2024 Connexions Conference - Program
Friday 29th November
8:00am - 8:50am
Conference Registration - Lecture Theatre 2
Registration opens with breakfast and barista coffee thanks to CS Espresso.
9:00am - 9:35am
Conference Welcome
Acknowledgement of Country by Jackie Wruck Safe and Together Institute
Conference Welcome Sharon Walsh Vice President Central Coast Domestic Violence Committee
Housekeeping
Central Coast Domestic Violence Achievements
Sharon Walsh Vice President Central Coast Domestic Violence Committee
10:15am – 10:55am
Director of Primary Prevention Women and Girls Emergency Centre Sydney
and Chair of Our Watch.
11:00am – 11:25am
Amenities Break
1:00pm – 2:05pm
Lunch
2:15pm – 3:05pm
Founders of She is not your Rehab and Authors of NZ #1 Bestseller She Is Not Your Rehab.
3:10pm – 3:40pm
Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and
Associate Professor of Criminology in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.
3:45pm – 4:20pm
Afternoon Tea
5:00pm
Close of Conference
5:00pm - 6:00pm
Champagne and Canapes
2024 Connexions Conference Guest Speakers
- Jane Matts - Sisters in Law Project
- Moo Baulch - Primary Prevention Women and Girls Emergency Centre Sydney and Our Watch
- Amanda Morgan (virtual) - Trauma Informed Indigenous Lawyering
- Olsen Clark - No to Violence
- Mataio + Sarah Brown She is not your Rehab
- Kate Fitzgibbon - Monash
- Jackie Wruck - Safe and Together Institute
Jane Matts
Jane Matts is a survivor Advocate, the Founder and Practice Leader of the Sisters in Law Project (SILP) which started in 2019. SILP is a volunteer advocacy group focused on project centric solutions to legal issues, primarily in family law in Australia. Jane has used her skills as an experienced, formally trained, business change manager and educator to achieve this. She is a founding member of Lived Experience Advisory Committee (LEPAC) Domestic Violence NSW (DVNSW) and firmly believes that lived experience and expertise should be central to innovation and change within the DFSV movement. Jane and SILP volunteers have worked with media such as Jess Hill and Tosca Looby on the award winning SBS series See What You Made Me Do, Future Women, ABC, The Project, and many print media articles. SILP was represented at the recent DFSV Round Tables with Micaela Cronin, and in developing the DFSV National Plan in 2022/3 with the Federal Women’s Safety Commissioner to name a few. SILP has lobbied for change in both state and federal jurisdictions as it relates to the injustices in our legal systems that specifically impact women. This includes driving factual, evidence based experiences of cross jurisdictional conflict between state child protection and Family Law that was partly addressed by the NSW Sate Parliament Children and Young Person Committee. This SILP project resulted in a formal review and a series of important recommendations to rectify the ‘misalignment’ observed. SILP also presented DFSV lived expertise of regional women to the NSW state inquiry into Coercive Control. Jane has developed a process of legal case management and support called Guided Advocacy where volunteers assist survivors by linking them with legal professionals and services to increase understanding of legal systems and manage (mostly) family law matters. SILP members attend court as support when needed, often from beginning to end of the legal cycle, including Appeals, which can take years. Jane has trained lived experts to present their experiences safely to individuals or groups, to work on policy and provide information in a trauma informed way. Jane is a graduate of the DVNSW Voices for Change initiative funded by the Luke Batty Foundation and was heavily involved in the development and launch of the Trauma Recovery Centre based in Wollongong. Jane is currently looking to obtain a scholarship to complete a PhD in Lived Expertise and address with members of SILP, the serious, unsafe practices in family law matters.
Moo Baulch
Moo is a social justice and gender equality leader with a career-long commitment to addressing and preventing violence against women and LGBTIQ+ people, campaigning for human rights, social inclusion and peace in Australia, UK, Spain and South East Asia. Moo led peak body Domestic Violence NSW through an era of significant change amidst growing public interest in the issue of gendered violence from 2014-19. In 2020 as Head of Customer Vulnerability at the Commonwealth Bank, Moo supported the
development of the first trauma-informed customer support team in an Australian financial institution and continues to provide advice on the development of Commbank’s Next Chapter financial abuse initiative. Moo is Director of Primary Prevention at Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre (WAGEC) a frontline specialist service for women and children in Sydney and was appointed chair of the board of Our Watch, Australia’s prevention of violence against women organisation in April 2022.
Moo speaks fluent Spanish, is a proud queer parent to two young children and lives on Gadigal land that was never ceded.
Amanda Morgan (Virtual)
Amanda is a Yorta Yorta woman, a researcher and legal professional who holds a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Psychology and is undertaking a PhD in Law. Her diverse expertise includes the areas of racism, harmful sexual behaviours, intrafamilial child sexual abuse, domestic, sexual and family violence, serious mental illness, coercive control, incarceration, religious cults, and law and policy reform. Leading trauma-informed and First Nations led solutions are at the forefront of Amanda’s approach and work. Her additional legal expertise includes working in the Crown Solicitor’s Office in NSW and within a number of legal centres, with experience of the Children’s, Family, District and Supreme Courts.
