No Ordinary People - The Pyjama Foundation and the 'Power Of One Hour'

A child in care looks you in the eye and asks, “How much do you get paid to do this?” That single question gets to the heart of what kids in out-of-home care often miss most: a dependable adult who chooses them, consistently, without a transaction attached. 

In this episode of No Ordinary People, Jade sits down with Bronwyn Sheehan OAM, founder and CEO of the Pyjama Foundation, to explore how one hour a week can rebuild trust, support early literacy, and gently shift the trajectory for children living in foster, kinship, and residential care.

Bronwyn’s journey began early, with a deep awareness of inequality, and was further shaped through her work as a nurse and midwife, where she witnessed the realities many children face from the very beginning. Those experiences made it impossible to look away and set her on a path toward action.

A defining moment came when Bronwyn met an 18-month-old boy, newly placed in care - frightened, unsettled, and disconnected. What he needed wasn’t complex: routine, warmth, and someone to show up. That realisation became the foundation for the Pyjama Foundation, built on a simple but powerful idea - that one consistent adult, showing up week after week, can help a child feel safe, valued, and ready to learn.

Today, the Pyjama Foundation supports children living in foster, kinship, and residential care through its Pyjama Angel program - volunteers who spend one hour a week reading, playing, and building trust. It’s a model grounded in early literacy, but driven by something deeper: connection, choice, and consistency.

Together, Jade and Bronwyn unpack:

- The moment a child asks, “How much do you get paid to do this?” 
- The 18-month-old boy who shaped the creation of the Pyjama Foundation
- Why trauma impacts brain development, learning, and literacy outcomes
- How “choice plus consistency” helps children feel safe enough to engage
- What makes a great Pyjama Angel
- How initiatives like National Pyjama Day are building awareness and action

This is a conversation about trust, belonging, and the power of showing up — and what becomes possible when every child has someone in their corner, simply because they choose to be there.

If this moved you, subscribe, share the episode with a mate, and leave a review so more people find these stories and help kids in care feel seen.

This episode was recorded at the Nova Entertainment studios.

Pyjama Foundation Contact Details

Website - www.thepyjamafoundation.com

National Pyjama Day - Fri 24th July 2026 - fundraise.thepyjamafoundation.com/event/

Email - admin@thepyjamafoundation.com 

Facebook - @facebook.com/pyjamafoundation

Instagram - @https://www.instagram.com/thepyjamafoundation/

No Ordinary People is produced by Jade Harley, Director of Impact at UnLtd.
This podcast shares the real stories of charity founders driving change for children and communities across Australia, especially those impacted by trauma, poverty, racism, and family and domestic violence.

Every story is a reminder: hope is built one small act at a time.

Brand identity and cover design created by my beautiful friends at Cocogun.

Got a story to share or want to get involved? Reach out to jade@unltd.org.au
Follow, rate, and share to help amplify these voices.
Connect: Instagram @noordinarypeople_podcast and LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/jadeharley

Transcript

Welcome And Acknowledgement

Jade 0:06

Welcome to No Ordinary People. I'm Jade and I'm on a mission to give positivity a voice by sharing stories of everyday people doing extraordinary things. They're a reminder of the power we all have to make the world a better place. I'd like to start by paying my deep respects to elders past and present and to all First Nations people listening today. We're on Gadigal Country, and Gadigal Country has always been a place of deep knowledge, story, and connection, where histories were passed on not through just books alone, but through spoken word, song, art, and story carefully carried across the generations. As a podcast rooted in listening and lived experience, we honour the world's oldest continuing cultures and the truth that stories are how wisdom survives, how identity is protected, and how responsibility is shared. Sovereignty was never ceded, and this always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Today's guest is Bronwyn Sheehan, OAM, founder and CEO of the Pyjama Foundation. Bronwyn was a nurse, a midwife, and is a mum of three. Over the past two decades, she's built one of Australia's most respected charities supporting children in out-of-home care, including foster and kinship care. Their love of learning program pairs screened and trained volunteers, known as Pyjama Angels, with children in out-of-home care to provide one-on-one mentoring. Bronwyn, welcome. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here. So, Bronwyn, before we talk about the Pyjama Foundation, I want to start with you. What shaped your worldview growing up? And when did you first become aware that not all children start life on equal footing?

