Streams 

1. Strengths-Based Approaches in Action

How are we applying these principles and beliefs to our work with individuals, families and communities? How are workers and teams taking up these approaches across a diversity of contexts (eg. child protection, mental health, community development, disability services, accommodation and homelessness prevention services, etc.)? What’s working? What’s being learned? What are the current challenges? IMPORTANT NOTE: Practitioners and organisations are encouraged to support community members to attend as guests of the conference to share their reflections on their experiences. Presentations could take a variety of forms including storytelling, performance, interview and panel discussions. Kyabra will provide some financial support, including travel, accommodation and airfares, for community members contributing to the conference.
 
2. Strengths-Based Approaches in Organisations

How do we apply the principles and beliefs that underpin our work with community members in our work within our own organisations and in relationships with other community and government agencies? How do we do “parallel practice”? What does strengths-based leadership and management look like? How can we grow a culture that supports strengths based approaches across a whole organisation?
 
3. Strengths-Based Approaches in Relation to Each Other

This stream picks up the conference theme “Weaving the Threads” in acknowledging the many practice traditions being drawn upon in strengths-based approaches. Many of us have been influenced by several of these traditions.  How do these traditions ‘fit’ with each other? What are the hazards/cautions in bringing ideas together from diverse traditions? How do we handle the tensions and contradictions that arise? Given the sometimes sad history of human service work based on classifying, labelling and compensating for “deficits”, how can we avoid unhelpful competitiveness between these emerging “strengths-based” traditions that could be friends?