Centre for Peacebuilding & Transformation
Our Services
From healing circle
to Parliament. The
full range.
Cygnet works across the full spectrum of social change – from front-line community facilitation DFR to government-commissioned research tabled in Parliament. We are engaged by statutory bodies to investigate complex social issues. By NGOs and councils to engage communities, facilitate healing and plan for change. By universities as research partners
1. Engagement & Participatory Practice
2. Consultancy
3. Restorative Practices
4. Restorative Justice & Conflict
Transformation
5. Leadership Development &
Capability Building
6. Professional & Cultural Supervision
7. Community led participatory research
8. Keynote Speaking &
Public Engagement
We work with the full range — from
large government contracts to probono community engagements.
Our fees are values-led and flexible.
Excellent practice should be accessible
across the sector, not only to those with
large budgets.
We work with the full range – from large government contracts to pro-bono community engagements. Our fees are values-led and flexible. Excellent practice should be accessible across the whole sector, not only to those with large budgets.
Each engagement begins with a conversation – and continues only when genuine trust has been established. We never arrive with a pre-packaged program. Every service we deliver is co-designed with the people it is meant to serve, shaped by local knowledge and cultural context and guided by what is actually needed rather than what is easiest to provide.
That is what makes our outcomes durable. Across all eight service streams, the common thread is relationship – not as a soft add-on, but as the load-bearing architecture of everything we build together.
At Cygnet, our services are not transactional products – they are deep, relational invitations to heal, reconcile and build futures of justice and belonging. We offer seven interconnected streams of practice designed to support individuals, organisations and systems to lead with integrity, respond to complexity and heal forward. Each offering is a bespoke expression of our commitment to walking alongside communities rather than doing things for them.
We work with the full range – from large government contracts to pro-bono community engagements. Our fees are values-led and flexible. Excellent practice should be accessible across the whole sector, not only to those with large budgets. Every engagement begins with a conversation and continues only when genuine trust has been established.
What distinguishes our service model is that it is never pre-packaged. We map systems to uncover emotional and political complexities, design processes that are emergent rather than prescribed, and stay accountable for outcomes long after the formal engagement has ended. The work is iterative. The relationship is ongoing. The goal is always transformation, not just delivery.
We go only where invited. When we arrive, we
bring our whole selves.
OUR PARTNERS
Stream 1: Engagement &Participatory Practice
Bringing people together to reflect, create and transform.
At Cygnet, we create the conditions for courageous conversations, shared decision-making and community-led change. We specialise in the design and facilitation of culturally responsive, trauma-aware, healing-orientated and participatory processes that bring diverse voices together to connect, reflect and co-create solutions in response to complex social challenges. Our work is grounded in deep listening and relational practice, honouring local knowledge, cultural identity and the wisdom held in lived and living experiences.
Our work supports people to bridge differences, restore trust and co-create pathways forward through shared decision-making and collective action, even in the midst of complexity, conflict or change. Whether navigating grief and conflict, shaping policy through community voice, or walking alongside systems reform, our team brings deep listening, critical insight and trauma-informed practice to every engagement.
We support:
- Community Engagement: yarning circles, storytelling forums, community dialogues
- Participatory Action Research: co-designed research projects that inform justice, healing and equity
- Strategic & Operational Planning: collaborative workshops mapping co-created pathways and solutions
- Systems & Policy Development: informed by lived and living experiences
- Trauma-Informed Facilitation: skilled support for navigating grief, conflict, adversity or transition
- Knowledge Harvesting & Translation: gathering lived and living experience stories and data and translating them into actionable insights for systems influence
Stream 2: Consultancy
Walking alongside organisations to imagine, design and embody meaningful change.
Our consultancy supports transformation that is relational, reflective and real. At Cygnet, we offer strategic advisory and consultancy services to support organisations, systems and communities to respond thoughtfully to complexity, navigate transitions and embed justice, healing and relational integrity into the heart of their work.
We work closely with our clients – government agencies, community-controlled organisations, NGOs, philanthropic bodies and private sector leaders – to co-create solutions that are grounded in context, guided by values and committed to long-term impact.
We support:
- Strategic and operational planning
- Policy and program design and review
- Systems mapping and change facilitation
- Cultural capability development and organisational transformation
- Restorative and trauma-informed systems change
- Equity, inclusion and anti-racism strategy development
- Governance and leadership advisory
- Community consultation and engagement planning
We understand that organisational transformation is not simply a technical exercise — it is relational, emotional and political.
Stream 3: Restorative Practices
Cultivating connection. Strengthening community. Building futures of trust.
At Cygnet, we understand that strong, resilient communities are built by nurturing the everyday relationships that hold us together. Our restorative practices focus on the intentional, ongoing work of connecting, building and deepening trust as the foundation for collective wellbeing.