Bronwyn 1:51

Yeah, that's a great question. When I was two, my family of mum and dad and my older sister, we moved to Fiji and we lived there for two years. And I used to play with the Fijian children that were in my immediate environment. And one day one of the little children stole my doll and I wanted to ring the police. And Mum explained to me that some children have lots of toys, like myself, and other children don't. And maybe I should consider letting her keep my doll because that's the only toy she'd have. So I think that's my earliest childhood memory where I got to see that some children have lots of things and a safe environment and other children don't.

Jade 2:34

Yeah, wow, and that really planted the seed. I think you'll probably see that in in your trajectory. We fast forward a little bit to your early career. So you were a nurse and a midwife, and you are a mum of three children yourself, so busy lady. How did those roles sharpen your sense of responsibility to children beyond your own?

Bronwyn 2:53

So when I in the 1980s, when I was doing my nursing training at the hospital, I did a couple of rotations in the children's ward. And we had this gorgeous little kid, he was two at the time, and then there was another child that was four, and they both lived in the hospital because they had a permanent tracheostomy, so they were breathing through a hole in their neck due to health conditions, and they were both a they were both in foster care. And so little Stanley was the one that I fell in love with, and I was in the ear, nose and throat ward, and he lived in the hospital the whole time. He had an amazing wardrobe provided by all the nurses, and he used to ride his little bike around the ward when all the other kids were having their tons their tonsils out. So I got to see that was my first experience with meeting a child that was in foster care. And obviously he didn't have any parents that came to visit him, although he was very much loved by all the nursing staff. Then when I did a rotation and casualty, I admitted a 13-year-old boy, and he was in foster care and he'd run away and he was living on the streets, and I couldn't believe it. And I can remember talking to him and asking him where he slept, and he told me that he slept up a tree. And that was my second experience of kids in foster care. And I thought this is this is wild. And I, you know, not every child in Australia has a safe place to sleep.

The Moment The Foundation Began

Jade 4:26

Yeah, I mean, that's just heartbreaking. I can only imagine you've got to go home and then be present for your kids and and your family. And those stories, I mean, that's you know, that's obviously gonna light a fire in anyone. So let's talk a bit a bit about the founding moment because that is what really fascinates me in these stories. Uh, you know, many people might have had an experience like you have had, but they don't do anything with it because they feel maybe like they can't make a difference. So there's a very specific moment that you've described as the genesis for the Pyjama Foundation. Can you take me back to that moment? Yeah, absolutely.

Bronwyn 5:02

So my three children when they were in primary school had a it was a beautiful suburb in Brisbane, uh, lovely families. And when my daughter was in grade four, she had a foster child that was in her year, and I could see that this child was left out of the broader community, and I encouraged my daughter to have kindness with her, and we invited her to her grade four birthday party, which is the first birthday party she'd ever been invited to, despite the fact that she had been at that primary school since prep. And her foster mum didn't drive, and so she caught two buses so this little child could come to the birthday party, and I just got to meet the foster carer, and she was amazing. I don't think too many people had paid attention to her, but she was like Mother Earth to me, and she'd had six of her own children. She'd been a carer then for 35 years. She had five kids in her home, and I could just see the load she was carrying. One day I was at her house visiting and picking up this young child or dropping her off, and this foster carer had a little 18-month-old baby boy in her arms. He had just entered foster care, and in my ignorance, I said, Why did he come into care? That's private and confidential, but she indicated that he had hand marks all over his little 18-month-old body. And looking at him, he he did it, he was disorientated. He didn't know where he was. He was clinging to his foster carer like a little frightened koala bear. And I thought, I can't believe that this happens in my environment, in my very suburb. This happens to children. And what and the broader community doesn't know about it, and how how can we do one simple act that can contribute? And my experience with my own kids is reading books aloud to them since they were newborn babies, and I got so much joy out of that experience. So I thought if I could read to this little guy and he loved learning and reading like my children do, then that could be a gift I can give him right now that he can take with him throughout his life path, knowing that he might move foster care placements, knowing that he might move back to his biological parents. But if he could sit and listen to books being read aloud to the him, then that can be the foundations for the future of his education.

Jade 7:42

I mean, the idea of reading to children in case it seems so simple. It's almost sort of deceptively so, right? I think we underestimate the power, and for those of us that were brought up reading, you almost take it for granted that that's a safe space that every I remember it. I remember loving my Enid Blyton books and going away with them the Magic Faraway Tree. You know, that was very, very important to me as a place of that was just mine. So why did literacy and learning specifically become the focus? Like what did you what were your hopes for what that would do for these for these kids?

