Lived experience projects

There are so many stories to be learned from and so many people who have generously shared their stories. Here is a collection of recent projects sharing these stories. They come from voices and experiences of children, young people and their families with the child protection and out-of-home care systems across Australia. Please reach out to us at change@centreforrelationalcare.org.au if you know of other studies or reports which would be helpful to share.

• This Matters to Us Report (2025) from CREATE Foundation. A summary of lived experience insights from children and young people with care experience, told through 100 Youth Advisory Group sessions held in 2024-25 across Australia.
• 'Treated as broken' (2025) from the Queensland Family and Child Commission Residential Care Expert Advisory Council. This report captures the voices of 11 young people with lived experience of Queensland's residential care system who participated in a youth-led workshop in Kingaroy, sharing reflections on relationships, staff, and cultural connections.
• 'I Became My Own Carer' (2025) from the Queensland Family and Child Commission Residential Care Expert Advisory Council. Drawing on a workshop with 16 young people in Caboolture, this report highlights how disconnection from culture and community profoundly impacts young people in Queensland's residential care system.

• 'Playing the Game': How Aboriginal families navigate child protection systems to restore their children home from out-of-home care (2025) by BJ Newton et al, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 60 (2). This article shares the experiences of 20 Aboriginal families trying to bring their children home from out-of-home care (OOHC) in NSW.
  
• #SnapthatStigma campaign (2025) from the CREATE Foundation. Young people with a care experience share stories which challenge pre-conceived views and show there is no such thing as a 'typical foster kid'. 
• Young people's lived experience of relational practices in therapeutic residential care in Australia (2025) by Lynne McPherson et al, Children and Youth Services Review, 170, 108129. Drawing on the views and lived experiences of 38 young people in residential care in New South Wales, this study explored the factors that supported the development of positive and trusting relationships, and what got in the way.
• 'Moving Cage to Cage': Final Report of the Special Inquiry into Children and Young People in Alternative Care Arrangements (2024) from the Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People NSW. This report includes the accounts of children and young people in their own words who have experienced Alternative Care Arrangements (ACAs) such as hotels, motels and other settings for emergency out-of-home care placements.
• 'Help Way Earlier!' How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing (2024) from the Australian Human Rights Commission. This report includes the voices of children and their families about what is needed to prevent children's contact with the child justice system.
• Out-of-Home Care and Education: Insights from Let Us Learn Webinar (2024) from the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare. This webinar shares first hand experiences of young people trying to get an education while in out-of-home care in Victoria.
• 'I was raised by a checklist' (2023) by the Queensland Family & Child Commission. This presentation shares the lived experiences of young people in residential care.
• Lived experience voices: insights into young people's transition from the child protection and youth justice system in South Australia and the intersections with homelessness (2022) from The Constellation Project. This report includes the views and experiences of young people who have transitioned from child protection and youth justice systems in South Australia, as well as practitioners within those systems.
• NSW Carer Survey Report of Findings (2022) from My Forever Family. This survey provides feedback on the views and experiences of foster carers, relative/kinship carers, guardians and adoptive parents within the out-of-home care system in NSW. Close to 1900 responses were received.
• In our own words: Systemic inquiry into the lived experience of children and young people in the Victorian out-of-home care system (2019) from the Victorian Commission for Children and Young People. The inquiry spoke with more than 200 children and young people in, or with experience of, kinship, foster and residential care in Victoria. 
• 'No voice, no opinion, nothing': Parent experiences when children are removed and placed in care (2017), a collaborative project with the University of Newcastle and Life Without Barries. This project shares the perspectives and experiences of parents in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, who had their children removed and placed in out-of-home care in the previous last five years.

• “Don't stand up on unlevel ground”: Care leavers' experiences of out-of-home care (2026), a paper on care leavers; bringing together the voices of young people, highlighting themes such as luck determining a good care experience, care being conditional, the instability of life without secure relationships, identity, belonging and feeling unheard."

•  Remember Me Now | Forgotten Australians (2026), a series of short films sharing what it meant to grow up in out-of-home care and how those experiences continue to shape their lives.