Bright Futures workshops are a space for learning and building connections with the primary purpose of keeping children safe from abuse. Bright Futures’ workshops explore what harmful sexual behaviours are, their impact on children, and provide an opportunity to develop practical skills to confidently approach issues and implement effective outcomes.

Bright Futures workshops are designed for teachers and front-line professionals who directly interact with children or work with children or child safety roles within government and non-government organisations.

This full day, interactive workshop will be grounded in a public health approach to problematic and harmful sexual behaviours.

We aim to increase participants’ understandings of problematic and harmful sexual behaviours by:

Defining and discussing age-appropriate sexual development, problematic and harmful sexual behaviours, and the various tools used to categorise these behaviours.
Using Australian context-specific examples, we will outline what a public health approach to preventing problematic and harmful sexual behaviours means.
Providing a sensitive and thoughtful space in which to discuss specific experiences and issues encountered by participants’ in their professional capacities.

09:00 – 09:30 Arrival and Registration

09:30 – 10:00 Introduction to Bright Futures

10:00 – 11:00 Sexual Development and Behaviours in Children and Young People

11:00 – 11:20 Morning tea

11:20 – 12:50 Introduction into Harmful Sexual Behaviours

12:50 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 The Public Health Approach to Harmful Sexual Behaviours

15:00 Communities of Practice / Workshop Close

Presented by

Beth McNamara, National Education Manager, Daniel Morcombe Foundation

Beth is a qualified social worker (1 Hons, USYD) who lives and works on beautiful Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi country. She has worked in violence prevention for 18 years, specifically in the areas of child sexual abuse and domestic and family violence. A career highlight was working at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, from its inception in 2013 to its conclusion in 2017, as a counsellor and lead policy writer. In her current role as National Education Manager for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation, Beth oversees a number of primary prevention projects which aim to enhance national approaches to child safety education. She also sits on the QLD Child Death Review Board and the QLD Harmful Sexual Behaviours Network.

Mia Harris, Bright Futures Project Facilitator and Families Child Therapist, Daniel Morcombe Foundation

Mia is a medical doctor, project facilitator and sex therapist, who is based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. She derives joy from working with people of all ages and backgrounds, and she has experience in tertiary education, clinical medicine, project management, and sex education. Her work is informed by her passion for social justice and advocacy.