Waterways
Culturally Responsive and Trauma-Informed Training
The Waterways Training Package is a national program designed to strengthen culturally responsive and trauma-informed practice across the child and family sector.
Waterways has been developed by SNAICC – National Voice for our Children in partnership with AbSec, KWY, QATSICPP, VACCA and Yamurrah to support mainstream services across Australia that work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. The training is a two-day, face-to-face workshop that supports organisations to build trauma-informed, culturally safe and anti-racist practice. It supports services to reflect on their roles and responsibilities, change harmful systems and practices, and uphold the rights, strengths and cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The training package is designed for mainstream and non-Indigenous organisations that work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families and communities.
Waterways supports meaningful, lasting change across all levels of an organisation by:
- strengthening cultural awareness
- building trauma-responsive capabilities
- identifying enablers and barriers to change
- offering clear pathways for workforce development
- supporting sustained organisational transformation.
The training is being delivered now, and organisations across Australia are invited to participate.
Contact training@snaicc.org.au for general enquiries or find jurisdictional contacts at the bottom of this page.
Why Waterways?
One of the most consistently identified barriers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families accessing family support is the fear of an interventionist system that drives towards the removal of children without offering sufficient, culturally and trauma-informed supports to families, even when families are actively reaching out for help.
Far too often, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families are met with child protection responses that are punitive, culturally unsafe, and not trauma-informed, even when families seek help. The name Waterways draws from connection to Country and the significance of water as a site of healing flow, and connection.
Waterways stands as an acronym:
- Weaving
- Anti-racism
- Trauma-Informed
- Education
- Responsiveness
- With Wisdom
- Awareness
- Yarning
- Solidarity
The training directly addresses Target 12 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which aims to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45% by 2031, and is aligned with Action 3c of Safe and Supported: The National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2021–2031.
Impact of Waterways
Throughout 2024 and 2025, SNAICC partnered with QATSCIPP, AbSec, VACCA, KWY and Yamurrah to co-design, co-produce and deliver Waterways nationally as part of a DSS-funded pilot project.
Between October 2024 and June 2025, Waterways was delivered to 1,032 participants across Australia. Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, with many reporting transformative changes in their approach to practice and policy. In July 2025, SNAICC hosted a workshop on Kaurna Country to review outcomes and shape recommendations for the future, and the project team will share the learnings at the SNAICC Conference 2025.
We are committed to building on the success of Waterways and are seeking opportunities to continue offering this vital training across Australia.
Interested in the Waterways training? Contact training@snaicc.org.au to find out more.
Art and Logo Attribution
Art: Seen and Unseen
Coming together by the water, a gathering place, a place for sharing, a place for learning a place for ceremony. This place is lush and fertile, we collect the foods and medicines we need to be well to care for our selves and one another. This is the right place for healing. Here we can grow and encourage growth. We protect the springs, the headwaters of our water ways, deep places with deep ancient stories and access to unseen realms. The waterways are healthy, supporting this nourishment and the grasses that weave together the river banks, ensuring endurance. The bubbles in the river show the movement and healthy flow of the water, a shallow place, a place to safely cross the river. The other side of the river is the spirit world, our dreaming, the unseen realm where much of our healing takes place.
Artist: Belle Buddon
Belle Buddon is a proud Wakka Wakka woman living on Bundjalung Country.
Register your interest
Waterways training is open to organisations across Australia.
To find out more, contact your state or territory lead:
- National & WA – josie.scott@snaicc.org.au
- ACT & NSW – AbSec Waterways Training or john.byrne@absec.org.au
- SA & NT – KWY Waterways Training or training@kwy.org.au
- VIC & TAS – VACCA or trainingevents@vacca.org
- QLD – QATSICPP Waterways Training or waterways@qatsicpp.com.au
Or contact training@snaicc.org.au for general enquiries.