Jen Shaw

Jen Shaw - Founder of Emerge, Youth Worker, Advocate & Serial Password Forgetter

Jen is a social entrepreneur, speaker and founder of social enterprise; Emerge Cafe. Jen is well known for her passion and drive to reduce youth homelessness and disadvantage and her ability to connect with people through the power of sharing authentic and often raw stories. Jen is well known for her work in writing cook books and building a successful online business and blog " Barefoot Kitchens" and being a mum to 7 children, 8 if you include her husband.

22/10/2026

Been thinking about this girl a lot over the last few weeks; 14 year old me, out of school, out of home hanging wherever the party was, destroying myself in anyway I could… I was hurting.

12 months before this photo I was sitting in a deputy principals office receiving another suspension for being an unruly teenager. I can’t recall every specific suspension but there was a lot. Wagging, fighting, selling stolen ci******es at the bus stop… I was well and truly on my way to bad places.

The words the deputy told me one day during a routine and regular suspension sit with me a lot as an adult, I mean I can’t remember them word for word, but the way they made me feel still hangs around now.

“We know your mother’s an addict, but that’s no reason to run amuck at school” as she handed down another 5 day suspension.

I’m always just thinking about what might have been different if the adults in those really early days around me recognised my behaviour as communication and rather than being tougher and creating distance they wrapped around me and brought me in.

12 months after this photo I was pregnant, never having completed year 9, no job or valuable employment skills, an application in to receive Centrelink and sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a well known trap house.

I’d grown up in violence, surrounded by drugs and addiction and sat in the ashes of my parents trauma. Right inside the messy stuff.

The last 10 years I’ve dedicated my life to walking alongside other young people who show up unruly, difficult, hard to manage and hard to reach. Equally I’ve dedicated hundreds of hours learning about trauma, attachment and addiction to understand them better and all the while I’ve been learning to understand myself. Healing.

14 year old me who appeared she was looking for a fight, but what she really probably needed was connection.

This week I sat on the 28th floor of a westpac building in Sydney, being interviewed for something cool really, a top 15 finalist in Australia precisely. (More on that later)

But as I looked out across Sydney Harbour I just found myself thanking this kid for hanging in there. 14 year old me.

You weren’t lost, you were just travelling 💕

16/10/2026

Grateful to have been invited to Canberra this week by my friend and Churchill Fellow Richard Brooking along with previous fellows and experts in the youth justice and child protection space.

The goal was to explore a communities of practise network; a collective of passionate and super smart people in this sector who’ve all been previous fellows in the pursuit of knowledge and innovation around the world to help young people be safe, protected and have a beautiful future.

I found myself connecting with some absolutely brilliant people from around the country who share my love of helping young people doing it tough, keen to change the narrative about young people, keen to advocate for difference keen to help build and strengthen the stuff we know works; long term, community lead relational models of care.

As always I’m inspired by the little moments and when young fellow Marial Mackay shared with me a quote he saw on a wall overseas during his fellowship I got goosebumps.

“Young people aren’t hard to reach, they are just easy to ignore”

Sent me back back home with a belly full of ignited passion.

Thanks for the invite and letting me be a part of something cool 💕

09/08/2026

I’ve been pretty quiet on all fronts the last few weeks. Intentionally staying away from social media, doing some planning for my next big adventure in helping young people… oh and my most precious update; a brand new baby boy into our family.

I’m now a grandma to 2! This little man “Mateo” and his mum and dad are settling into their new life spending some time in our home so I’ve been on the 3am shift, relearning making bottles, changing nappies and playing dressups with the most cutest little boy I ever did meet!

There is something so very special about meeting your grandbabies; watching your children fall in love and take care of their own babies. When I look at the amazing parents they are becoming I can feel the wounds of my family heal and I’ve just been soaking up the hell out of that 🥰

Keep watching this space for grandma baby spam and all the exciting Emerge updates coming soon.

30/06/2026

I teach the young people I work with that you become like the 5 people you hang out with most, So in my plight to be a better leader, better youth worker and shaker of change I was absolutley drawn to the work of will_smith_tas I’ve been hearing trickles of how amazing he is for a few years now, but not until I jumped on a plane and came to visit with Will and his amazing team (including young people) did I truly appreciate how special Will and JCP Youth is.

