Sarah Davies AM On Trauma Aware Education Amplifying Children's Voices

Sarah has had a wide-ranging career with executive roles in a range of industries from tertiary education to private sector consulting, marketing and strategy. 

For the last 14 years, her focus has been in the for-purpose sector, where she has been a passionate advocate for children and social change.

Her desire to work with like-minded people, to ensure that children and young people are safe and secure and building positive futures, was forged through 18 years as a Director of Kids Under Cover, and an exciting and rewarding four years as the CEO of The Reach Foundation.

Sarah discusses creating a safer world for young people, trauma aware education systems, and the opportunity for growth in the philanthropy and social impact business sectors.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in the social impact space?

[Sarah Davies AM] - Professionally I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm not an anything in particular, which sometimes worries me, but clearly not enough to have done anything about it! My focus on community building and the for-purpose space really was just a part of my DNA; it was the influence of my parents, the circumstances regarding where I was born and how I grew up. Really, almost before words could describe it, I always understood the critical nature of equality of opportunity and equity and how life randomly throws that out of whack for so many people. I was always one of those kids that would whinge on about how things weren't fair, "it's not fair, it's not fair,” I would say. I was one of those little bratty kids. My father's response every single time was, "what are you going to do about it?" I was raised with this expectation that I had agency, that I had options, choice and the ability to influence. I suppose that developed into a fundamental belief that all of us have an ability and responsibility to create the world we want to live in. But for so many of us, for whatever reason, some of that ability is diminished. I think the onus is on the rest of us a bit more to help put that ability back fully in their hands. That's just how I've grown up, and I've been really lucky in that I've been able to choose careers, hobbies and community roles that just feed that desire to build strong communities.

Were there any particular milestones or turning points for you on that journey?

I think a couple of key lessons happened rather than milestones. The first one was it's so easy when you work in the social change space to get overwhelmed with the scope, the escalation of the need and the breadth of the issues and challenges we have. It's very easy to intellectually get drowned by a sense of, “this is just so big, how are we going to tackle it?”What I've learned is that everybody, every day doing something deliberate, intentional and positive actually seriously shifts the needle. Rather than being the rabbit in the headlights and thinking, "oh, this is all too hard," or, "where do you start," individual, ordinary people can affect incredible change just by focusing, being intentional, deliberate, and finding allies to do it with. The other big lesson I wish I'd learned 15-20 years earlier was that actually, this is a long game. You can't fight every battle all the time with the same intensity. In my twenties and thirties, I was red hot and had a go at everything, but I didn't understand what people meant when they said to me, “you've got to learn to bide your time.” That would frustrate me, and in my late fifties now, I finally understand it's a long game. Play this game with strategy, intent and thought.

As the CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, can you share a little bit more about that role, the enterprise, its purpose and the impact it's generating?

As a foundation, we were born out of the Port Arthur tragedy, when Walter Mikac lost his wife and two daughters, Alannah and Madeline. He founded the organisation on the belief that all children should have a safe and happy childhood and should live free from violence and trauma. Now 26 years later, that is still at the heart of us, the flame that keeps us going. Our focus is to fight for the rights of children and young people to be safe, so that their future is strong. It's a very simple proposition. We do this in four key ways. The first is through our trauma informed work, and this we've been doing now for 26 years. It is the specialist therapeutic healing and recovering from trauma work that we do with children and young people who are referred into us by our partner agencies, most often the police or family violence agencies. We work individually with clients to help them heal and recover, and we run a case management support system around them with their carers, parents, doctors, schools and teachers to create that ecosystem of support. We also have extended that work into kindergartens, early childhood centres and primary schools as a result of demand, because what we're seeing is young children turning up to these services, displaying lots of behavioural signs that something has happened to them. But, with our early childhood educators and teachers, the pre-service training doesn't help them identify or respond to it.

We are embedded in a centre or a school, working with the school and teachers to support the children, but actually to build a whole trauma informed understanding and practice across the organisation.

The second part of our work is around empowering positive digital citizens. It grew out of an anti-bullying program that the organisation started 20 odd years ago. That morphed into anti cyber bullying and the whole eSmart school program that's been running for about 11 years. That eSmart school program has developed into online safety, and now our framing is quite intentional. It’s deliberate about how we make sure we build the digital intelligence and media literacy skills, attitudes, competencies and behaviours in children and young people so that they are able to make the most of all of the opportunities that their digital worlds and digital lives present. But they also can keep themselves and other people safe and create good experiences for them and other people online? That's a national service primarily in partnership with schools across the country. Our third area of work builds on the IP and content from those areas, and we run a program called Dolly's Dream in partnership with Tick and Kate Everett, who very sadly lost their daughter to suicide about four years ago. It's really an anti-bullying, kindness, online safety and wellbeing program, but exclusively for remote, regional, and rural Australia. This is where Tick and Kate are from and where the communities help us to deliver those programs.

