2017 Robin Winkler Lecture

Transforming the Lives of Children, Parents and Communities through Positive Parenting: myth or reality?

The 2017 inaugural Robin Winkler lecture by Professor Matthew Sanders, Director, Parenting and Family Support Centre and Professor of Clinical Psychology, The University of Queensland.

This presentation focused on the critical role of evidence-based parenting programs in the prevention of serious social, emotional and behavioural problems in children and child maltreatment. The impact of parenting on parental and child capacity to self-regulate and its impact on various aspects of development and wellbeing with be discussed. Learnings from large scale population-level implementation of evidence based parenting and family support interventions were highlighted. It focuses on the importance of using evidence based interventions, that are culturally informed, and have contemporary relevance to parents in an age of technology. Professor Saunders attempted to answer the question “What we need to do as a community to shift the needle on child maltreatment and enhance children’s wellbeing at a whole of population level.”

Professor Sanders is considered a world authority on the development, implementation, evaluation, and global dissemination of evidence-based parenting and family intervention programs. He is the founder of the widely acclaimed Triple P-Positive Parenting Program developed under his leadership at the Parenting and Family Support Centre at the University of Queensland. This unique population-based, multilevel system of evidence-based parenting interventions based on cognitive behavioural principles has been widely disseminated internationally via Triple P International under license from the University of Queensland to 28 countries in 20 languages. Triple P is considered one of the best examples of behavioural and social science innovation arising from research at an Australian University to have been commercialised and to have produced major international impact on the wellbeing of children and families. 

Professor Matthew Sanders has made a major sustained contribution to the Australian community for almost four decades and his work has influenced government policy in multiple jurisdictions in Australia and overseas. He has been a consultant to the Council of Europe on Positive Parenting. His research has been recognised with numerous awards including the National Violence Prevention Award, the Commonwealth Heads of Government; International Collaborative Prevention Research Award from the Society for Prevention Research; a Trailblazer Award from the Association for Behaviour and Cognitive Therapy (ABCT), Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological Association, a Distinguished Contribution to Psychology Award from Australian Psychological Association, Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, Fellow of the New Zealand Psychological Society, Fellow of the Society for Experimental Criminology, Fellow of the Australia Academy of Social Science, Top 5 Innovator Award, University of Queensland, and Queenslander of the Year.

The Robin Winkler Lecture

This lecture commemorates the work of Robin Winkler, a highly influential teacher and researcher whose work was guided by humanitarian values and a relentless questioning of accepted orthodoxies. He died at the age of 43 while heading the UWA clinical masters program at the Psychology Clinic, which now bears his name. In the Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology he is described as “a singular, crusading figure” in Australian psychology.

This lecture is co-hosted by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and the School of Psychological Science.