16th–18th March 2026
RACV Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast, QLD
Strong Minds, Safe Spaces: Mental Health, Identity and Connection in a Changing World
What to Expect
Insight-driven keynotes from leading experts
Practical tools for your work with children and young people
Real stories and lived experience perspectives
A deep dive into digital, clinical, cultural and systemic issues
Time to reflect, reset and connect
About the Conference
Exploring the future of youth mental health through connection, inclusion and innovation
The 2026 Child & Adolescent Mental Health Conference (CAMH26) brings together a diverse network of professionals and advocates dedicated to the wellbeing of children, teens, families and communities.
This is your space to learn, share and connect with educators, clinicians, youth workers, researchers, policy leaders and people with lived experience from across Australia and beyond.
Through practical sessions and honest conversations, CAMH26 will explore how we can better support mental health, identity, and belonging for children and adolescents in a rapidly changing world. From creating safer spaces to strengthening resilience and connection, the conference will spotlight real solutions for the challenges facing young people today.
Who Should Attend
CAMH26 is designed for anyone working to support the mental health of children, adolescents and their families.
You’ll be in good company if you’re a:
- Mental health professional or clinician
- Youth or family support worker
- Educator, school leader or wellbeing coordinator
- Early childhood or paediatric specialist
- Academic or researcher
- Community worker, cultural advisor or peer support leader
- Government or policy representative
- Parent, carer or lived experience advocate
What to Expect at CAMH26
- Impactful keynote presentations
- Practical, real-world strategies
- Topic-based breakout sessions
- A welcoming, respectful atmosphere
- Social events and informal networking
- Culturally responsive and inclusive content
- Time and space to reconnect and reflect
CAMH26 will spotlight emerging ideas across early intervention, digital engagement, neurodivergence, education systems, trauma, family support, youth voice, and more.
What’s Included in Your Registration
Your registration includes access to:
- All keynote presentations, concurrent sessions and workshops
- Premium catering across all three days
- Full access to the CAMH wellbeing program
- Networking events and informal socials
- Discounted accommodation at RACV Royal Pines
- A professionally produced venue experience
- Access to the official conference app
- On-demand replay of sessions for 30 days post-event
- CPD points and a certificate of attendance
- Opportunities to win delegate prizes and giveaways
Presentation Topics
Your submission should connect with our 2026 conference theme:
Strong Minds, Safe Spaces: Mental Health, Identity and Connection in a Changing World
Submissions can align with any of the following topic streams:
(Click To Expand)
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Foundations First: Mental Health in the Earliest Years (0–5)
- The first 2000 days: What children need to thrive, connect and grow
- Attachment, co-regulation and emotional safety in the early years
- Identifying and responding to early signs of mental health need
- Parental and caregiver mental health: Building strong foundations for children
- Integrating social and emotional wellbeing into early childhood education and care
- Designing integrated early years systems that connect health, care, and family supports
-
Neurodivergence in Focus: Beyond Labels to Lived Experience
- Neuroaffirming practice: beyond masking to authentic support
- Gender, masking and late diagnosis in neurodivergent youth
- Gaming, special interests and positive obsession: A deeper look at what works for neurodivergent minds
- Behaviour as communication: Reframing behaviours as expressions of need
- What helps after a diagnosis? Supporting families through post-diagnostic adjustment
- Social motivation in neurodivergent youth: Rethinking what belonging looks like
- Reforming systems to deliver truly neuroaffirming and accessible supports
-
Digital Lives and Mental Health: Navigating Tech, AI, and the Evolving Online World
- Likes, filters and digital self-esteem: Impact on identity
- Sextortion, grooming and digital exploitation
- Vaping, online trends and substance use: Digital drivers of distress
- The mental health impacts of a social media ban: Exploring early signals
- AI, telehealth and immersive tech: The future of care and support
- Co-designing safer online spaces with children and teens
- Digital fatigue and disengagement: When youth opt out
- Early exposure to social media and mental health in under 12s
- Innovating digital service models to meet youth where they are, safely and effectively
-
Beyond the Curriculum: Building Responsive, Inclusive, and Resilient Learning Communities
- Embedding mental health across the curriculum
- Whole-school approaches to creating mentally healthy learning environments
- Student-led mental health initiatives: supporting youth agency and peer-to-peer influence
- School refusal and re-engagement: new strategies and supports
- The evolving role of school psychologists and wellbeing coordinators
- Building mentally healthy school cultures through leadership and governance