Our fourth area is across all of that, but by doing all that work on the ground, what it allows us to see [and what at times makes us pull our hair out in frustration] are all the problems with the systems design. Whether it's lack of or poor regulation, the rules of the game don't work, and so our advocacy and policy agenda get sucked out of our experience on the ground. We have a range of priorities we're trying to prosecute through a ton of advocacy and policy lens, because if we can get the rules of the game changed and the universal services meeting these needs, then we don't need these programs.

Having worked in the philanthropy space, can you tell us more about its role in Australia as well as the changes and opportunities you've observed?

I have to say, I think philanthropy is critical to resourcing and empowering positive social change. In some cases, we do know how to fix these problems; the things that are blocking us are not about knowledge and programs. But most times, this is hard stuff. It's not easy to address, and so the resourcing that we need has got to have a high-risk tolerance, embrace innovation, allow failure, learning and improvement. Philanthropy is our social risk capital, it's the only dollar in play in our charitable sector across the country, which by the way, use 8% of GDP our and involves 11% of working Australians. It is a significant engine and economic house in Australia. But philanthropy is the only dollar in the mix that is free to behave like that, and what I find sad is we treat the philanthropy dollar in the same way as we treat a government or corporate dollar. By design they are different.

You lose philanthropy’s power if you don't exploit the characteristics of that social risk capital and its freedom to the absolute max. Philanthropy is critical and the most beautiful enabler of positive social change.

Philanthropy in Australia is strong. We have seen over time [although there've been individual years where it's dipped up and down], really good growth in planned, thoughtful and structured giving, which is how I define philanthropy. It's different to the spontaneous, generous, fundraising giving; it's planned, thoughtful and structured overtime with intent. It is in partnership and thoughtful about how that dollar gets used to create impact. We have seen great progress in both the size of philanthropy in Australia and its behaviour and attitudes. How philanthropy responded during COVID for example was just amazing. Giving went up. The way that philanthropists managed or controlled their grants was suddenly much more open, flexible, and responsive to community needs. That behaviour, long-term untied funding, backed good people, and was not overly restrictive in how you use the money as the recipient. This is where you can get the most power out of philanthropy. Now, what I find disappointing is Philanthropy Australia released a report recently indicating that behaviour has slipped back to a more restrictive tied approach. I think that's a real detriment, the power from philanthropy comes from its freedom. The other area where we do need to see change is we just need to see more of it. Whilst [philanthropy] has grown, we still really lag other countries in terms of how many people in that high net wealth space are giving this way. I'm not going to compare us to America, because lots of people do that and culturally, I think we're quite different. But in Australia, as a percentage of GDP, total giving is about 0.8%, whereas in New Zealand [much closer cousins to us], it's 1.8%. We need more giving and more philanthropy. The one area I think that philanthropy has changed significantly in the last five or six years is its understanding of the role of advocacy and systems change. What has been fabulous to see is the appetite of philanthropists to support policy and systems change through advocacy work, and that looks like it's a sticky behaviour, which is fantastic.

What are steps and key learnings you could share with change makers across sectors looking to grow their impact?

I'm really glad you gave me a bit of a heads up on this question, because I don't know if I could answer very helpfully off the cuff! I have thought about it, and I think there are five things, and they're going to sound a bit 'motherhoody', but I really think this is what I've learned (in no particular order). The first one is we must connect; we must build our networks with our peers. We must engage, we must keep learning and listening and be out there connecting with communities and peers all the time. The second one builds on that, which is we have to collaborate. This is not about us, it's not about the brands of our various organisations, it's not about the longevity of our programs, it's all about the outcomes we are chasing. We must find our allies, our partners, and we have to work together. That's when exciting stuff happens. That's when the magic really happens. The third one is we have to keep learning, it's really easy to get distracted in an organisation where resources are stretched, demand is increasing, the work is really important and, in many instances, lifesaving. Time to stop and learn is seen as a bit of a luxury, but we must keep learning. If resources are limited for formal time out or formal professional development, then we must find other ways. For myself, one of the ways I have loved learning is by participating in other organisations boards, committees and working groups, because that allows me to think at a systems or strategic level, but without the daily pressure of delivering it right here and now. It allows my brain to make connections between that and then what I'm trying to do in our organisation. The fourth one is related to that and is something getting increased attention in community and society. It is this realisation that we've got to be curious. We shut down difference, we shut down disagreement, but we've really got to build our curiosity muscle and chase the evidence. [We need to discover] what is the new thinking? What's the counterpoint? Why do people disagree? Why did that not work? If we don't feed our curiosity muscle, we're going to be so much the poorer for it. Then the fifth one is we must be generous. We must be generous with our resources, with what we know, with our knowledge, with our tools. We've got to put it out there and give it to anybody else that it might help, because first, the world gives it right back at you, but secondly, it's about the outcomes, and a rising tide lifts all boats.

