Dr Sarah Ciftci is a Research Associate at the Research Centre for Children and Families where she coordinates the ARC-funded Fostering Lifelong Connections for Children in Permanent Care study. The study aims to explore how the out-of-home care sector can better support children’s ongoing relationships to their families when they are in care and involves action research with out-of-home care caseworkers in NSW, surveys with carers and interviews with children, young people and their families. Practice resources have been developed in collaboration with lived experience and practitioner experts. Sarah regularly contributes her qualitative research and project management expertise to several projects in the child protection and out-of-home care contexts, including large-scale program evaluations. Her research interests include children’s wellbeing, cultural safety, alternative models of child protection decision-making and human rights.