Building the Workforce that Ends Violence and Harm

Over the past few months, WorkUP Queensland has worked closely with the sector to shape a strategic workforce plan for the years ahead. The themes and insights that emerged from this work are now guiding our next steps together as a workforce.

What’s Next: Our Workforce Symposium

Join us in Brisbane on 18 March 2026 for an in‑depth exploration of these strategic themes. The symposium is an opportunity for all domestic and family violence, sexual violence and women’s health and wellbeing workers to come together to unpack the sector’s most pressing workforce challenges. These ‘wicked problems’ need sector wisdom to shape effective workforce development strategies. Key themes include:

• Recruitment and retention
• Workforce wellbeing and safety
• Leadership and governance in a period of rapid growth
• Quality practice, safety and accountability
• Working as part of an integrated system
• Diversity, equity and inclusion.

Guest speakers will share insights emerging from our workforce planning workshops and the 2025 Workforce Survey.

• Vikki Reynolds will join us online to discuss building a safe, sustainable and well workforce.
• Associate Professor Natasha Cortis will explore the themes of recruitment and retention, by sharing her research and inviting discussion about what this means in practice, and what can be done to strengthen and sustain our workforce.

Facilitated by WorkUP, the symposium will bring workers together through conversations and activities focused on these themes. Insights from our consultations align strongly with our earlier workforce survey, giving us a clear and comprehensive picture of sector needs. WorkUP is currently analysing the findings with our team and Reference Group, and developing a drafted high-level, strategic workforce plan to share with you at the symposium.

What We’ve Learnt So Far

Across all themes, we heard a clear sense of pressure at both system and individual levels. The workforce continues to feel the impacts of policy, housing and technological change. Future workforce solutions will need to focus on:

• Strengthening wellbeing, safety and support
• Building digital capability and ethical technology use
• Sustainable attraction and retention strategies.

Workshop participants also envisioned “what good looks like” for the future workforce, one that is:

• Skilled, insightful and trauma-informed
• Diverse, values-driven and informed by lived experience
• Collaborative and multidisciplinary
• Resilient, supported and sustainable
• Respected, valued and well-resourced
• Prevention-focused and forward-thinking
• Grounded, unflappable and committed to good.

Professional Development Priorities

Participants also shared how they prefer to engage with WorkUP and their professional development priorities. These fall broadly into:

• Leadership and governance
• Workforce wellbeing, safety and supervision
• DFV, sexual violence and complex risk practice
• Therapeutic skills
• Children, young people and family-focused practice
• Cultural capability and inclusive practice.

We’d love to hear more. Your input helps us plan effectively and make the best use of our sector’s time and resources.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far—through surveys, workshops, meetings or reference group involvement. Your input is valued and vital for our work.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to share your voice, please get in touch. We look forward to seeing you at Our Workforce Symposium.

Connecting Conversations: A Final Opportunity to Strengthen Practice with Young People

As Connecting Conversations moves into its final phase, we’re reflecting on the impact this project has made across Queensland, and inviting the sector to help shape what might come next.

Since launching, Connecting Conversations has supported practitioners to build confidence, skill, and clarity in navigating challenging conversations with young people accessing youth services. Through a mix of online and face-to-face delivery, the project has created space for learning, reflection, and connection across roles, services, and regions. The project has largely supported the upskilling of youth workers, with content focusing on safe conversations through a domestic and family and sexual violence lens. It provides an opportunity for practitioners working as part of an integrated system, to approach conversations with youth from an alternative perspective.

Across the youth and family support, DFSV and broader human services sectors, Connecting Conversations has reached:

• 220 individuals
• 96 organisations

Participants have come from diverse practice backgrounds, bringing rich perspectives into each workshop. Feedback consistently highlights the value of practical tools, shared learning, and the opportunity to pause and reflect on how conversations can either strengthen or undermine safety, trust, and outcomes.

What makes Connecting Conversations different

The project focuses not just on what to say, but how and why. It supports practitioners to approach complex conversations with curiosity, confidence, and care. It has helped strengthen workforce capability by embedding reflective practice, peer learning, and ongoing skill development.

Final workshops in 2026

This phase of Connecting Conversations is due to conclude in June 2026, with 8 workshops remaining. These sessions are the last opportunity to engage with this program in its current form.

If you’ve been meaning to attend, or to recommend it to your team, now is the time!

Register for our online sessions, held February 12-13th and February 26-27th.

What next?

As we look ahead, we’re keen to hear from both the youth support and specialist DFV, SV and women’s wellbeing sectors:

• Would you like to see advanced Connecting Conversations training offered in the future?
• Would you like to see adapted resources to further support your conversations with young people?

Your feedback will help inform whether WorkUP develops the next program building on the foundations of this project.

Next steps:

• Register for one of the remaining Connecting Conversations workshops
• Encourage colleagues and teams to attend while places remain
• Share your feedback and interest in an advanced offering by emailing kirstie.williamson@healingfoundation.org.au.

Strengthening Queensland’s Response to Substance Use Coercion

Webinar Recording Now Available

Substance use coercion is rapidly emerging as one of the most complex practice challenges facing Queensland’s DFV, AOD, child protection, women’s health and mental health sectors. With coercive control now criminalised in Queensland, practitioners across the state are asking: How do we recognise substance use coercion? What does a safe, coordinated response look like? And how can we work better together across systems?