You've got extensive experience in the youth and education spaces. What are some of the key learnings, challenges, and opportunities you’ve observed from working in this space?

I feel so blessed to be able to work in this space. For me, prevention, early intervention, children and young people are my happy places. Equality of opportunity is just perfect. I think that the learnings and opportunities are the same thing for me, so my top two would be, first of all, the brilliance and power of children and young people in and of themselves. They're awesome! If you need to be inspired or motivated about the future of the world, hang out with some children and young people, because oh my god they are exciting. Their ability, resourcefulness, resilience and insight, we need their voices, experiences and advice on how to do this stuff better. How do we get them front and centre in terms of the policies, regulations and the programs that have been designed to affect them, but in many instances no one's even thought about them and the impact that it has had?

That's been the biggest lesson and joy, but it's also our biggest opportunity; how do we harness their wisdom, insight, energy, and ability to design what they need?

The second learning is also an opportunity. If we are thoughtful, deliberate, intentional and we use evidence-based practice, we can create positive change. This stuff works, and it may be slow, it may fail at times, but we can do this. It's absolutely within our power to do it. I see it every day, so we just need more of that. I think the learnings are the opportunities. From a challenges perspective, you've caught me in a week where I've read a couple of things that make my blood boil and make me more determined. Last week, the Australian Children Maltreatment Study Report was released, and if you haven't read it, I encourage people to have a look at it. It's not the Australia I thought we had. This was a nationally representative survey of eight thousand adults, aged 16 and over, but what the survey did was ask the adults about their childhood experiences. What the researchers found was that about 40% of them were exposed to domestic violence perpetrated by another family member. 32% of them (so a third of them) experienced physical abuse. 28% of them (more than a quarter) experienced sexual abuse, and 30% (another third) experienced emotional abuse. If you are going to your child's community sports game on a Saturday morning, and you've got two teams on the field or court, a third of them are going to have experienced or will experience physical and emotional abuse. What kind of country are we living in where that happens? You've asked me this question in a week where that stuff's sitting heavy with me. That's our challenge; we have got to stop that. I can't think beyond that now, my head and heart are bit too full of that right now.

When you're talking about the wisdom and the potential our children and young people can bring us, do you have any examples that have been powerful?

There are so many, us adults and oldies we've just got to get out of the way. When I think about some of the exciting ways that young people are creating change, there are three clusters. There's a whole for-purpose, side hustle, social enterprise space, with just extraordinary young people doing very creative, brilliant things.

That's everything from starting a consumer goods type organisation or a bespoke product, but they have a purpose led intent, environmentally sustainable, profit sharing, B-Corp accreditation seeking attitude, which is very different. We're so lucky, because that wave and envelope will affect us all.