In a world that’s obsessed with banishing our broken kids to lockup, to the streets and ignoring the hard stuff it’s refreshing to witness Will and his crew just love some of the wildest young people back to life.

The next few months for me is about learning and listening; finding the real, raw, dogged people not afraid of the hard stuff. Doing the work, whatever it takes.

So grateful I came here. 💕

27/06/2026

My favourite thing on the internet right now is this guy who sings to animals in zoos and rescue centres.

They all seem to be so curious and many join in, in their own way 🥰

Sharing this with you for no other reason than to make you smile today 💕

14/06/2026

Call me woo woo if you like, but whenever I have a question about life I’m always drawn straight to nature and its energy for the answers.

I’m pretty big on working with energy; if I had to pick one tool to communicate and harness as a youth worker, a mum and apparently a friend of kookaburras. Energy would be it.

We are surrounded by so much wildlife at my place, including a lot of kookaburras, they are everywhere here, there’s always one guaranteed to greet you at the front fence and fly you up and to the house and at dusk you can hear them chatting and calling out across the paddock, they pop up on the clothesline when I’m hanging out the clothes, and join the chooks for scraps of a morning and of an afternoon on my deck when I’m thinking about stuff, they’ll just come and sit and have a yarn with me; almost a knowing that I need an extra hand with stuff. There’s one or two a little more bold than others who will let me pat them which is pretty cool to.

We don’t need to chat with words, there’s an energy shared here that doesn’t require a single sound.

Thanks for the chat today mate 💗

08/06/2026

About 18 months ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and some other weird heart stuff. Add to that by the end of last year I was barely able to make it through the day without physical pain; plantar fasciitis in my feet, arthritis in my knee and my whole body out of whack from injuries gone unlooked after.

Hello 40!!

Don’t feel sorry for me, I absolutley allowed myself to end up there; eating like absolute s**t, running on high levels of stress doing absolutely nothing for my wellbeing.

I could blame it on being a busy mum, running a not for profit, working with youth in crisis but the reality is I just wasn’t paying attention. Big mistake HUGE!

This year I just decided to take back charge of myself; my body, my mind and my spiritual wellbeing. Something about starting to have grand babies and wanting to be the coolest grandmother 40 years from now is just inspiring.

So since February I’ve been doing all the stuff I know and love with food again; eating consistently (because in the past I’ve historically not eaten at all until 3pm and then eat EVERYTHING) moving my body more, drinking a ton of water, doing more breathwork and woo woo stuff, getting back into magnesium, improving my sleep and just resetting my nervous system to allow me, yes to lose weight but just bloody feel like me again.

3 months down and I’m 12kgs lighter, my skin is clearer I’m living with less pain everyday and I’m almost ready to join a women’s gym (just overcoming my little anxiety around that just watch this space 🤣 )

But who’d have thought a little commitment and investment in yourself would do wonders for your body and headspace. 😜

My next step is making sure I’m starting to lift heavy stuff when I get to that gym, learning reiki for me and for the kids I work with and I’m pretty keen to try out this gazwright.official 9D breathwork people keep showing me.

Oh and if you want a recipe for a super easy stirfry this week.

- garlic and ginger
- Chicken Mince
- Carrot, broccoli, capsicum (but whatever veg you like)

All fried up in a wok/ pan whatever you’ve got.

A sauce of 1/4 oyster, 1/4 soy (light and tablespoon of dark) 2 tablespoons honey and a tablespoon of chilli paste.

Serve up with some basmati rice and you’re good to go.

Enough for dinner and lunch so I don’t get caught out tomorrow.

07/06/2026

I didn’t plan to become a foster parent this year.

I mean I did I guess on some level, but it was always something my husband and I were going to do later on when all the kids grew up.

But through my work we met this little fella who was right on the edge of showing up on your local crime pages; kicked out of school, hanging out with a rough crowd , and definitely no safe adults attached to him. But we could see pretty quickly what he wanted more than anything was safety and belonging.

Initially we advocated heavily for him to cross into another region with Emerge, but the complexities of the system don’t really allow for that; there are invisible lines and boundaries everywhere that don’t always work in what’s best for the kid and what they need. So we did the next best thing that felt right, put our hand up to foster him to get him out and away from trouble and engaged in real family life and another chance.