We believe that restorative practices are a way of being, not simply a set of interventions. They invite us to live relationally – to foster environments where belonging, respect and shared accountability are woven into the fabric of daily life. Through simple yet profound practices, we help individuals, teams and communities lay the foundations for safety, resilience and collective wellbeing.
We support:
- Community building circles that strengthen relational trust
- Restorative dialogue practices to deepen connection and understanding
- Relational leadership development for organisations and teams
- Embedding restorative values and practices into organisational culture
- Trauma-aware and culturally grounded approaches to relationship building
- Training and mentoring in everyday restorative practice skills
Restorative practices are not just a strategy for times of crisis – they are a daily investment in the conditions that prevent harm, foster equity and inspire thriving communities. We don’t just respond to harm; we build the relational ecosystems where healing, trust and transformation become possible.
Stream 4: Restorative Justice & Conflict Transformation
When harm disrupts relationships, we respond with courage, connection and care.
At Cygnet, we believe conflict and harm – when held with integrity – can become powerful catalysts for growth, understanding and healing. We support individuals, families, teams and communities to repair trust, restore relationships and transform the conditions that give rise to conflict and harm.
Our work begins with a detailed process of conflict mapping, designed to surface the layers of harm, the systems that sustain it and the human experiences that carry it. This allows us to design bespoke, relevant and specialist responses that reflect the unique needs of the people and communities involved. Our approach is always intentional, relational, trauma informed and culturally grounded. We don’t impose one-size-fits-all solutions – we co-create the process with participants, inviting them to be active architects of their own healing and restoration.
Whether navigating interpersonal conflict, organisational rupture or systemic harm, we support people to move beyond blame and silence toward shared understanding, courageous dialogue and pathways forward that are hopeful, just and enduring.
We support:
- Restorative justice conferencing and healing circles
- Mediation, conflict coaching and workplace restoration
- Multi-party dialogue and systems-level repair
- Long-term strategies for transforming conflict and culture
Restoration takes time. Transformation takes trust. We are here for both.
Stream 5: Leadership Development & Capability Building
We don’t run programs. We grow capability.
Most training ends when the room empties. Ours is designed to begin there.
Cygnet works alongside organisations – not just their staff – to build genuine, lasting capability in restorative practice, peacebuilding, trauma-informed approaches and culturally grounded leadership. What distinguishes our approach is that we design for embedding, not just for learning. We co-create with the organisation from the outset, mapping what is actually needed, what already exists, and what conditions are required for new practices to take root and hold.
Our work is experiential, relational and deeply practical. We don’t impose a pre-built curriculum. We build something together – shaped by the people, the culture and the challenge – and we stay alongside long enough to ensure it moves from the training room into daily practice, team culture and organisational systems.
What this looks like in practice:
- Co-designed training programs shaped by the organisation’s specific context, culture and goals
- Pre-engagement mapping to identify capability gaps, existing strengths and organisational readiness
- Experiential learning that builds skills through doing, reflecting and applying – not passive delivery
- Post-training embedding support – follow-up sessions, coaching, supervision and practice communities
- Evaluation and review cycles to measure whether change is actually taking hold
- Capability building that extends to teams, leadership and governance – not just frontline practitioners
Focus areas include: Restorative justice and restorative practices, peacebuilding and facilitation, trauma-informed and healing-centred practice, cultural capability and ethical allyship, decolonising methodologies, anti-racism and active bystander, community development and systems thinking, leadership and organisational change.
The measure of success is not what people know when they leave the room. It is what they do differently – and sustainably – six months later.
Stream 6: Professional & Cultural Supervision
Holding space for reflection, growth and cultural integrity in complex practice.
We hold space for reflective practice, cultural safety, integrity and sustainable wellbeing. Our supervision services are holistic, culturally grounded and relational. We support practitioners, leaders, change agents and teams navigating complexity to stay aligned with purpose, centred in practice and supported in community.
We don’t simply deliver supervision – we co-create a safe, supportive space for inquiry, insight and restoration. We enter gently, build relationships with care and walk alongside people in ways that honour their stories, communities and responsibilities.
We support:
- Individual and group supervision
- Cultural consultation and coaching
- Integration of trauma-informed, decolonising, relational and systemic lenses
- Ethical decision-making and practice integrity
- Cultural supervision grounded in First Nations worldviews, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professionals – supporting colonial and
- cultural load, community obligations and identity safety
- Cultural consultation and coaching for allies and non-Indigenous practitioners
- Coaching in cultural humility, strengths-based allyship and decolonising practice
Stream 7: Community led participatory research
Research that is done with communities, not on them.
At Cygnet, we understand that the most rigorous and useful research is built on relationship. We bring together the methodological rigour demanded by government and academic partners with the relational, community-centred practice that ensures findings are truthful, trustworthy and genuinely usable.