Our latest SPARK webinar, Strengthening Queensland’s Response to Substance Use Coercion, brought together leading researchers and practitioners to unpack the realities, risks and opportunities surrounding this issue. The recording is now available to watch on demand. Watch the webinar to gain fresh insight into a hidden form of coercive control that profoundly impacts safety, autonomy and recovery and walk away with practical approaches you can apply immediately.

Recorded live on unceded Jaggera and Turrbal lands, this 90‑minute webinar delves into:

• How substance use coercion shows up in real‑world practice
• The connection between substance use and coercive control
• What Queensland practitioners are currently seeing across systems
• Insights from national DFV–AOD collaboration research
• Practical strategies to strengthen cross‑sector responses
• Opportunities for system reform and practitioner‑led innovation.

SPARK shorts

For those who prefer quick, targeted learning, we’ve also created short, topic‑specific video clips. These bite‑sized resources explore key themes, from hidden tactics and harm minimisation to practitioner advice, making it easy to deepen your understanding even when time is limited.

Short on time? Explore the range of shorter videos.

Share these recordings with your colleagues and start a conversation about strengthening your practice when responding to substance use coercion.

Career Progression through Scholarships

The WorkUP Scholarship program has recently awarded 10 new scholarships to sector workers looking to progress their careers.  

Last month we wrapped up a highly competitive Round 11 of our Scholarship Program with 22 applications received across Queensland. Several applications came from regional and remote communities as well as South-East Queensland. It was brilliant to see such strong interest from a diverse range of workforce – leaders, practitioners and allied support roles alike seeking opportunities to fund their career development, with grants of up to $15,000 available. The Scholarship program helps provide equitable access to higher education and career development opportunities for those in our sector, ensuring that our workforce can develop with diverse voices and perspectives.

A skilled workforce is a capable and resilient workforce.

We asked Girija, a grant recipient to reflect on the impact the scholarship grant had:

 “I am very grateful to have received the WorkUP Queensland Scholarship and am excited to start the Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. I really appreciate this opportunity. Being awarded the WorkUP Scholarship made it possible for me to apply for a course I have wanted to do for a long time. The financial support eased the pressure of undertaking a Masters degree. The application process was really straightforward and the information was easily available. I found the information session to be very helpful. The WorkUP Queensland team were approachable, supportive, and promptly responded to my questions. I’m looking forward to this learning journey and to building my counselling and community work skills, as well as sharing what I learn with my colleagues. I would encourage others working in the sector to consider applying for a WorkUP Queensland scholarship”.   

Girija Dadhe, Domestic Violence Integrated Response Manager

To stay updated with scholarship launch dates, check out our scholarship program webpage and keep an eye on our social media.

Student Placement Showcase Series

Throughout 2025, WorkUP Queensland ran the Student Placement Showcase Series, highlighting innovative placement models used by the domestic and family violence, sexual violence and women’s health and wellbeing sectors.

Bringing together sector leaders, placement supervisors, students, and university professionals, the series explores what’s working, what’s possible, and how we can build a stronger, more supported workforce through meaningful student placements.

The series highlights the diversity of placement opportunities and experiences throughout our sector. Episodes include student stories and tips for:

• Hosting outback, rural and remote student placements
• Perpetrator intervention and men’s behaviour change placements
• Hosting students with lived experience
• Hosting culturally and linguistically diverse students
• ‘Placement Poverty’
• Unique placement structures (10-day placements).

The showcase recordings are a valuable resource, designed for organisations, looking to host a placement student. Through sharing practical advice from sector leaders, the Student Placement Showcase Series presents supportive approaches to student placement models that grow and sustain our workforce.

Help grow our workforce and check out the Student Placement Showcase Series now.

Walking Alongside: Counselling with Survivors of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence

Throughout September and October 2025, WorkUP Queensland partnered with facilitators Sue Kitchener and Tania Felstead (Wattle Tree Wellness) to deliver the Walking Alongside: Counselling with Survivors of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence workshops in Townsville and Cairns. Each workshop was held over two full days, offering participants the time and space to immerse themselves in the content, engage in reflective conversations, and enjoy meaningful connection with colleagues.

The workshops brought together counsellors, practitioners, case workers and advocates from across the north, north-west, central and far north Queensland regions to deepen reflective practice, explore trauma-informed and culturally responsive ways of working, and strengthen practitioner wellbeing.

A wide range of counselling skills, frameworks and practice approaches were explored and practised together within the group, with the goal of strengthening confidence, extending practice skills, and integrating new perspectives into day-to-day work.

The workshops opened conversations about the values and motivations that draw practitioners to this work, and the importance of presence, safety and humility in supporting people impacted by violence. The sessions also highlighted ethics in practice, as well as local knowledge and the wisdom of First Nations practitioners who generously contributed to the discussions.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many participants describing the workshops as “just what I needed.”

Thank you to all the participants who joined the conversations, shared their practice wisdom, and explored new ideas for their work. Walking Alongside will continue throughout 2026, so keep an eye out for workshop announcements.