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Adela Holmes brings over five decades of wisdom to this compelling conversation about healing our most vulnerable children. With a career spanning 52 years in child protection and therapeutic care, Adela shares the remarkable journey that led her from folk singing in coffee lounges to designing groundbreaking therapeutic programs for traumatized young people.

Discover the story behind Hurstbridge Farm, a pioneering therapeutic residential care program that transformed outcomes for children who had experienced complex trauma. When traditional systems were failing these young people—often criminalizing their trauma responses—Adela helped create a relationship-based model that changed their life trajectories. The results speak volumes: while similar children in traditional care settings plateaued or deteriorated, 65-75% of young people at Hurstbridge showed significant improvement.

What made the difference? Not the farm setting itself, as many assume, but the consistent, calm presence of adults who understood trauma and provided psychological containment. "People think that it's the farm environment that is the key, but it's not. It's relationships," Adela explains. Through powerful stories and examples, she illustrates how seemingly small moments—like a formerly street-entrenched boy asking her to walk with him to retrieve a birthday present—represent monumental shifts in a child's capacity to trust and connect.

Adela's passion remains undiminished after more than five decades, driven by seeing the profound difference therapeutic care makes. Her message to policy makers is clear and urgent: "Don't fiddle with what does work. Add to what does work... Spend the money now, because in 10 years' time is when the judgment will come." For anyone working with vulnerable children or interested in how we can better support them, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and renewed hope that healing is possible through the power of therapeutic relationships.

Bio:

Adela has a career spanning 52-years, during which she has worked in the child protection, child & family welfare & out of home care fields for both the Victorian state government and the non-government sector. 

 Adela has a well-established track record in designing, developing and delivering complex trauma grounded therapeutic care services for the most complex and challenging children and adolescents, and an expertise for working successfully with and supporting others to work with these children and adolescents. 

During her career Adela has designed and been involved in the ‘start up’ leadership and management of significant therapeutic service initiatives funded by the Victorian state government. These include the ‘Take Two” Intensive Therapeutic Service and the Victorian government’s successful pilot therapeutic residential care program, Hurstbridge Farm. 

12 other pilot programs were developed using the same model and, in 2011, all 13 were evaluated as being highly effective in producing positive life outcomes. 

Adela has been specialising as a trainer in the utilisation of complex trauma frameworks since 2000 and during this time has consolidated an extensive knowledge base and expertise in trauma & attachment informed therapeutic practice, both as a practitioner and a trainer of these skills. 

Adela also specialises in the facilitation of Reflective Practice Groups and, in her consultancy work, Adela delivers to such groups as a visiting consultant on a regular basis.

In October 2024 Adela was awarded the inaugural Centre for Excellence in Child & Family Welfare Industry Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Out of Home Care. 

Adela has no intention of retiring

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