We partner with statutory bodies, government departments, universities and community organisations to design and deliver research that investigates complex social challenges – from child protection and youth justice to homelessness, suicide prevention, family violence and systemic inequity. What distinguishes our approach is that those most affected by the issues under investigation are not simply subjects of our research. They are co-designers, co-researchers and co-authors of what is found and what is recommended.
This is not a methodological preference – it is an ethical commitment. Extractive research that treats communities as data sources without returning knowledge, power or benefit to those communities is, in our view, a form of harm. Our research is designed from the outset to leave something behind: capability, voice, relationship and a findings record that communities themselves can use.
We partner to support:
- Government-commissioned investigation and reporting: including statutory inquiries, program evaluations and policy-relevant social research
- Participatory action research: co-designed with communities to surface lived and living experience and translate it into evidence for systems change
- University research partnerships: bringing community access, cultural safety expertise and relational methodology to academic projects
- Community-led inquiry: supporting organisations and communities to investigate their own challenges, document their own knowledge and advocate for change on the basis of their own evidence
- Knowledge harvesting and translation: gathering stories, data and expertise from community and converting it into formats that influence policy, practice and funding decisions
- Research design and methodology support: advising organisations on how to conduct research that is ethical, culturally safe and genuinely participatory
Our most recent major research engagement: Holding Hope was commissioned by the NSW Ombudsman’s Child Death Review Team and tabled in the NSW Parliament in December 2025. It is a demonstration of what becomes possible when government bodies commission research with the courage to centre community voice and when communities are treated as the essential architects of the reform they need.
We don’t extract knowledge. We build it – together, with those who hold it most deeply.
Stream 8: Keynote Speaking & Public Engagement
Speaking truth with heart, vision and purpose.
We offer keynote speaking and public engagement for events, conferences and community gatherings that seek to move minds, open hearts and inspire meaningful change. Our keynote offerings are not performances – they are invitations. Culturally grounded and woven through with storytelling, lived and living experience, truth-telling and visionary insight, they spark courageous conversations and catalyse collective action.
Through word and presence, Christine Thomas offers a rare blend of clarity, compassion and cultural authority – inviting audiences into radical empathy, relational justice and bold imagination for what is possible.
Our offerings:
- Keynotes, lectures and panel participation – grounded in lived and living wisdom, professional expertise and systems insight
- Truth-telling and storytelling facilitation – guiding audiences into deeper understanding and relational justice
- Talks on peacebuilding, healing, leadership and cultural transformation – rooted in real stories, informed by experience and delivered with soul
We don’t just speak to inform. We speak to transform
Testimonials
Cygnet’s work with multiple parties to restore relationships was meticulous… Their restorative analysis and processes were masterful, and their preparation was a significant reason for the success we encountered.” The Salvation Army, Youth Outreach Service Flexischool, Lawnton QLD
Overwhelmingly the sessions on Trauma Informed Leadership and Self Care were seen as the highlights of the September intensive: ‘Inspirational and new information to apply to my professional and personal life.’” Evaluation Report, Australia Awards Women’s Leadership Initiative
We applaud Cygnet’s program of peace dialogue and community art projects… we are thankful to be a small part in their awe-inspiring work.” The White Eagle Lodge, Maleny Cygnet Peace Day Community Event
I was deeply touched by the speakers that Cygnet had brought in to talk to us of real-life stories… this created strong and inspiring connections.” Participant, Cygnet Peace Day Community Event
A very delicate and sensitive situation has been handled calmly and well… I felt this was a moment I could demonstrate a better model to humanity.” Participant, Restorative Process
It was such a pleasure to have you speak for us… it sparked conversations about the need for more RJ in the field.” ANZATSA Conference, Keynote Address
Timeframes were tight, but all phases were completed to a very high standard… facilitation was culturally respectful and safe.” Consultancy Client Feedback
The session was really well received… the lived experience was relevant, particularly for the clinicians in the audience.” Forensic Intervention Services Virtual Forum, Keynote Address
Hands down the best session of the entire program.” Conference Participant, Keynote Address
The delivery of the workshops required a high level of culturally specific trauma-informed practice… Cygnet conducted comprehensive planning and followed up with timely reports and support.” Client Feedback, University-led Project, Consultancy
QATSICPP recognises Christine Thomas… her deep relationships, cultural authority and expertise were critical in ensuring the project was culturally safe and aligned with community needs.” Client Feedback, QATSICPP Consultancy
Impact & Reach
Three decades of practice. One enduring conviction.
30+
Years of restorative &
peacebuilding practice
4+
Countries of active
engagement
8+
Distinct service streams
across all scales
1+
Report tabled in NSW
Parliament, Dec 2025
3,500+
individuals supported through peacebuilding, training and facilitation
150+
organisations served, including government departments, not-for-profits, education systems and justice agencies.