Dr Susan Collings is a Senior Research Fellow at the Transforming early Education and Child Health (‘TeEACh’) Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Before embarking on an academic career, Susan spent many years in the community services sector working with children and families with disability. As a sociologist, Susan draws on ecological and life span approaches to address social inequalities and improve service interventions. Her participatory and arts-based research collaborations with young people, families and the services who support them have improved practices in areas that include disability planning, birth family contact, family-led decision making and parenting capacity assessment. Susan has established an international reputation for her research with parents with intellectual disability and their children and is an executive member of the IASSIDD Special Interest Research Group on Parents and Parenting with Intellectual Disability. She is also a founding member of the National Advocacy Collective, an Australian group formed in 2022 to promote the rights of parents with intellectual disability and their children to ethical treatment and adapted parenting support.

Renee Mills is a senior social worker for Community Living Association Inc and has a background in community development practice.  Renee has worked alongside young people at risk of homelessness for 20 years, particularly where there is experience of intellectual and/or cognitive disability and transition from out-of- home care. Thorough this work, the challenges facing parents with intellectual disability has become a primary focus in Renee’s work, due to the high occurrence for these young people of early life parenting and engagement as parents in child protection systems.  Renee has been working alongside parents and practitioners to advocate for the rights of parents and their children, and to develop models of practice that effectively and sensitively support parents.  Renee is also engaging with this issue at a systems level with a view to create change, working collaboratively with Child Protection stakeholders in Queensland, and as a founding member of the National Advocacy Collective to promote the rights of parents with intellectual disability and their children.

Crystal Richardson is a proud mother of three beautiful boys. Crystal has lived experience of intellectual disability and navigating the child protection system as a parent. She believes as a parent it is important to role model building healthy relationships for her children and has worked hard to build a positive relationship with the foster carer. Crystal also believes it is vital to role model speaking up, so her sons know how to use their voice as they grow older.  She is a passionate advocate for parents with intellectual disability.  Most recently she presented on the lived experience of parents with intellectual disability and what it takes to best support them at the Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability Conference and the Queensland Foster and Kinship Care Conference.

Dr Catherine Wade is Principal Research Specialist at the Parenting Research Centre. She leads research, evaluation and analysis activities at the Centre, managing a team of research staff engaged in projects focused on evaluating the implementation and impact of initiatives aimed at improving the lives of vulnerable families across Australia and internationally. Catherine is also a Research Affiliate with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. She has over 20 years of experience conducting social policy research spanning a range of public health priority groups including parents with intellectual disability. She has delivered professional training to over 1200 practitioners, in evidence-informed parenting programs for parents with learning difficulties (in Australia, Sweden, Norway and Japan) and has developed and evaluated innovative resources aimed at these parents. Catherine is an internationally recognised expert on parenting with intellectual disability, with regular requests for her advice, training and representation on steering committees and reference groups as a result of her clinical and research experience with these families.