Family Inclusion Strategies Hunter Committee
Tammy
President| Founding member
I started with FISH in 2014 as a founding member. I am a parent with lived experience whose children were removed. I worked hard to get them home and my family is proud of what we achieved together.
As part of FISH, I’m helping and educating others to be more family inclusive. Family inclusion is about children’s rights and the importance of them knowing their families and where they come from and for parents and family to be part of decisions about their children’s lives.
Workers and carers need to partner more with parents and families and build better relationships so they can all meet children’s needs and rights.
Colleen Mullins
Secretary| Founding Member
I have been part of FISH since its formation in 2014, where I found myself in awe of the parents who had shared their lived experience with us at our first forum, and where it became clear that only through learning from these parents as experts could we improve a stretched and broken system. I am a Social Worker who has worked in the child protection and out of home care sector at different times in my career and I am passionate about early intervention, restoration and family inclusion work. It is a privilege to be part of FISH and I am proud of the work that our Peer Leaders and Committee members have done to contribute to practice and system change.
Beck
Vice President
I have been part of FISH since 2022. I began as a peer worker, supporting parents who are currently involved in child protection systems, so they do not have to navigate complexity, surveillance, and profound pain alone. I bring lived experience as a parent impacted by child protection systems.
Too often children lose their right to family because parents are judged at the worst moments of their lives. Once labelled, parents are excluded from decision-making, subjected to punitive and risk-focused responses, and left to carry shame and blame rather than being supported. These processes deepen trauma for both parents and children.
I am now a Parent Advocate and committee member, working alongside parents to ensure their voices are heard in systems that routinely make decisions about them without their meaningful participation. My advocacy is driven by the knowledge that outcomes for children who remain in OOHC are poor, and that prolonged separation causes lasting harm to identity, attachment, culture, and wellbeing.
I am committed to challenging practices that remove parents from their children’s lives and to advocating for responses that keep families together wherever possible.
Catherine
Founding & Current Member
I am a mother of four children, a grandmother of eight and I am a student. I am a keen advocate for mothers and for grandparents raising grandchildren when parents need them. Kinship and foster carers should play an active role in supporting parents in their work towards having their children returned home. I think FISH is critical in this work and I am excited to be part of promoting the importance of child-parent-carer relationships.
Biarta
Current Member| Allie
Bio coming soon x
Melissa Kaltner
Committee Member| Allie
Dr Melissa Kaltner has a background in psychology. She started her career in frontline child protection practice before moving into research, policy and evaluation through a range of government and consulting roles. She draws on this experience in her commitment to empowering lived experience led reform and advocacy across the community services sector. Melissa is co-founder of child and family consulting practice Lumenia.
Mel A
Committee Member| Allie
Bio coming soon x
Jessica
Founding Member|Allie
I am a social worker and researcher with a lot of experience in child protection and out-of-home care. I am also a mum to two amazing young men. They were both primary school aged boys when I began working with other social workers and with parents with lived experience to form FISH in 2014.
We were angry about the way parents and families were treated and how damaging this was for them and their children. We felt parents and families needed to organise together to make change and to address the underlying causes of child removal.
As time has passed, I have become even more committed to supporting parent and family leadership in the child welfare system here and around the world.