Resume

Catherine Santoro is an independent consultant and educator who has been a passionate child protection practitioner for over 20 years.

Catherine has worked in both government and non-government agencies in front line managerial and leadership roles both at practitioner level with families and policy at level overseeing multi-million dollar implementation strategies to reduce the number of entries into care (preservation) and restore child to birth parents if possible when they have been removed into care (restoration).

She is passionate about implementation planning to support any practice change or introduction of new tools, as families cannot benefit from strategies or practice they do not experience.

Catherine provides services to government and non-government agencies as a trainer and coach, curriculum writer and implementation consultant in both family and safety centred practice (Partnering for Safety) and Structured Decision Making in many regions of Australia and Singapore. She believes that child protection practitioners need both evidence based assessment tools and skills and processes that enables them to have conversations with families about assessment of safety, risk and work collaboratively to keep children with their family when possible.