Amanda is sought after as an advisor and representative on national committees and strategies, including being appointed as an advisor on the Policy and Advocacy committee at the National Women’s Safety Alliance, the National Strategy Advisory, Monitoring and Evaluation Co-Design, and National Clinical Reference Groups as part of the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030. Amanda was also appointed to the Expert Advisory Group to the National Anti-Racism campaign 'Racism. It Stops With Me’ at the Australian Human Rights Commission. As a survivor advocate and a Member of the Adult Survivor College at the National Centre for Action on Child Abuse, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Steering and Lived Experience Policy Advisory Committees at Domestic Violence NSW, Amanda regularly shares her lived experience to help drive change in policy and practice across Australia.
Amanda has been featured in the Daniel Morcombe Foundation’s 2023 Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson, the All About Women Festival at Sydney Opera House, the BBC UK, the Law Society of NSW Journal, training materials for It's Time We Talked and campaigns with Teach Us Consent.
In 2022 Amanda was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and has most recently been to New Zealand, USA, Canada, England, Scotland and Iceland to investigate trauma-informed approaches to legal processes and justice for historically underserved survivors.
Olsen Clark
Olsen Clark is a Policy and Advocacy Advisor at No to Violence, the largest peak body in Australia for organisations and individuals who work with people using violence to end domestic and family violence. With a Master of Social Policy, Olsen has helped drive No to Violence’s policy and advocacy across areas including adolescent violence in the home (AVITH), gambling, coercive control and government strategy. Driven by a desire to collaborate and amplify practitioner voices, Olsen has recently led No to Violence’s work on the Victorian inquiry into capturing data on people using family violence and advocacy in NSW to boost funding for men’s behaviour change programs. Olsen is deeply passionate about social justice, particularly in how it intersects with gender equality, economic policy, housing rights, and the role of sports.
She is not your Rehab
Taimalelagi Mataio Faafetai (Matt) Brown, is a New Zealand born Samoan author and renowned communicator who works to eradicate domestic violence by supporting those who perpetrate violence, to heal. A New Zealand Māori (Ngāpuhi/Te Rarawa) wāhine, Sarah is a writer and producer who is passionate about the mandate of ‘creating violence free communities’ and has worked alongside Matt to re-define the way we communicate about family violence with creativity and innovation.
Together the couple co-founded She Is Not Your Rehab and launched the concept in Matt’s 2019 TEDx talk. He says the movement is an invitation for men to acknowledge their own childhood trauma and to take responsibility for their healing so that they can transform their pain instead of transmitting it on those around them. Both Sarah and Matt became members of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2022 and were awarded a Commonwealth Points of Light award by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as Head of the Commonwealth before she passed.
Prof. Kate Fitz-Gibbon
Kate is an internationally recognised expert in domestic and family violence, femicide, perpetrator interventions, and the impacts of policy and practice reform. Kate is a Professor (Practice) with the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University, and an Honorary Professorial Fellow with the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. In 2024, Kate founded Sequre Consulting, which is committed to advancing safety and equality.
Kate has advised on homicide law reform and family violence reviews in Australia and internationally, and has led submissions to state, national and international inquiries. Kate has published her research extensively, including in the 2024 book, Our National Crisis: Violence against Women and Children (Monash University Press). Her research has also been cited by the High Court of Australia. Kate has been appointed to a number of board, committee and advisory group roles by state and federal governments in Australia. In 2021 Kate was appointed Chair of Respect Victoria by the Victorian Government. Kate is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders 2024 class.
Jackie Wruck
Jackie Wruck has been a Certified Trainer with the Safe & Together Institute in Australia since 2017 and joins the Safe & Together Institute as the Asia Pacific Regional Manager! Jackie lives in Queensland, AU, and has been working within the community sector for over 20 years. This included working within Government and Non-Government agencies that worked with vulnerable individuals and families in Australia. Jackie has worked in the fields of Child Protection and Domestic Violence as a frontline practitioner in both advocating and crisis support of families. She has also worked in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations as a DV Specialist and would consult on cases that involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. Jackie has the lived experience, knowledge and understanding of the issue of DFV in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and was the cultural lead for the Walking With Dad’s program, which is grounded in the Safe & Together Model. Jackie has assisted in bringing both Safe & Together and the Child Protection Child Placement Principles framework together to enhance the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in Australia to assist in keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children out of the Child Protection system. In addition to training on the Safe & Together Model, Jackie continued to use the Safe & Together Model directly with families as a child protection professional, coaching and consulting on cases with domestic violence. She continues to be committed to the safety and well-being of children and families through practice changes through the Safe & Together Model. Jackie will be representing, assisting and supporting Safe & Together Institute in the development and implementation of the model across Australia and Asia Pacific regions.
