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The FDCA 2025 National Conference provided delegates with a wide variety of workshops to choose from. These interactive workshop sessions will cover a range of different topics that appealed to all those within the family day care and early childhood education and care sector.
To view a summary of the workshops, please scroll down or click on the links below.
FRIDAY 24 OCTOBER | SATURDAY 25 OCTOBER
How to Get Kids to Listen - The Power of Conscious Communication
Sylvia Arotin, CEO & Founder, Guide and Grow
Ever hear yourself saying “No, stop, don’t do that, be nice, Share!” Frustrated with not knowing what to say? Or maybe you are struggling to deal with some more challenging behaviour after trying so many different approaches with no positive outcomes? In this fun filled session you will understand more about where children's behaviour stems from and learn how to tackle those stressful moments with ease and confidence. You will have the opportunity to learn practical conscious communication skills that you can apply, with a takeaway workbook as a future reference. The session will leave you feeling equipped to communicate in a positive and effective way helping build children's skill set so that they have the ability to self-regulate, communicate effectively and learn about healthy boundaries. Children will be able to reach their full potential becoming capable, emotionally intelligent and confident members of our community.
The Science of Temperament and Emotion Regulation: Practical Tools for Fostering Self-Regulation and Understanding Diverse Behavioural Needs
Siobhan Kennedy-Costantini, Director, Science Minded
This engaging workshop explores the science of temperament and its role in shaping children’s behaviour, emotional responses and learning experiences. Designed for educators and caregivers, the session provides practical, evidence-based strategies to support self-regulation and emotional development across a range of temperament profiles. Participants will deepen their understanding of how individual differences influence behaviour and gain tools to create inclusive, responsive environments. With a focus on building emotional resilience, attendees will leave equipped to recognise and support diverse needs, implement co-regulation techniques and foster a culture of connection, acceptance and calm in early learning settings.
Engaging in Play - The Play Cycle Theory in Family Day Care Settings
Kerry Smith, Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith University
Dive deep into the fascinating world of children's play through this interactive and insightful workshop. This session will explore the play cycle approach to observing and supporting a child’s play process. It will equip you with practical tools to observe and understand children's play as a dynamic and evolving process. You will explore the stages of the play cycle, become familiar with the four adult roles in the play process and reflect on your professional practice. Discover new strategies to enhance your support for children’s play and make meaningful contributions to their development.
Supporting Leaders to Support Educators: Creating Responsive Approaches to Educator Wellbeing
Trish Osgood, Be You Consultant, Be You
At Be You, we recognise the unique context of family day care and the potential for leaders to build educator communities that support high-quality education and care. This workshop will focus on strategies to support educator wellbeing and foster community through effective leadership. We will explore case studies and Be You implementation tools, and discuss the challenges and opportunities to supporting educator wellbeing. We will examine ways to achieve consistency while addressing individual needs, and challenge assumptions about educator preferences to create responsive leadership in family day care settings.
Connect, Reflect, Embed: Our Journey of Exploring The Child Safe Standards and what they look like in Family Day Care
Nicole Halton, Director & Lauren Jackson, National Children's Services Manager, Inspired EC
As an organisation operating family day care across three states, unpacking legislation, guidelines and standards can be challenging. In 2023, we recognised that we needed a structured approach to implementing the relevant Child Safe Standards. Forming a dedicated team, who meet monthly, has been key to ensuring that we are a child safe organisation. In this session, Approved Provider Nicole Halton and Children's Services Manager Lauren Jackson will share the practicalities of this process, inspiring services and educators to take action in relation to child safety. Children and families deserve organisations that are committed to child safety.
Streamlining for Success: Making the Most of Technology and Automation in Family Day Care Management
Laura Hewitson, Field Coordinator, Foundations Family Day Care
Discover ways to automate processes in your service using a mix of paid and free platforms, including Asana, Google Sheets, Dropbox, and your service's website. Learn how to use technology to manage personnel registers, excursion documentation, vacancies, programming, automatic document sorting, and more, following Foundations Family Day Care’s proven strategies for saving your team precious time and achieving an Exceeding rating in Quality Area 7. All participants will receive free access to our automated Programming Workbook (designed for use in Google Sheets) that will cut your programming and critical reflection time to just 10 minutes a day!
