The Safeguarding the Future conference was held in Canberra on 23-24 May 2024. We’ve invited speakers from Australia and across the globe to talk about
- Vision building and vision keeping
- Safeguarding for all ages
- Supported decision making
- Moving out of an institutional setting and creating a home of one’s own
- Safeguarding in hospital settings
- Building networks and strengthening freely given relationships
- Circles of support
- Wills, trusts, and guardianship
- Employment
- And much more.
Every one of our invited speakers generously shared their personal stories, powerful insights, and practical tips. From the feedback we received after each session, we could see that attendees learned a great deal from every presentation.
While many attendees were Canberra locals, many others had travelled some distance to be in the room. In every break, there was plenty of conversation as attendees shared their own stories and experiences with others. The atmosphere was wonderful, and we’re grateful that so many people were able to take time out of their very busy lives to attend the event.
We greatly appreciate the work of three young people who contributed to the success of the event.
- Milly Whitehouse for all her behind-the-scenes help in the lead-up to the conference
- Ryan Gilligan for creating such beautiful woodwork. We purchased several of Ryan’s pieces as gifts for some of our speakers.
- Rachael Cross for creating the gorgeous screen-printed bags that we purchased to hold gifts for all our speakers.
Gavin Blake’s visual scribing was a highlight of the conference. Through his work, Gavin has created some beautiful documents that capture the essence of each presentation. These will be shared with attendees very soon, and we hope they’ll be a useful resource to help everyone remember the main points of each session.
We received a lot of positive feedback from attendees, including
“A brilliant two days filled with opportunities for family networking, capacity building and information to support people with disability to live a valued life.”
“I am going home re-energised to see my daughter’s future in a much more positive light.”
“A wonderful opportunity to think deeply about our present situation and the challenges of the future. Inspiring, practical and supportive.”
“A great opportunity to learn. A fantastic place to network with people who have similar lived experience. I walk away with so many ideas.”
“I loved this conference. It was an amazing meeting of the minds.”
We also captured some footage from families who were willing to share their experiences of working with Imagine More. Josh Mulrine and the team from Digital Communication Studios edited these beautifully into a short video.
We can’t wait to see how attendees put what they learned about safeguarding into action. We suspect there will be – as there always is when families are inspired and motivated – many innovative, creative, and effective approaches to building and safeguarding excitingly ordinary lives for people with disability.
Day 1 speakers
Day 2 speakers
Some examples of Gavin Blake’s work