What I love about that is it also blurs the boundaries between charities and everybody else. Charities are not something on the side for when things go wrong that you don't have to think about most of the time. That is not what we're about, and so this blurring of positive citizenship and agency is exciting. That wave, that volume of behaviour and attitude affecting us is just phenomenal. That's an obvious way I think we've seen it play out. The second way is it's an oldie, but a goodie is this grassroots community activity. That might be activism in a political or a progressive sense, but it might just be just not liking something and fixing it. I live in St. Kilda in the city of Port Phillip, and last year there was this amazing young woman who wanted to grow veggies on the nature strip on her street. There were council regulations saying she couldn't do it, so she said, "actually I think that's wrong, let's change it," and she did. She activated the community (not politically), and suddenly the council says, "actually, you're right, let's do it." One young woman saying, "let's have a crack at it, come on, change the rules,” was all that was needed. Just extraordinary, now, here in our place. The other thing that is happening in my local government area (which is not connected to the government, it's an independent thing) is there are a bunch of us getting together to create a Port Phillip Community Foundation. This will be an independent philanthropic entity that we are looking to people within Port Phillip to give to, and then for the community to decide where the money should go in our community. That sense of self-sustaining and local agency, that people power, whether it's granting veggies, building culture or dealing with social issues, is fantastic. The third area, comes from me spending a long time on the Kids Under Cover board, which is an organisation that prevents youth homelessness. That's been a big thing for me in my life, how to prevent youth homelessness. There's this program that Infoxchange built and run called Ask Izzy, which is this website that connects people who need services in real time (so right here, right now), whether that's somewhere to sleep tonight, family violence support or something else that is immediate. It connects them with over 370,000 services across the country. You get onto the website Ask Izzy, put in your postcode, your location, tell them what you're looking for, and up pops all the local services that are able to help you there and then. It is brilliant. It's been around a long time, it's grown, but just something like that. We know it works, it's really powerful. We talked a bit about systems change before and the power of advocacy. Sometimes it is about community activism, but this is just about trying to address the rules of the game. There's been a campaign running with the community sector and philanthropists for a long time called The Home Stretch, and it's been led in Australia by Anglicare. What it was saying to the system is when you turf children out of state care at the age of 18, you are setting them up most likely to fail and have terrible experiences. If you turf them out at 18, we're doing it on purpose. However, the evidence says globally, (24 is the ideal age, but) if you wait until they're 21, then their life trajectory and opportunities are just that much stronger because of those extra couple of years. This has been an advocacy campaign running for years, and now I think we have every state and territory, perhaps bar one in the country, running pilot programs extending out of home care and state care to 21. It's not always the bright, flashy, clever, new thing that’s the most powerful, that's what I meant by playing the long game.

What are some inspiring projects or initiatives that you've come across recently creating positive social change?

We've talked about the Australian Children Maltreatment Study, and now in the digital world, there is a lot of care and attention (as there should be) based on how do we deal with this huge escalation of online child sex abuse material? This includes sextortion all the way through to serious crimes that is being enabled by the technology, where the platforms and services are not working well enough to identify it, take it down, report it, and be part of stopping it. Certainly, with our regulations, we've got such a catch up to play. With the E-Safety Commission in Australia, we are so lucky our E-Safety commissioner is fantastic. She's an extraordinary woman doing great work, but we need government, we need tech platforms, we need community to come on board with all of this. There's an organisation Jesuit Social Services, and again, this isn't new, this isn't flashy, this is something they've been doing for a while. But it's been difficult, it's been uncomfortable, and their approach has been, “how do we actually think about changing the trajectory and behaviour of the perpetrators?” Where do they get material? Where do they get their allies from? What are the behavioural indicators and patterns that if we understood early enough, we could intervene in a supportive sense? Some of that now is really starting to develop some 'aha' moments. The University of New South Wales is doing some research now, and hopefully it'll be out soon, about what are the online spaces that some of the perpetrators and potential perpetrators go to and what are their behaviours? They're talking to them and asking them about these behaviours, because that will then enable us to intervene so much earlier.

Sometimes, some of that inspiring social change work is at a gritty end that people don't like to talk or think about, but it is just so important. This is in addition to those bright strengths based enabling programs, which are also critical. We need to think of change across the spectrum.

I'd like to talk about a couple of the programs that we're developing. I talked a bit about the trauma informed practice of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation and the work we are doing in early childhood centres and kinders. That grew out of and was exacerbated through COVID, [an unintended consequence] when the government made childcare free and accessible through COVID to support families. What happened was the services started seeing cohorts of children that they'd perhaps never seen before, and so the need was intensified and made much more visible. Through our work, this year we are launching a service for primary schools, so implementing a trauma lens across schools. We've had so many primary school teachers say to us kids are coming back into the classroom after a couple years at home or who have started school at home are displaying behaviour that is not just naughty kids. It is not about them being difficult kids but is indicative of quite serious experiences that they're having. How do we design something that supports the child and their immediate needs right now, while also creating capability and capacity in the systems, universal services, staff, teachers, policies, structures, attitudes, and the culture of the schools to change? That evolving intervention comes from learning, understanding and importantly partnering and hearing what community are saying.

Is there anything you can share about those learnings and the feedback you're receiving from the organisations you collaborate with?