To follow, or not to follow? Tips for applying professional boundaries in Family Day Care
Samantha Dellamarta, Facilitator & Olivia Brown, Facilitator, Safeguarding Training Australia
We recognise that the family day care environment is unique, and balancing the benefits of providing care in the home with the requirements of the ever-changing child safety landscape can be complex. In this workshop we will discuss the importance of professional boundaries in family day care and the role of service providers to support educators in understanding and applying professional boundaries. We will provide practical tools and guidance (that align to Child Safe Standards and National Principles) to assist educators to apply professional boundaries to scenarios that may be exclusive to the family day care environment.
Walking alongside: Our Relationship with Kauwanu Tamaru Teaching us about Kaurna Language and Culture
Paula Pittman, Director of Family Day Care Programs, Department of Education South Australia, Jemma Henley, Inclusion Professional Team Leader & Uncle Tamaru, Aboriginal Consultant, Gowrie SA
Through a desire to embed Aboriginal perspectives and culture within our services and not wanting to “get it wrong”, we reflected that we knew little about where to start. This led us to engage with Gowrie SA Inclusion Agency and meet Kaurna Elder Kauwanu Tamaru. Soon we enrolled in Yellaka Warra (today’s word) – “Kaurna for educators working on Kaurna country”, offered through Deadly Mob with Gowrie SA Professional Learning Program to continue our cultural journey. This inspired us to learn ways to embed Kaurna language and culture into our daily practices with children, providing rich, meaningful environments where children can learn without bias.
Tax and Accounting for Educators
Ben Mueller - Director and Principal Accountant, FDC Tax
This session will provide practical information and tips to educators to help them better understand and manage their business' taxation and accounting obligations. Tailored for family day care educators, it will provide key information, tips and latest opportunities regarding these matters. Educators will have the opportunity to ask questions both during and after the conclusion of the session and will even have the chance to ask questions specific to their circumstances following the session.
Plenary Workshop: Engage Your Brain: 2-7 Years
Nathan Wallis
This talk focuses on the social/emotional aspects of your brain development – how feeling impacts our thinking. While the times that this brain really has the steering wheel is 2-8 and again in the middle of adolescence, it is relevant to all learners that want to feel engaged, enthusiastic and passionate about what they do.
The fundamental mistake society has made over the last few decades, is thinking that a two year-old is a little seven year-old and that the earlier we get ready to be seven, by learning numeracy and literacy, the better off we will be. That’s just not how our brain develops. A large part of intelligence is problem-solving and problem-solving is hugely dependent on creativity. Creativity largely comes online, between the ages of two and seven, in a free-play, child-lead environment. It’s development is inhibited if we focus instead on seven year old formalised literacy and numeracy.
This talk supports the research behind play based learning. Learning is so much easier when the learner is engaged. Come along and learn how to engage your brain
Stress-Free Programming: Achieving Quality Without the Complexity
Kylie Clark, Director, Kids Family Day Care
Tired of program planning feeling overwhelming? This workshop is designed to help Family Day Care educators simplify programming while maintaining quality, creativity, and engagement. Through interactive activities, real-world examples, and a fun approach, you'll learn how to create flexible, effective programs without stress. Discover how simplicity reduces burnout, improves outcomes, and makes planning enjoyable. Walk away with practical strategies, resources, and a renewed confidence in your programming. Let’s transform program planning into a creative and stress-free experience! Don’t miss this opportunity to rethink and refresh your approach to early childhood education.
Setting the Foundations for Children to Become Experts at Play
Stephanie Hoy, Family Day Care Educator, West Country Family Day Care Scheme
Have you ever cared for a child who seems clingy, needs constant engagement, struggles to entertain themselves, and lacks confidence when interacting with other children? It takes around 45 minutes of uninterrupted play for children to truly engage, solve problems, build narratives, and enter a “flow state” of learning. In the early years, our goal is to nurture curious, active, independent thinkers who can apply their problem-solving skills across any area of interest. This lays the foundation for lifelong learning and supports development in ways that formal, rote teaching simply can’t match. Let’s take a closer look at play spaces, intentional setups, daily rhythms, and the diverse roles educators can take on to support immersive, imaginative, and creative play.
Innovative Leadership - Creating Leaders in Family Day Care
Kristine Eldridge, Nominated Supervvisor, Campbeltown Family Day Care
This session supports current and aspiring leaders in family day care to reflect on and expand their perspective of leadership. Participants explore their leadership styles, the qualities of influential mentors, and how these can be shared within their teams. The workshop focuses on building capacity in staff and educators, viewing leadership through a new lens, and maintaining passion and inspiration to support retention. It aims to foster opportunities for leadership within services, promoting unity and continuous growth amongst staff and educators.
