FISH Management Committee
Tammy, President. 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
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.
Catherine, Committee 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.
Jessica, Committee Member. 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.
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