Bronwyn 8:14

My experience when I was little, my dad used to read to us at nighttime, and I can remember him reading us A.A. Milne, a poem on Alexander Beadle, and it was just routine, it was safe, it was beautiful, it was nurturing, and I just loved that experience as a child myself. Then when I had my own children, I read books aloud to them every night, I could just see how they loved it. One book turned into two, turned into ten, turned into twenty, and then just one more book, just one more book. When uh they went to school for the first time in grade one, I could just see it was like magic. Like one day they couldn't read, and the next day they could read everything. Yeah. And what I didn't realise what I was doing, and I took for granted because that's all I knew to do, was that children learn to read by having books read aloud to them. That that the words and books and the written word are different from our oral language, that children learn to read with picture cues, but it's the passion of loving the books and the experience and the bonding that really made a difference. I got a letter of support from Mem Fox very earlier on when I started the Pyjama Foundation, and she said that children will fall in love with reading, not by a professional teacher, but by someone that has a vested interest in them, like their parent or a relative or a friend. And it's that it's that nurturing and the love of books that all is wrapped up together, which is such a beautiful experience. And looking at this little 18-month-old baby boy who was frightened, disorientated, didn't know where he was, I thought I could do that to him. What say I did what say I read to him and he got that experience? So that was the creation of the Pyjama Foundation.

Jade 10:20

Incredible. Look when you first when you first began in 2004, there were around 21,000 children that were in the out-of-home care system. So today it's a staggering 46,000. Why are we seeing that number grow in a country as, you know, as wealthy and as you know full of potential as Australia? Like, why is that happening in your mind?

Bronwyn 10:44

Yeah, I think it's just a reflection on society. It's the pressures, it's intergenerational trauma, it's drug and alcohol abuse. Unfortunately, indigenous children are overrepresented in this space. So it's not one factor, but it's a accumulation of many. I think intergenerational poverty, drug and alcohol abuse would probably be the main factors that I can see from the outside looking in.

Jade 11:14

And if we look at those children, so you know, I've got some kind of confronting data here, but around, you know, nine to ten children in foster care are below average literacy by the age of seven. So that really early adoption of language and learning is is is falling behind for them. And 75% of young people in care don't complete year twelve. So why do you think education outcomes for children in care have been historically overlooked?

What Makes A Great Pyjama Angel

Bronwyn 11:41

Well, children who have experienced trauma will ha will historically have lesser educational opportunities. So their earlier life has been about survival. Trauma impedes brain development. They haven't come from a literacy-rich environment. They have come from parents that probably have neglected them. And they just haven't had that interaction, that human connection. And as I said, that impedes brain development. And consequently, you know, the kids have got so many things that they're thinking about, so many, you know, they they might their their schooling is limited. Yeah. Uh their early literacy is limited, their vocabulary is limited. So it's a whole combination that leads to poorer outcomes for this pool of children.

Jade 12:43

And look, I think this is this is what I love about your program is is that I suppose the the deep understanding and and the training that you give the pyjama angels. Because can we talk a little bit about what you look for in a pyjama angel and what is that training? Because it's not just a case of you know, matching, you know, you go through quite a rigorous process to make sure that that you're supporting the angel in that environment so they know what to look out for, but also making sure that you've got a match that's going to hopefully last for a long time. So can you tell me a little bit about like what you look for in an angel?

Bronwyn 13:16

We look for people that love children. Every single volunteer that comes our way, 99.9% want to give back. So we're looking for kind, compassionate, happy children people that love children, that love reading, that maybe have had a great experience when they were little, or they had can't read to their own children anymore. So we are blown away by the most beautiful people that come our way: 90% female, 75% with education higher than grade 12, and they've had experience of that literacy, they know the importance of it, and they often work full-time or part-time. So very beautiful people that are empathetic, that have kindness, and they want to do something positive for other people. And what is incredibly beautiful is that if you want to make yourself happy, the easiest way you can do that is to try and make someone else happy. And our volunteers sometimes come to me in tears saying, Thank you so much for starting this organisation. This is the highlight of my week, or this is fundamentally the best thing that I have ever done.

Jade 14:34

Oh wow, that's gotta be so good to hear.

One Hour That Builds Trust

Bronwyn 14:36

I love it. I love it.

Jade 14:39

The phrase the power of an hour is is something that pops up a lot in your work. So why does one consistent adult one hour a week make such a profound difference?

