Chloe is an experienced Social Worker who has worked with children and families across the South Australian child protection and family services system for close to two decades. Her career has spanned statutory child protection, intensive family services, family preservation and reunification, domestic and family violence, homelessness, out-of-home care, and therapeutic services for children and families.
Chloe spent nine years with the South Australian Department for Child Protection, primarily in supervisory and leadership roles. During this time, she developed extensive experience working alongside families experiencing complex and intersecting challenges. Her statutory experience gave Chloe a strong understanding of child protection assessment and decision-making, risk and safety planning, the complexities of reunification, and the responsibility involved in determining whether children can safely remain with, or return to, their families.
It was through this work that Chloe developed a particular passion for family preservation and reunification. Having spent many years seeing children enter the care system, she became increasingly interested in what could be done differently and earlier — both to prevent children from needing to enter care and to create genuine pathways home for children already separated from their families.
Chloe holds a strong belief that, wherever it can be achieved safely, children are best supported to grow up within loving family homes, connected to the people, relationships, culture and communities to which they belong. She also believes parents and families experiencing significant difficulties deserve the opportunity, support and clarity necessary to make change. Reunification, for Chloe, is not about minimising harm or returning children home at any cost. It is about doing the relational work alongside families to understand what has happened, what children need to experience differently, what parents need in order to provide safe and nurturing care, and what observable evidence will demonstrate that change is meaningful and sustainable.
Following her time in statutory child protection, Chloe moved into the not-for-profit sector, ultimately becoming Senior Manager and Practice Manager at Relationships Australia South Australia. Most recently, she led specialist child and family programs and major cross-agency partnerships spanning intensive family support, domestic and family violence, infant and early childhood intervention and therapeutic services.
A significant part of Chloe’s recent work has been in Intensive Family Services, supporting families where there were significant concerns for children’s safety and wellbeing, with a focus on strengthening families, keeping children safely at home and preventing escalation into statutory child protection wherever possible. Chloe led an Intensive Family Services consortium involving Relationships Australia South Australia, KWY Aboriginal Corporation and Uniting Care Wesley Bowden, working across government, Aboriginal-led and community service systems with families experiencing multiple and intersecting complexities. The service achieved strong outcomes in supporting families to address concerns while children remained safely within their families, reinforcing Chloe’s belief in the value of intensive, therapeutic and relational intervention to prevent removal.
This experience has given Chloe a perspective from both sides of the child protection system: she understands the statutory responsibilities, thresholds and evidence required when there are serious concerns about a child’s safety, while also understanding how systems can sometimes become fragmented, overly risk-focused or difficult for families to navigate. Her work is grounded in the belief that good child protection practice requires us to take harm seriously without losing sight of people’s capacity for change.
Chloe’s practice is child-centred while firmly grounded in a whole-of-family approach. She believes children should be meaningfully included in decisions affecting their lives, but that sustainable safety is usually created through change in the family and caregiving relationships surrounding them. Her approach seeks to hold compassion and accountability together: being clear about harm and what needs to change while remaining curious about families’ strengths, relationships, culture, history, lived experience and capacity to do things differently.
Her practice is strengths-based, trauma-responsive, restorative, family-led and safety-organised, drawing on attachment theory, systems thinking, infant mental health, caregiver sensitivity and the neuroscience of caregiving. Chloe has extensive experience using Safety Organised Practice approaches to help children, families and professionals develop shared understandings of harm, danger, strengths and safety, and to translate professional concerns into clear goals that families can understand and work towards.
Chloe is particularly passionate about building family and naturally occurring safety networks around children. She believes professional services should not become the source of a family’s safety; rather, effective intervention should strengthen the relationships, protective factors and community connections that will remain in children’s lives long after professionals have stepped away. Her training in Family Group Conferencing complements her commitment to family-led decision-making and to families having genuine agency and power in developing solutions for their children.
Children’s participation has been another significant focus throughout Chloe’s career. She provided evidence to the South Australian Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Royal Commission regarding the importance of recognising children experiencing domestic and family violence as victim-survivors with their own rights, experiences and perspectives. Chloe believes that hearing children’s voices is only the beginning; meaningful participation requires those perspectives to genuinely influence what happens around them. Wherever safe and possible, this means working alongside parents and caregivers, helping them understand their child’s experience and become active partners in strengthening safety, connection and healing. This philosophy has shaped Chloe’s presentations on child-centred and safety-organised practice in South Australia and internationally, her contribution to sector-wide practice development and training, and her work with Emerging Minds, where she has advocated for child-inclusive therapeutic practice that recognises children within the context of their most important caregiving relationships.
Chloe holds a Bachelor of Social Work, Bachelor of Social Planning and Master of Business Administration specialising in Social Impact from UNSW. She was awarded a Centre for Social Impact scholarship to undertake her MBA and graduated with Excellence. Her studies strengthened her belief that families should not have to navigate complex challenges or service systems alone. She understands that lasting change is not only about what parents can do differently, but also about ensuring families receive the right support, are genuinely heard and have opportunities to build on their strengths. Chloe is passionate about helping services work better together so that children and families have the best possible chance to thrive.
Her further professional development includes the Trauma Research Foundation’s Certificate in Traumatic Stress Studies, led by Dr Bessel van der Kolk; MERTIL (My Early Relational Trauma-Informed Learning) certification led by Professor Jennifer McIntosh; Circle of Security Parenting (COS-P) Facilitator training; Family Group Conferencing through Relationships Australia South Australia; Clinical Supervision Certification through the University of Adelaide; Mindful Leadership Certification; Diploma of Leadership and Management; Introduction to Infant Mental Health Certification; and ongoing Psychodrama training through Psychodrama Australia.
At Connecting Families, Chloe brings together her experience in statutory child protection, intensive family preservation, therapeutic and family services, and systems leadership to return to the work she is most passionate about — working directly alongside children, parents and their networks. Her aim is to help families make change that is not simply described in meetings or written into plans, but can be seen and experienced in the everyday lives of children — creating the safety, stability, connection and care that can keep families together and, where children have entered care, help create a safe pathway home.