Collaborative Arts for Wellbeing - Process Over Product
Marie Armstrong, Director, Early Years Care
This hands-on workshop explores the power of collaborative art projects to support children’s wellbeing, creativity, and deep connections. Grounded in the Early Years Learning Framework’s principles of relationships and holistic development, this session highlights the importance of process over product, fostering mindfulness for both children and educators. Through layered mark-making, we will experiment with quality materials and diverse tools, embracing artistic exploration as a shared experience. As Pablo Picasso said, "Every child is an artist." Let’s nurture creativity, self-expression, and meaningful connections through art that celebrates the journey, not just the outcome.
Connections with the Communityin Family Day Care
Rebecca Karslake, Manager - Integrated Children's Services & Natasha de Jong, Family Day Care Field Office, Ballarat Family Day Care
In this session we will take participants on a journey of breaking down barriers for family day care educators in relation to connections with the community. We will provide real life examples of identifying gaps, challenges faced and positive outcomes achieved, in a variety of ways that can be implemented in individual and unique settings. This session will include the why, the how and the who providing tips for coordinators and educational leaders to support their educators on this journey. Presentations will include snapshots of outings in action, including children’s engagement, and children's voices detailing their experiences with community. You will hear from educators and how it supports with documentation, scaffolding children's learning and development, and building relationships with the environment and community.
Digital Media in a Family Day Care Setting
Beverley Egan, Director, We Belong Family Day Care
This session is designed for family day care educators, coordinators and educational leaders or any interested persons who want to deepen their understanding of how using digital media can strengthen relationships between children, and between educators and children. Participants will learn how to effectively integrate technologies in supporting children's play. Participants will explore a new website created to support educators and services to help young children use digital technologies.
Swingin' the Pendulum Back to a Simpler Time
Victoria Edmond, Director, Big Hearted Education
In today’s fast-paced world, we often feel pressure to do more for children—but what if doing less actually helped them more? This engaging 1-hour session will challenge the way you see learning, showing how stepping back allows children to build independence, confidence, and deeper thinking skills. Through real-life examples and practical strategies, we’ll explore how to shift from over-directing to trusting children as capable learners. It’s time to swing the pendulum back to a simpler, more natural approach—where children take the lead, and we support them in truly meaningful ways.
Embedding First Nations Perspectives and Cultural Awareness in Family Day Care
Natashja Treveton, Managing Director, Inspired EC & Jackie Bennett, Co-Founder, Connecting the Dots Through Culture
The introduction of version two of the Early Years Learning Framework highlighted the importance of education and care services embedding first nations perspectives in programs, practice and environments. But what does this mean? What does it look like? How do we do this in a meaningful way? How do we document our process? In this session, Tash Treveton and Aunty Jackie Bennett will share a practical, hands-on approach to weaving and connecting to your community, with a particular focus on the approach that Inspired Family Day Care has undertaken in the past year and a half.
Place-Based Service Delivery
Perry Campbell, Senior Manager National Projects, ACECQA
Research shows the importance of place-based and relational pedagogies for children’s optimal learning, development and wellbeing, (Early Years Learning Framework 2.0). Place-based service delivery views the child as learning within the context of and strong connection to place. It recognises that a place-based approach supports children to thrive and develop a strong sense of identity and wellbeing. Quality family day care should be reflective of and tailored to the needs, context and characteristics of place. This workshop will get you to reflect on and consider family day care service delivery in the context of place, location, culture, language and Country, and the influence on service delivery.
Celebrating Play and Finding Joy in Neurodiversity in the Family Day Care Environment: Neurodiversity Affirming Practice
Ashton Posch, Family Day Care Educator, Busy Butterflies Education and Care
This workshop explores the importance of inclusion in family day care, focusing on supporting neurodivergent, at-risk, and vulnerable children. It offers practical strategies for creating nurturing, play-based environments where every child can thrive. The session highlights the role of play in fostering development, connection, and belonging while addressing the unique needs of diverse learners. It will also provide insights into recognising and responding to barriers that impact participation and inclusion. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to enhance inclusive practices, ensuring every child feels valued, supported, and empowered within their family day care setting.
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