Bronwyn 14:51

Yeah, we it's really interesting. What is what children really resonate with is someone that ch shows up every week just for them to hang out with them, to do something that they want to do. It's our program. We guide the children. We tr well, let's say we try and trick them into learning. Yeah. But we they get to choose. They get we take a a bag of tricks with us books, puzzles, games, craft. The children get to choose what they'll read, what they won't read. So you have to become quite a good negotiator. But I think we're strengt sending a very strong message to these children and that they are special and they are valued by society and the kids get it. Every single child will say to their volunteer, how much do you get paid to do this? Because a lot of people in their lives are paid. And they the kids are savvy and they know that. And so, how much do you get paid to come and see me? Well, I don't get paid at all. I just come because I like you and I want to I want to help, I want to hang out with you. How wonderful is that for a kid in care to know that you're their special person, that they're gonna you're gonna turn up every week just for them. And sometimes they'll push back and say, Oh, you don't have to come, or you don't have to come anymore, and they're really testing you to see if you really will come back. And I think that is such a simple one hour of your time, but it can really mean the world to a vulnerable child.

Jade 16:29

And I know that the the angels will get as much out of it, if not more, than the kids sometimes. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of feedback that you get from some of the people that have have been providing this this care and this support for many years? Are there any sand-out people? Yeah, oh, there's many. There's many.

Bronwyn 16:48

So our average length of volunteering is three and a half years. Many of our volunteers have been with the kids for five, ten, fifteen, and even twenty years. And they keep coming back because they're invested in the children. They they become like family and they want the kids to succeed. They yeah, they become very significant people in the volunteers' life. And we've had the most adorable scenarios. We have Charlie, who was three years old when he came to us. His first pyjama angel actually works for the Pyjama Foundation now, and her name is Renee, and she was with him for eight years. He was uh this gorgeous three-year-old that used to run around the backyard and she used to chase him around. He used to hang upside down and she'd read a book to him and have to turn the book upside down so he could see the pictures. And they became great friends when she when she got married. He was in her bridal bridal party, and then when she had her first baby, she named him Charlie after the child that she supported for eight years. Charlie's now 22. He's 22 next month. He works full-time, he started a university degree. He's a beautiful, kind, and considerate man, and the Pajama Foundation threw him a 21st last year.

A Story Of Long-Term Impact

Jade 18:16

So it's just a beautiful, beautiful story. Oh, and you've probably got loads of those. What have you seen change over the years, Bron? Like, has it become has it become easier to get support? Has it become harder? Like, what have you seen change in in the landscape whilst you've been doing this important work? Yeah, interesting.

Bronwyn 18:37

Well, uh clearly the number of children has increased. There's always been a shortage of foster carers. I think that's a really great need in the community is that we desperately need more foster carers now more than ever. The children seem to have lots of complex needs. Yeah. Greater than ever. Yeah, and it we raise most of our income in order to operate and that's always been hard. And I wish after 20 years that was getting easier, but it's not. And that's yeah, with when there's uncertainty in our economic climate, that makes it harder.

Jade 19:21

Yeah.

Bronwyn 19:22

Yeah. So it's I can't I wouldn't say that this journey has been easy, but it has been incredibly fulfilling. Yeah. And you know what? When I was speaking this morning at an event that you were at, I you asked me why I still do this, and that was a really great reflection for me because sometimes I get stuck in this is really hard. And then this morning when you asked me that question, I remembered why I did it, and it was for the children.

Jade 19:56

Yeah.

Bronwyn 19:57

And that that when you have a purpose like that, then that is a great reminder that maybe it's not quite so hard after all, and maybe I can do this, and maybe we can support more children. And yeah, maybe it's not about me and being hard, maybe this is about them and what we can do and what difference we can make.

Trauma And The Stigma Kids Carry

Jade 20:21

Yeah. So you know exactly why you're getting out of bed every morning. You've got probably many children, and you've got images in your head of of what their lives have been like. What would you what would you like people listening to know about children in the the care system, like the out-of-home care system, whether that's kinship care or foster care or residential care, like what would you like people to know? What myths would you like to bust about who those kids are and why they're, you know, why it's so important that we stand in solid solidarity with orgs like yourself? Yeah.

