Risk Aware Consultancy and Training

13/07/2025

Risk aware proudly supporting the St Kilda football club and the Danny Frawley Centre - St Kilda's hub for mental health resources designed to bring further awareness to mental health issues within the community.

25/06/2025

Reflective Practice: Enhancing Well-being and Professional Growth

Working in any setting or environment can present many challenges, in particular when working in areas that may involve complex and challenging behaviours. In any workplace, self-care is vital and is often something that is ignored. Increased self-awareness can benefit employees by helping to recognize patterns in their emotions, including events or situations that can be both personally and professionally challenging.

Reflective practice is one example of self-care. It provides a safe environment for people to come together to discuss experiences, issues and areas of concern with their peers. The time can be used to reflect on one's actions whilst gaining the support of their peers and engaging in the process of continuous learning.

Reflective practice is a process of critical self-examination and learning from experiences, particularly in professional settings. It involves thinking deeply about past actions, decisions, and situations to identify areas for improvement and growth. By engaging in reflective practice, individuals can enhance their skills, adapt their approaches, and ultimately improve their overall performance.

Key Aspects of Reflective Practice:

- Critical self-assessment: Reflective practice encourages individuals to analyse their own behaviours, thought processes, and emotional responses related to a specific experience.

- Learning from experience: It's a way to make sense of what happened, understand the factors that influenced the outcome, and identify lessons learned.

- Continuous improvement: Reflective practice is an ongoing process of learning and adapting, leading to better performance in the future.

- Adaptability: It helps individuals adjust their approach based on new insights gained through reflection, leading to more effective strategies in similar situations.

- Contextual awareness: Reflective practice considers the specific context of the experience, including the environment, the people involved, and the goals of the situation.

Benefits of Reflective Practice:

Professional development: Enhances skills, knowledge, and decision-making abilities.

- Increased self-awareness: Provides insights into one's strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth.

- Improved performance: Leads to more effective strategies and better outcomes in future situations.

- Enhanced problem-solving: Fosters the ability to analyse challenges and develop creative solutions.

- Reduced errors: Helps identify potential pitfalls and develop strategies to avoid repeating mistakes.

Increased job satisfaction: Contributes to a sense of accomplishment and professional growth.

-Prevention of vicarious trauma: In high-stress professions, reflective practice can help manage the emotional impact of work and prevent burnout.

Commonly used in healthcare settings, however, widely accepted and encouraged in all other work environments.

Our Services:
Individual and group sessions available
Regular or post-incident support
Trained and qualified facilitators with many years of experience

Contact the team at Risk Aware for further details, costs, or to book your free trial session.

Email: RiskAware@outlook.com
Phone: 0401640204

24/04/2025

15/04/2025

Beyond Right and Wrong: Understanding Harm Without Losing Compassion

As a society, we often lean into binary thinking, good vs evil, victim vs perpetrator, right vs wrong. These narratives offer comfort. They make the world feel tidy, manageable, morally clear.
But human behaviour, especially at its most extreme, rarely fits so neatly into categories.

I work with people who’ve committed serious offences, and the teams that support them.
When I share this, I’m often met with thinly veiled statements in disguise :
“How can you help people like that?”
“What about the victims?”
As though compassion in one direction invalidates it in another.

But here’s what experience and evidence consistently teach us: two things can be true at once.

Yes, some behaviours are deeply harmful.
And yes, the person behind those behaviours may also be a product of cumulative disadvantage, childhood abuse, entrenched poverty, exposure to violence, disrupted attachment, and systems that failed them long before they harmed anyone else.

When someone is raised in chaos, that chaos becomes their reference point. It shapes how they relate to themselves, others, and the world.
While many transcend these beginnings, research shows that even one protective factor, a caring adult, a moment of safety, a relationship of trust, can be the difference between surviving and spiralling .

Still, public discourse often fails to separate behaviour from identity.
We collapse the two, treating people as irredeemable rather than as human beings shaped by complex and often tragic circumstances.
In doing so, we reinforce shame, stigma, and alienation, all of which increase the risk of reoffending.

This isn’t just a professional observation. It’s also personal.
I’ve been witness to violent crime. I know what it is to feel afraid, angry, even consumed by a sense of injustice.
And yet, even then, I found myself asking:
How did this person, once a child, once innocent, end up here?

Those are the questions that matter:
-What led to this behaviour?
- What pain or absence sits underneath it?
- What access did they have to safety, education, or care?
- And if one or two things in your life had gone differently, could you have ended up somewhere else?

This is not about excusing harm. It’s about understanding it.
Accountability is necessary, but it doesn’t require abandoning empathy.
In fact, without empathy, meaningful accountability rarely occurs.
If we want a safer, more compassionate society, we must get better at holding space for complexity, even when it challenges our instinct to judge.

Everyone, regardless of their past, deserves the chance to be seen, heard, and understood.

18/03/2025

Australia's Prison Dilemma - why are our imprisonment rates going up despite a significant reduction in violent crime?

Worth a quick watch (1:12min):

Australia is putting more people in prison despite a significant fall in the number of criminal offenders. A Productivity Commission research paper looks at ...

26/02/2025

Thanks to an overwhelming response, our upcoming workshop “ Managing personal safety in the face of Threats and Aggression ” is now at capacity.
For information regarding all future Training & Workshops join our mailing list . Contact us with your contact details at RiskAware@outlook.com

14/02/2025

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrxWQshV5xpo2CScLeh0Got7T0wTllUYl8llSU4_cPIB1IsQ/viewform?usp=sharing

Managing Personal Safety in the Face of Aggression and Threats Workshop Event Address: Mitcham Bowling Club - 306 Mitcham Rd, Mitcham VIC 3132 Contact us at Riskaware@outlook.com To register: https://lnkd.in/gWJBEmwP

11/02/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/future-justice-and-corrections_fjcs25-mentalhealthincorrections-communitycorrections-activity-7294852647734362115-XnId?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAABAkghcBUcg7g9WX_uRm-8zTOAygLOqF0Uk&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

We’re excited to announce Cathy Cooper, Forensic Clinical Specialist at Eastern Health, as a speaker at the Future Justice and Corrections Summit! Cathy…

05/02/2025

Feeling unsafe at work or in the community?
Are you interested in developing a greater awareness of personal safety, or how to respond to aggression / threats / violence?
Our workshop might be just what you're looking for...

Workshop Aims: - Reduce Risks of Aggression and Violence - Increase Knowledge & Awareness - Develop Skills in Managing Challenging Behaviours -...