Over the last year and a half the Signs of Safety has transitioned from Andrew Turnell’s private company Resolutions, to Elia International, a not-for-profit and membership-based organisation.
COVID meant that until recent months this has been a work in progress, as like organisations and child protection agencies around the world, our priorities shifted to make sense of how to continue our work through the pandemic.
In May 2021, the members of Elia who are the licensed Signs of Safety Trainers and Consultants elected their first Board of Directors and Elia truly became the new home of Signs of Safety. This is a landmark development that puts the evolution of the Signs of Safety in the hands of people who are and have been child protection practitioners and leaders and who work, day in and day out, with child protection practitioners and leaders.
Terry Murphy
Terry Murphy (chair), former CEO of the statutory child protection agency in Western Australia and a licensed Signs of Safety Consultant.
Frank Thomas
Frank Thomas has been with the solution focussed movement since its early days and is a counselling academic in Texas, USA.
Gayle Desmeules
Gayle Desmeules, a Metis woman from Alberta is a consultant working with a wide range of human service organisations including child protection.
Agi Gault
Agi Gault is a former child protection practitioner and manager and a licensed Signs of Safety Trainer and Consultant.
Glenn Pearson
Glenn Pearson, a Noongar man from Western Australia, is director of the Aboriginal health leadership team at a major children’s health research centre.
We are proud and humbled to have such a strong, talented and diverse board for Elia.
Elia’s Mission reaches beyond the Signs of Safety:
Elia equips organisations and communities entrusted with the care of vulnerable children, in any culture or country, to do everything possible to place the responsibility for the child’s safety and healing with the parents, children and everyone naturally connected to the family.
Wherever possible, Elia supports organisations and communities working with other vulnerable people to use our approaches to enable their work to be more participatory.
Elia itself will develop as a participatory membership-based organisation. Its ambitions for participation, like those of the Signs of Safety approach for child protection, are substantial and require all of us to be open and learning and developing along with the child protection practitioners and leaders we work with.
We are very pleased that Andrew Turnell (the co-creator of the Signs of Safety and its principal developer since the 1990’s) although stepping back is not stepping out of Elia. He will hold a non-executive position responsible for the Signs of Safety IT Solution and innovation in general.
Elia members are very pleased to be taking this next step for the Signs of Safety community and look forward to joining with child protection practitioners and leaders al around the world to do better, much better, for vulnerable children and their families.