End of Year Reflections

by Fiona Boyle (CEO)

As 2024 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to extend our heartfelt thanks for your continued support and collaboration throughout the year. When working in the areas of darkness, we are always amazed at the lightness we find in actions of courage, honesty, selflessness, tenacity and compassion. All part of the jigsaw in creating a safe organisation.

Kooyoora Office Hours

Our office will be closed during the holiday period from 1pm (AEST) 24th December 2024 to 9am (AEST) 2nd January 2025.

During this time our intake will be monitored for anything assessed as requiring an urgent response. We also understand this time can be difficult for many, please refer to the crisis support on our resources page.

Looking back, it has been a year of significant achievements and important milestones for Kooyoora. We’ve made progress in our initiatives and deepened our partnerships. Here are some of our key highlights from 2024.

Our New Office Space

Kooyoora has had the strategic goal of establishing its own physical office presence since its inception. In 2024, this goal was achieved. There were many reasons for the delay in achieving this, including the need to be fiscally responsible, the maturity of the organisation, and COVID-19. COVID-19 redefined Kooyoora’s operating model, as it did for many organisations, and we found that a dispersed hybrid environment works best for our work.

This shift clarified what we needed, and our Administration Manager, Marcella Meagher, worked tirelessly to understand the needs of the business and, most importantly, the needs of the people in contact with our service. She collaborated with the team to understand their needs in a dispersed, predominantly remote workforce.

We wanted the space to facilitate communication, collaboration, and the development of a strong organisational culture. The result of this aspiration was the added benefit of supporting people's wellbeing, sense of belonging, job performance, and the creation of purposeful spaces for different ways of engaging and working.

Principles of Trauma Informed Architecture

Many years ago, I had the privilege of being involved in a co-design process to create an environment for people who had experienced sexual abuse and those who supported them at the Gippsland Multidisciplinary Centre - GCASA. During this process, the importance of the environment in recovery, safety, and wellbeing was paramount and well documented in literature. I learned about the principles of trauma-informed architecture. While Kooyoora does not have the resources to engage in such a significant and in-depth process, we certainly used the learnings from this project to inform the design of our office.

We have considered:

• The importance of nature

• Creating calmness through uncluttered spaces and clear access to doorways

• Natural light and the ability to feel grounded by seeing outside

• The front entrance and office design to engage with people, featuring warm colours and a "cozy" atmosphere

• Inclusion – accessibility, subtle tokens, images, tactile objects, and resources specific to cultural and psychological safety

Colour psychology:

• Blue: Calmness, trust, and sensitivity

• Green: New beginnings, abundance, peace

• Orange: Energy, happiness, and vitality

While we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback about our space, we recognise that it is still a work in progress. A very big thank you to Marcella Meagher and Katrina Thomas, who both organised this entire move so that when I returned from annual leave, it was all done!

Our New Online Pre-Employment Screening Application

This year, we proudly launched OSCA, our new online pre-employment screening application, designed to make the screening process as easy as possible for both applicants and organisations. OSCA ensures that individuals joining organisations working with vulnerable populations meet high safety standards.

The platform provides real-time status updates and automates inefficient processes, saving valuable time for both you and the applicant. OSCA integrates seamlessly with our professional development platform, offering a comprehensive solution for all your needs.

This tool reflects Kooyoora’s commitment to prioritising safeguarding in all recruitment processes, enhancing both efficiency and safety. You can learn more about OSCA here.

Our New Abuse Prevention Framework

In 2024, we announced our new Framework for preventing abuse through cultural change. Kooyoora’s Abuse Prevention Framework is an organisational culture change program designed to safeguard against harmful behaviours such as abuse, harassment and misconduct. Accompanying the Framework is a range of tools designed to equip organisations with processes for understanding their cultures and identifying areas for improvement.

Trials of the Framework and tools are currently underway, with the final publication expected in early 2025. This work is crucial in helping organisations recognise the importance of cultural change as a means of preventing abuse and ensuring safer environments for everyone. We’re excited about the ongoing partnerships and the future impact of this Framework.

Learn more about the Prevention Framework here.

Our New Website

A major milestone this year was the launch of our new, user-friendly website. With a fresh design and enhanced functionality, our website provides access to information, resources, and news.

People often do not understand Kooyoora’s role or functions. A key part of our strategy is to create opportunities to share our work through storytelling. It is a complex task, considering the sensitivity of the information and work we do, maintaining legal and ethical confidentiality requirements, and ensuring it is understandable and concise.

The website and social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube) are the mechanisms for achieving this.

Safeguarding Matters - Newsletter & Live Educational Forums

In 2024, we introduced two new initiatives to support our vision of building safer organisations: Safeguarding Matters, a bi-monthly newsletter, and Safeguarding Matters: Live, a new educational forum series.

The bi-monthly newsletter raises awareness of safeguarding issues and shares insights to help organisations foster safer environments. The forums offer opportunities to engage with leading experts and explore critical safeguarding topics.

We encourage you to share these with your colleagues, friends, and networks. Sign up here to receive future newsletters and be notified of upcoming forums in 2025.

Marcella's Retirement

Marcella Meagher has been with Kooyoora since its doors opened on 1 July 2017. She worked in the area of professional standards before joining Kooyoora, assisting with a statewide audit of the dioceses of the Anglican Church during the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry and through the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. She is someone many people will know or have spoken to over the years, with her infectious positivity, can-do attitude, and bubbly personality. I can hear her laugh just thinking about her.

Marcella is part of the fabric of Kooyoora—she has watched and guided the organisation every step of the way. Steadfast in her support, wisdom, and knowledge about our work, our team, and what we need to do and where we need to go. It is difficult to describe the legacy she has created at Kooyoora, but some key examples include her pivotal role in the office move and the immense project of designing, developing, and project managing the Online Screening Application (OSCA) platform. She single-handedly drove this incredibly important work, drawing on her deep understanding of what the system needed to do—combining her technical knowledge of clearances with an awareness of the real challenges people faced in applying for them. She anticipated potential struggles and worked tirelessly to develop solutions with the IT technicians, often waking in the middle of the night with new ideas.

I collated a long list of things people have appreciated about working with Marcella, and some themes emerged:

• “She is a font of knowledge, experience, and support which makes the job easier and helps produce the best approach/responses we can.”

• “She is someone I know I trust, respect, and rely on for her responses and the information she shares.”

• “Always available to answer any question without fuss or judgment.”

• “She’s an upbeat, super helpful, and very positive person with a great laugh.”

• “Warm and welcoming.”

• “No-nonsense, straightforward.”

• “Her belief in me.”

• “Her sense of calm.”

• “Strong dedication to Kooyoora’s work.”

• “Her brownies 😊.”

Marcella obviously takes with her a huge amount of corporate knowledge. In true Marcella style, she has been planning this for some time, and we have had a successor in place for 18 months. We are in the capable hands of Raelene DeLuca, who has been operating as our Administration Manager since July.

We are also fortunate that Marcella will come back for project work as needed. Most importantly, we wish Marcella well as she enters the next chapter of her life—spending more time with family, improving her golf handicap, and enjoying long summers at the beach. (Oh, and of course, she only wants projects in the winter!)

Surprise Breakfast

Whilst we celebrated Marcella’s retirement with the wider team, we also held a surprise breakfast with the small group of people who were instrumental at the start of Kooyoora- Anne Baker (inaugural Executive Director, Pauline Kelly Board Director, Angela Canon- started the journey of Kooyoora and Marcella’s involvement)