Relieving entrenched disadvantage and poverty through direct incremental reform.

As a 16-year-old mother SEED Futures CEO and Founder, Bernadette dreamed of a world that valued her and provided pathways enabling her family to thrive. This vision led her to share her own lived experience through Brave Little Bear in 2006 and establish Brave Foundation in 2009 to deliver meaningful change for other young parents and their children. Despite early scepticism, Brave Foundation has grown to be Australia’s largest organisation supporting young parents. Please see Bernadette’s Founders note and timeline from start up to national success on the Brave Foundation website here.

Supported by studies in international primary preventative strategies, Bernadette discovered that the experiences of young parents could guide efforts to help all families at risk of entrenched disadvantage, especially during the critical first 1,000 days. Without early intervention, these families often face generational poverty, becoming long-term welfare recipients. Between 2009 and 2022, Brave grew to more than 22 staff. Throughout this time, Bernadette was named Tasmanian Australian of the Year 2019, Barnardos Australian Mother of the Year and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2021.

SEED was launched by Tim Costello AC, as a systemic advocacy initiative, to re-envision how we tackle disadvantage and poverty in young people and families. Bernadette said at the May 2022 launch, “I have a bold exploratory ten-year end game, to establish a central primary prevention mechanism, where lived experience, sectors and governments advise each other, in the creation of policy and funding architecture that meets the need when it matters most,” Ms Black says. You can read more about the journey from Brave to SEED in this article, written by Philanthropy Australia in October 2023.

In SEED, Bernadette and her team have devised a four-stage, 10-year roadmap to overhaul the social service support system for families across the first 1000 days by 2032, creating a place to flourish rather than flounder. SEED aims to see everyone in the ‘system’ win, from lived experience to the authorisers of policy. The SEED team are well on target in meeting their goal, with transformation taking deep root in our systems.

Bernadette often says that her dream is to do herself out of a job, where one day our systems meet the needs of families in timely ways, before entering disadvantage, so that future generations can flourish. Bernadette says, “There is a lot of work to do in the next decade. I am now ‘Nana Bebe’ and when I see my 31-year-old son and his family, I return to my ambitious dream from so many years ago – that all families know what it’s like to flourish, to be nurtured and to nurture,” says Bernadette.

You can read Bernadette Blacks bio here