Bronwyn 20:53

These children have, you know, we don't know the type of family we're going to be born into, do we? No. We don't know what country we're going to be born into in the world. In Australia, I think we're very lucky and rem we're reminded every day on the media how lucky we are to live in Australia. Some children, through no fault of their own, have been born into unfortunate circumstances where their parents haven't been ha haven't had the skills or the capabilities to look after them. And I think that that is showing in sometimes of the tricky behaviours of the children. And I just like people to know that when you see a child displaying behaviour that i is not what you would think would be appropriate, just to have a think and a reflection on why they displaying particular unfavourable characteristics, and that's because of the trauma that they have experienced. So I'd like children. I'd like the broader community to have empathy for our disadvantaged, for our children in foster care, and that they should have praise and support for the foster carers because we can't change it the system. The government can't change the system by themselves. It has to be the community that surrounds this child protection sector. And we can all do something to help.

Jade 22:28

Yeah. Look, you raise a really good point. I think, you know, I was having a chat with someone on on a similar topic a couple of days ago. And it was a really, it really s stuck, struck me how they said it. They said, instead of asking what is wrong with you, ask what happened to you. You know, just that really simple, instead of the there's the blame and there's the you know, mapping your own misconceptions or prejudice onto a young person, and instead going, what happened? Like what happened? Let's let's chat about that. So I think that that really that really sits with me.

Bronwyn 23:00

Yeah, and also too, like being a child and having to navigate, like looking at that little 18-month-old boy, he didn't know where he was. Children having to navigate being the foster kid and having that stigma is a is a load to bear in itself. One of my beautiful girls, ladies, is now well into her twenties. She had a pyjama angel for 10 years. And when she was at school, the role was actually accidentally projected on the wall, and uh she had a dot beside her name, and I think that's the dot meant that she was a kid in foster care. Obviously the role wasn't meant to be projected, that was an accident. She was o she was the only one that saw the dot beside her name. But I think that's sometimes how these well, I think often that's how these kids feel, that they have a mark beside their name. Narissa, one of our beautiful adults that's done two university degrees, that's been so successful in her career and life, you know, she thought that children like her from her background weren't meant to go to university. So we need to change, we and we need to help rewire these precious brains. Yeah. So they know that in this wonderful country they have opportunity to succeed and thrive.

Practical Ways To Get Involved

Jade 24:18

You know, what would you say to people who are thinking about doing something like the Pyjama Angel program? Yeah, how would you how would you in like what would you say in terms of what they'll get out of the experience?

Bronwyn 24:32

Yeah, look, we operate across Queensland, Sydney, Melbourne. So we're not in all locations across Australia. If you want to change how your outlook on life, do you want to be happier and more fulfilled, then there's no better way than you can do that by volunteering and certainly volunteering with children. If you can't be a Pyjama Angel, maybe you could buy our pyjamas, which are for sale in Myer. It's starting to get a bit cooler. You might need some winter pyjamas. And boy, do we have pyjamas for you. So Myer, we have a partnership with Myer, and every five dollars from a sale of PJs comes to us, and they're our uh uh co-branded pyjamas in Myer. You can always go to our website, let us know how you could get behind our campaign.

Jade 25:26

Yeah. So should we talk about National Pyjama Day? Yeah. So National Pyjama Day this year, so it's uh 2026, we're in April at the moment, and National Pyjama Day is Friday, the 24th of July. So, how can people get involved in that day?

Building A Charity From Scratch

Bronwyn 25:40

Yeah, you can go to National Pyjama day.com and register. You too can join in the comfiest day of the year. My goal is to have every person in their pyjamas on National Pyjama Day, the 24th of July. And it is the comfiest day of the year. We're all equal when we're in our pyjamas. You can set up a fundraising page. No donation is too small. It's all those little incremental activities can really add up to helping us run our program. Last year we sent out 6,000 National Pyjama Day kits, and we had hundreds of thousands of people in their pyjamas. And it's a great campaign, it's lots of fun. And it's a way you can contribute to allow us to screen, recruit, train more pyjama angels. We've got over 800, uh more than 800 children on our wait list, and I'd love for them to be able to share with us the joy and love of reading.

Jade 26:48

So, Bron, when we look at things like leadership, you know, you were a nurse and a midwife, you'd never run a business, and you jumped in and went, you know what, this is a problem. I'm gonna have a I'm I know I can do something about it. But how did you, you know, how did you form that that early org? Like, did you have mentors? Like, where did you learn from? I'm really interested in that founding, that sort of first year of founding, founding the organisation and and how you found that stretching you.

