shared their voices.
We closed with AbSec and Mounty Aboriginal Youth Community Services bringing the forum to a close together.
2 days. Dozens of sessions. Hundreds of voices. And a single consistent message from young people who led this forum:
We know what needs to change, and we are ready to lead the change. We need the system around us to finally catch up.
To every young person who shared their story, their knowledge, and their vision — thank you. What you gave this sector cannot just be written into a policy document. It lives in the people who were in the room, and we will carry it forward.
A big thank you to our sponsors for backing young people to lead this gathering: Cages Foundation, Pastel Foundation, MacKillop Family Services, Office for Youth NSW, Youth Action NSW, Act for Kids, and Legal Aid NSW.
AbSec will keep listening, keep amplifying, and keep working alongside communities, ACCOs, and young people until the system reflects what our mob deserves.
Stay deadly.
