Andrew McCausland

Andrew commenced his working life as a secondary school teacher with the Victorian Education Department, demonstrating an early commitment to assisting disadvantaged children to reach their potential.

His learning journey has included degrees in Education (B.Ed) and Fine Art (B.Art Painting), developing an understanding of the role of creativity in broader holistic definitions of learning and education.

While studying art at RMIT and exhibiting for a decade, he worked for the Salvation Army Crossroads Network establishing education programs for children and young people facing multiple complex barriers, developed community art projects, and was a founding committee member of Grey Area Artist run exhibition space. He also worked at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE, designing innovative programs to engage young people with complex needs to develop Educational and Vocational pathway plans. In 2011 he delivered a Victorian Government Access and Equity pilot program at Federation University Ballarat. The program aimed to improve tertiary level education participation for children in out of home care, post out of home care and kinship care.

Andrew has worked for Berry Street since August 2012, and has incorporated into his practice current Brain Based theories about the impact of trauma on the learning and life trajectories of children and young people who have experienced trauma, attachment disruption and neglect. 

In his time at Berry Street, he has worked as a Senior Case Manager and Team Leader of Home Based Care and Manager of Education and Early Intervention Programs, as well as training, assessing and supporting Foster Carers and providing trauma training to schools and Secondary Teachers.

He has developed a pilot project that seeks to build capacity for Foster Carers to deliver informal learning in home based care placements- the “Raising the Bar” Project. He presented this model at the 2014 ACWA national conference, and developed a training manual for case workers and foster carers. He has also project managed the Navigator Pilot Project in 2017 for the Department of Employment and Training in the Central Highlands region, establishing a trauma informed case management service that returns the most disengaged secondary students in the region back to school.

He continues to develop and deliver training to Foster Carers Case workers and Teachers state-wide in collaboration with the Foster Care Association of Victoria, DEET and the Berry Street Childhood Institute.