- Alternative schooling models and mental health outcomes
- Approaches to preventing and responding to bullying
- Teaching respectful relationships: curriculum, challenges, and culture
- Embedding mental health reform into school systems, policy, and leadership structures
-
Breaking the Cycle: Trauma, Family Violence, and Abuse
- Early trauma interventions in education and care settings
- Trauma-responsive practices for children reintegrating after family violence
- Adolescent use of violence in the home
- Integrating First Nations cultural healing into trauma models
- Addressing consent, coercion, and control in teen relationships
- Early recognition and intervention in family violence: what schools and services need to know
- Building trauma-responsive systems that support early identification and long-term care
-
Families in Focus: Mental Health in the Home and Beyond
- Whole-family mental health support: the role of family in integrated care
- Parenting under pressure: tools for co-parenting after separation
- Grandparents, kinship carers and non-parent caregivers: Filling the gaps in mental health-informed support
- Decoding distress: practical tools for parents to navigate emotions and behaviour
- Intergenerational healing: breaking cycles of trauma and disconnection
- Empowering culturally diverse families to navigate mental health services
- Co-designing family-centred mental health systems that are easy to access and navigate
-
Supporting the Workforce, Sustaining the Mission: Empowering the People Who Support Our Young People
- Practitioner wellbeing: burnout, vicarious trauma, and recovery
- Building clinical confidence in early-career workers
- Rural and remote workforce challenges: models that work
- Supervision for multidisciplinary teams: best practice frameworks
- Professional development pathways for school-based practitioners
- Promoting educator mental health and sustainable practice
- Empowering the workforce to drive innovation and reform across youth mental health systems
-
Culturally Safe and Self-determined Care: Mental Health Across Diverse Communities
- Cultural belonging and identity: mental health supports for First Nations and multicultural youth
- Decolonising mental health: power, policy and community control
- Culturally safe schools: strategies that support cultural identity and wellbeing
- Working with CALD youth: language, stigma and belonging
- Staying connected to country and culture while schooling away
- Transforming systems to support culturally safe, community-led models of care
-
Emerging Mental Health Challenges: Identity, Safety and Complex Realities for a New Generation
- Navigating identity, intersectionality and mental health in a changing world
- Self-harm, suicidality and complex distress
- Eating disorders across the spectrum
- Consent, pornography and adolescent development
- Gendered violence and digital misogyny
- Creating gender-safe and identity-affirming spaces
- Designing inclusive mental health systems that address loneliness, isolation, and the complex realities young people face
- Designing flexible, inclusive systems that respond to complex and intersecting youth needs
The CAMH26 Conference Committee
Alex Dalton
Mental Health Advocate & LGBTQ+ Rights Activist | Youth Peer & Lived Experience Worker
Brian Moore
PhD, Psychologist PSY0001778777, MSCPA, Senior Lecturer, University of Wollongong
Registration Options
$ 449 + GST
Virtual
Save $100 with Early Bird. Ends 13/03/2026.
- Live streaming of all keynote presenters
- Live streaming of all sessions in the plenary room over three-day conference period
- Virtual presentations
- Complete online access to audio and visual presentations for 30 days*
- Over 10 hours towards CPD points
- Your personalised certificate of attendance
$ 1,249 + GST
In-Person
Save $200 with Early Bird. Ends 13/03/2026.
- All keynote presentations
- All concurrent presentations
- Discounted accommodation rates
- Access to conference app
- 5-star conference catering package
- Access to exclusive networking functions
- Complete online access to audio and visual presentations for 30 days post-event
- Printed conference materials
- Over 10 hours towards CPD points
- Your personalised certificate of attendance
- Exposure for your organisation
- Plus, chances to win great prizes!
$ 3,447 + GST
In-Person Group of Three (3 pax)
Save $750 with Early Bird. Ends 13/03/2026.
- All keynote presentations
- All concurrent presentations
- Discounted accommodation rates
- Access to conference app
- 5-star conference catering package
- Access to exclusive networking functions
- Complete online access to audio and visual presentations for 30 days post-event
- Printed conference materials
- Over 10 hours towards CPD points
- Your personalised certificate of attendance
- Exposure for your organisation
- Plus, chances to win great prizes!
Registrations will open Thursday 30 November 2023.
Register your interest to attend the 2024 CAMH
Register Your Interest
Register Your Team's Interest
HAVE A TEAM OF 4 OR MORE?
Venue
RACV Royal Pines Resort, QLD
Monday 16 March - Wed 18 March 2026
Accommodation Rates:
| Run of House Guest Room excluding breakfast | $270 per night |
| Run of House Guest Room incl. breakfast for one guest | $300 per night |
| Run of House Guest Room incl. breakfast for two guests | $330 per night |
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