Intervention is key; impact comes from listening to that, learning, and responding. This is going to sound so obvious (but it makes such a difference), but it is about validating someone's experience. As a kinder teacher, when that three-year-old child hangs onto your leg at the end of the day at pick up time and says, “please, I want to come and live with you, I don't want to go home,” what does that childcare/kinder teacher do? How can you carry that with you when you go home at the end of your workday? It's something as simple as, "oh my God, I'm right to feel this." That is important. This is scary, this does need attention, we do need to address it. This is hard, it's wrong and we can change it. We need to change this circumstance and environment all the way through to something as practical as childhood centres and kinders changing the way they set their furniture out. If you're doing reading time and you're asking the children to come and sit in a circle around you, and there's a child that will not come out of the corner, stamps their feet, kicks, hisses, spits and maybe thumps you because they won't come into the circle, they're not being a brat. They're doing that because they've learned that's the safest place to sit. Maybe, if you have children presenting like that, you don't make them come and sit in the middle of the room. Maybe you should have sofas that have got their back to you. Something as practical as how you physically lay out the space to support children to feel safe and included through to the professional development, learning and policies are important. We have got good child safety standards in Australia, mandatory child safety standards. But enabling people and giving them the understanding of the tools to make that real is crucial, so that we have genuinely child safe environments. There are a thousand ways to do things, and the Alannah & Madeline Foundation are a tiny player in this whole field. What is important for an organisation working in the social change space is to be clear about who they are, what they stand for, what their principles are, what their theory of change is and what evidence-base they have. We have three principles that inform and design everything that we do. These principles are above strategy, policies and procedures, above everything. The first one is we're a rights-based organisation, so everything that we do comes from the question, "what's in the best interest of the child and the rights of the child?" Now that is easy for us to hang a hook on; it's based on the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. There was an additional addendum to that about digital rights of the child, so there's our framework. We're a rights-based organisation, it's about the rights of the child, and so everything starts and finishes with what's in the best interest of the child.

Our second principle is that we're a strength-based organisation; we work from the fundamental belief that children and young people bring a bucket load of strengths, assets, power, opportunity, and potential into the mix, and that's where we to focus.

Yes, we're addressing problems, but we are not addressing them from the point of view of a deficit, a problem or what's wrong with someone. Instead, we're a strengths-based organisation, and that means most of our work is about building capability and capacity in children, young people and the environment around them, be they teachers, carers, parents or regulators. If you build skills, capability, capacity and feed strengths, our belief is that's what creates sustainable and scalable changing. Our third principle comes from a mantra that grew out of the Civil Rights movement in the US: nothing about us without us. It's not doing things to people or for people; it's with and even behind. It's not about giving children a voice, they've got voices! What we've got to do is create channels to power for those voices to be heard. I'm not saying that's the right and only way, but that's our philosophy and approach to chasing the change we're after, with all our allies and partners by our side.

To finish off, what are some books or resources you would recommend to our listeners?

To be honest, because I’m a jack of all trades, master of none, I’ve never been the person that consumes discipline related deeper channels. I'm a bit of a magpie because I like the synergies of patterns across the top. I'm also a reader, and there are some podcasts I like, but most of my stuff is reading, because I really like the reflective, quiet space of holding the words that go into my eyes and my head. It's how my head has learned to work. There are three groups of things I mainly consume. There is first the general news stuff, I'm a scanner, so I really like The Economist. I'm old fashioned, I get it every week. I like the international flavour, I like the slightly dry humour it's written with, and it's not my normal world. If you work in this space and all you do is hang out in this space, you can forget that other people care about other things. I like The Economist because it brings some of that back.

I am loving The New York Times. I'm an online subscriber, and they do a brilliant daily briefing I really like, because again, it has a global, international lens as well as Australian news. But they also do these amazing ‘deep dives' each day into something random, whatever that might be. I read this brilliant deep dive they did a couple of weeks ago on the guy that basically invented leaded petrol and invented the CFC technology that enables refrigeration. Several years later, the two greatest pollutants and harms to our environment are leaded petrol and CFCs. There were so many unintended consequences years later. I love The New York Times. I like The Squiz, I know it's not cool, but I love it. I think they're funny and clever. In terms of my sector stuff, I actually think that membership organisations which bring community sector colleagues together are really powerful. We're members of the Community Council For Australia, the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOS) and Philanthropy Australia. They all do daily curation. They do all the work for you, and I get these beautiful daily summaries by theme, topics across all media (all channels), about our sector and our space. For me, that is a great source and resource that I use regularly. Rising tides lift all boats, I think collective collaboration is the power that's going to do this stuff. I subscribe to various newsletters also, but the podcasts that I like, I will first have to say Impact Boom, (I'm not just saying that for the podcast)! Like Impact Boom, there's another local one called Humans of Purpose I really like. My daughter got me onto Ologies, so I'm loving that. It's a bit random and out there. But one of my favourites is Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't know whether you've read Freakonomics, it's the random putting together of information and challenging assumptions about causality. I really love that, and I find that helpful when thinking about how we solve intractable problems? I'm a bit obsessed now with reframing and the power of reframing, and Revisionist History is in that style.