Bronwyn 27:18

Yeah, look, I sometimes ask that question of myself. Look, it's all one step after the other. Like now, when you look back of you know, running the Pyjama Foundation for 20 years, how do you do it? Well, it's like eating an elephant, it's just one bite at a time. It was one step at a time. So I saw the need, I formed the company, I set up my structure, I went to a volunteering organisation and found out how to manage volunteers. Anything that you do that's big is one step after the other. I went into the local rag, I asked for volunteers, I designed a training module, you know, I knew that safety was going to have to be my our number one priority. So it's just a matter of seeking the right people that were in the industry. A peak body for foster carers helped me when I first started. They could see how beneficial this would be to the kids, so they helped me. And then I just sought out the right person at the right time, and I just kept asking questions, I kept watching other people, I just built and built and built and built. It's like building a Lego house, it's literally just that, and I was just really unstoppable in regards to that. So because and once I put the first pyjama angel with a kid, and we read to our first child, her name was Natasha, on the 3rd of February 2005. She took one look at a at her pyjama angel and went and hid under the bed. And her pyjama angel sat and read to two feet that were sticking out, and that was the first placement. And I that's when I was hooked, and I thought, I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna do this again, and I'm gonna do it again. And we've trained 15,000 volunteers, we've touched the lives of probably 20,000 kids. I'll never know our full extent of our impact, but you need good people, you need people uh females are wonderful pyjama angels because they're loyal and and nurturing, and not that males can't be, but you know, I've just been I've just attracted great, like-minded people that really want to make a difference. And once they fall in love with the children, then I've got them.

Measuring Impact And Proving It Works

Jade 29:45

Yeah. Not going anywhere. And where what's what was the evidence that was coming back to you? And how did you collect that in the early days? So, how did you know that whilst you know it you you your gut and your instinct took you so far, but then of course, to secure funding and to keep growing, you've got to have the evidence and the data. So, what were those early signals and how did you know that yes, this is working?

Bronwyn 30:09

Probably by the longevity of our program with the individual children, how the children were responding to it, how they liked it. It's pretty, you know, it's it's children need time, attention, they want to do fun things. So I could see the children blossoming. I could hear, you know, I was getting feedback from the teachers saying, What are you doing at home that's different? Because this child's more engaged in the classroom. Yeah. And so it's all those in, you know, I was collecting feedback from my volunteers, both quantitative and qualitative, and it was all positive. And so then after a few years, I grew that. I grew my program evaluation with a researcher, and for the last seven years I've worked with a university, and we have proven that our program is trauma-informed and evidence-based. And I've just then built on my program evaluation because that's very important.

Jade 31:06

Yeah. So, Bron, when you imagine Australia in 10 or 20 years' time, what does success look like for children in care? And what needs to change? So, whether that's policy funding or just the public mindset, like what needs to change to make that vision a reality?

Bronwyn 31:21

I think this sector needs more attention. Definitely needs more funding. But it needs some, you know, savvy people that are invested in this sector. The foster carers need more support. That's obvious. The children need the proper treatment therapy or or their health concerns met, or you know, it it is multi-layered. But I think the sector needs more attention, more needs more government funding. These are precious children, they're Australia's children. Yeah, we can't let them be left behind. Yeah. Oh.

National Pyjama Day And Closing

Jade 31:59

Preach, preach, preach. Look for our listeners, you know, what's one tangible thing outside of National Pyjama Day? So get involved on the 24th of July. We want to see every Australian in their pyjamas. But on top of that, you know, what's a tangible way they can support not only your work, but support the work of, you know, if there's a foster carer in their community, like if they know that there are kids within their school environment, like what can people do just to just to be more empathetic and more inclusive and reduce this stigma?

Bronwyn 32:29

Yeah, I think people in general could have more empathy. They could be kind, they could offer, you know, to help out some foster carers if they knew they were living in their street. Or you could ask what they might need. Don't assume what they might need, but you could ask if there's anything you could do to help them. And it could be little acts of kindness, we know that that that really benefits uh the community and makes everyone feel better. But just to have some empathy, non-judgmental opinions on vulnerable kids and on the sector.

Jade 33:06

As always, we will share all of the links in the notes. So if you want to find out how to get involved with National Pyjama Day, we will pop the link in there. We'll put all of the social handles in there. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you in the studio here, Bron. Congratulations on everything that you and the team have achieved over the past 20, 20 odd years, and long may it continue. And hopefully, we can get that 800 wait list down for those precious kids that are uh looking just to have a consistent adult. So it's been a privilege to have you here. Thank you for all you do, and uh we out.

Bronwyn 33:41

Yay.

Jade 33:46

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