Wednesday, March 18, 2026

11:50 AM - 12:30 PM

Adelaide Oval - William Magarey room

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Overview

Presented by: Kimberly Taylor - Community Engagement Officer / Aboriginal Narrative Approaches Practitioner, Rebecca Cort - Senior Manager Research and Innovation, Dr. Jaye Litherland-De Lara - Senior Researcher, and Dr. Yasamin Veziari - Senior Researcher. KWY Aboriginal Corporation

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Details

Wilto Willo, meaning ‘spring star’ in Kaurna language, is a research project led by KWY Aboriginal Corporation and delivered in collaboration with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation. The project aims to contribute to the reduction of the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) in South Australia. Wilto Willo utilises Aboriginal Participatory Action Research (APAR) that centres Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, valuing, and doing. The project has focused on developing a culturally grounded and anti-colonial research approach that integrates Aboriginal narrative practices within APAR to strengthen social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) for Aboriginal facilitators and participants. This approach recognises the cultural and emotional labour involved in sharing lived experience and positions research methodology itself as a way of supporting community wellbeing. This work is grounded in the knowledge that Aboriginal people hold the solutions to keeping our children and young people safe, connected to family, and strong in culture. The project involves gathering and amplifying the voices of Aboriginal community members with lived experience of the South Australian child protection system through community-based yarning circles, online surveys, and one-on-one interviews. Yarning circles are facilitated using Aboriginal narrative approaches. Cultural practices, including weaving, are integrated into the yarning process to support grounding, reflection and relational safety, recognising Aboriginal narrative approaches that support safe sharing, collective meaning-making cultural practice as part of the research methodology. Discussions focus on the strengths and protective factors in community and the contributing factors within the system that increase child protection involvement. Our goal is to ensure Aboriginal voices are central to the design and implementation of policies and practices that affect Aboriginal lives, ensuring Aboriginal family ways and the communities of care and responsibility that support them are central to sector reform. This interactive workshop will present the development of the Wilto Willo APAR methodology and its integration of Aboriginal narrative approaches as a therapeutic research practice. Participants will take part in a guided weaving activity used within Wilto Willo yarning circles to support Aboriginal narrative approaches to data collection. Together we will explore how culturally grounded and therapeutic research approaches can support SEWB while informing system changes needed to reduce Aboriginal over-representation in South Australian OOHC.