Amy’s Story

Dr Amy Gill moved between kinship, foster, and residential care placements as a teenager in Ohio. She attended five different high schools before being placed with a foster family who supported her love of learning. Amy was among the first recipients of Chafee Foundation Education Training Vouchers for care leavers in the United States. She lived on campus at Antioch College for five years while earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree. As an undergrad, Amy had many opportunities to travel for internships and study abroad. This inspired her to move to London for a working holiday after graduation.

From London, Amy moved to Perth, where she completed a Graduate Diploma in Primary Education then taught in regional and remote Aboriginal schools in Western Australia. She went on complete a Master of Education by thesis which explored cross-system collaboration to support the needs of students in out-of-home care. Amy then moved to Sydney to work as an early childhood education research assistant, where she was encouraged to apply for a PhD scholarship.

Amy's PhD consisted of a mixed-methods study exploring service responses to parenthood among care-experienced young people in New South Wales. During the course of her candidature, she became involved in advocacy, outreach, and scholarship within the care-experienced community. Amy now lives in Brisbane with her young daughter and remains a passionate advocate for out-of-home care sector reform and translating lived experience into effective social policy and practice.