HFCC 2020 Keynote Announcement and Call for Abstracts

9 Apr 2019

Join us for the 20th Helping Families Change Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from Wednesday 5 February to Friday 7 February 2020.

The Helping Families Change Conference will bring together leaders in parenting and family research, policy and practice.

A variety of world-class presentations will be on offer, as well as a social program to give delegates the chance to network with their international colleagues and enjoy Brisbane, the birthplace of the Positive Parenting Program.

We have already secured a number of great Keynotes for HFCC2020.

  • Professor Theresa S. Betancourt, is the inaugural Salem Professor in Global Practice at the Boston College School of Social Work and Director of the Research Program on Children and Adversity (RPCA). She is Principal Investigator of an intergenerational, longitudinal study of war-affected youth in Sierra Leone (LSWAY). Dr. Betancourt has also developed and evaluated the impact of a Family Strengthening Intervention for HIV-affected children and families and is leading the investigation of a home-visiting early childhood development (ECD) intervention to promote enriched parent-child relationships and prevent violence that can be integrated within poverty reduction/social protection initiatives in Rwanda. In the US, she is engaged in community-based participatory research on family-based prevention of emotional and behavioural problems in refugee children and adolescents resettled in the U.S. through the collaborative development and evaluation of parenting programs led by refugees for refugees that can be linked to prevention services involving refugee community health workers.
  • Dr. Brian K. Bumbarger, is Visiting Research Associate at the Prevention Research Center at Colorado State University, as well as Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith University Institute of Criminology. For over two decades he has conducted research and advised policymakers on dissemination, implementation, and sustainment of evidence-based programs and practices to strengthen families and communities. From 2008-2016 Dr. Bumbarger served as Founding Director and Principal Investigator of the Evidence-based Prevention and Intervention Support Center (EPISCenter), a state-level intermediary supporting communities and government systems in the largest-ever dissemination of evidence-based programs and community collective impact coalitions, with over 300 sites. The EPISCenter has been cited internationally as an exemplar for bridging research, policy and practice to improve child and family outcomes and government services. Brian is currently working to replicate learnings from that initiative, throughout the United States and across the world.
  • Professor Janeen Baxter, is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course in the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland. Professor Baxter has research interests in inequality, family, gender and the life course and has published widely in these areas. Professor Baxter is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and serves on a number of government advisory committees and international project reference groups.
  • Professor Matthew Sanders, is Director of the Parenting and Family Support Centre at The University of Queensland. He is the founder of the internationally recognised Triple P-Positive Parenting Program, which is now run in 28 countries around the world in 22 languages. 76,000 practitioners have been trained to deliver Triple P. He has published extensively in the area of parenting, family psychology and the prevention of behavioural and emotional problems in children. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Australian Psychological Society, New Zealand Psychological Society, Australian Association of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and the Academy of Experimental Criminology. He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland. He has been a consultant to the Council of Europe on Positive Parenting and is a former Queenslander of the Year. He is author of the recently released book The Power of Positive Parenting: Transforming the Lives of children, Parents and Communities using the Triple P system. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. In 2018 he received a Queensland Greats Award from the Queensland Government.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Now we need your research to complete the program. The scientific program committee invites submissions of abstracts for presentations, symposia, and posters on a broad range of domains related to children, parents, and families.

We warmly welcome abstracts from researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and professionals that address issues of parenting and parenting intervention, and related topics, including:

  • Prevention of child maltreatment
  • Promotion of self-regulation in children and parents/carers
  • Parenting in the context of trauma and trauma-informed care
  • Working with refugee families
  • Cultural adaption of evidence-based parenting support
  • Engaging with disadvantaged communities and diverse populations
  • Supporting parents of children with chronic health problems and disabilities
  • Workplace delivery of parenting support
  • Professional supervision and peer support
  • Policy and funding issues
  • Implementation, sustainability and system-level change

Abstract deadline: Monday 3 June 2019 

Click here for submission guidelines, and to submit your abstract.

Registration will be open in the coming weeks and more invited speakers will be announced. 

Keep up to date by checking in on the conference website

For further enquiries, please email pfsc@psy.uq.edu.au

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