We knew pretty early he’d be a good fit in our home; wild and free, plenty of humour and sass just like our girls 😜 the bit I love the most about our experience as a family is watching my kids bring him in, they have this kind of super power that kinda knows he’s had a rough trot in life but don’t spend too much time there. They call him brother, they defend him and boy do they give him the full sassy sister experience too 🤣🙄

He asked me recently how long he can stay with us, I told him we would probably need to have a discussion about him moving out when one of us is 52 😜

I don’t reckon there will be any season of my life that doesn’t have kids in it. My own, my extras and all the little ones we haven’t met yet. 💕

04/06/2026

I’ve just sat down to start reading through the findings from the Child Safety Commission of Inquiry. I guess I’m supposed to tell you I’m shocked, mortified, in disbelief. But so far it’s just a reminder of what I have known, what we all have known for a long time.

If our kids are a barometer of how we are going as a society, oh boy do we have some fixing to do.

I’ve been arriving at this destination as a youth worker, a founder, a mum, a foster mum and hell a tax payer for a long long time.

The last couple of years; we, Emerge had become intertwined with the Child Safety system. We accidentally found ourselves receiving referrals and providing care for really complex kids who were hard to “place” everywhere else.

For ten years we had been working with the really tough kids locally, and we never really worried about what their child protection status was; in social enterprise cafes and crisis support, boxing and wrap around support, we just got in and did whatever they needed together.

Our Emerge home was only ever created for kids in our programs to have a safe, family like environment to compliment all the other stuff we were doing; By day, working on learning and building skills for their future and by night and weekends eating real food, building connection and relationships with committed adults, learning to love your home and live with other people and absolutely the ability to be a kid first and foremost at the base of our approach.

I guess we did a pretty good job, all of our data points towards increased belonging, reduced youth justice involvement, improved housing stability, reduced substance misuse and improved wellbeing and emotional regulation to name a few markers we collect. But for me the evidence sits in the real stories of the kids if you ask most of them, they report back that Emerge felt like family.

There’s still a whole bunch of them who are either hanging around as mentors, youth workers or just carrying what they learnt with them and sharing it with the world, doing good things in little ways.

Now I’m absolutely not pretending we have all of the answers, or we worked miracles with every kid that came through our doors we don’t and we didn’t, It looks as though from this inquiry Emerge and providers like us have only been working with about 7% of the young people in care who were tough to place and engage, but for me personally the timing just feels right for where I’m at in my life and next adventure.

With the closure of our Toowoomba operations, and a reset of Emerge, my board have given me permission and space to spend some time learning and creating something new (yet actually our original vision) which is creating a home that loves broken kids back to life, there’s the creation of a physical home in this yes but for me it’s a model, a relational real giving a s**t about our kids approach.

Learning from what we’ve done really well in this space, and even what we did badly, learning from others and listening to kids to build something that brings relational youth work, safety, family and home together.

I’m not interested in ragging out anyone or governments that got it wrong but just taking some time and space to bring something real and relational to the mix.

There’s a much bigger picture and work to do here to create something that really changes kids lives, and I want to be part of it.

I asked ChatGPT to create a picture of me doing that, it added one too many sausage dogs, and I’m not sure where my arms are. But it pretty well got it right 🤣😜😉

13/05/2026

Last week I spent some time with my mates at Backtrack Youth works and The BackTrack network.

I’ve been a big fan of BackTrack for a long time, but even more so spending time in Armidale and amongst the BackTrack network closely over the last few years.

Some of the founders of other like minded youth organisations have become close friends; on my speed dial when youth work or being a founder and running a youth organisation gets intense.

I admire them deeply, inspired by their tough and grit to back some of the most disadvantaged kids all around the country, a bravery to try things differently, my visits to backtrack are always timely, kinda right when I feel like giving up I go spend time with these amazing people and I find love and courage all over again.

This last week I brought along one of our young fellas who’s been kicking around Emerge for a few years now, over dinner with Backtrack’s founder Bernie Shakeshaft this incredible young man, whom only met Bernie that day sat and lead something we call circle work amongst us; our young man, 4 seasoned youth workers including Bernie who created circle work many many many years ago.

Not only did he lead it but he explained it perfectly, not for a minute realising he was sharing with its creator.

It was a pretty special full circle moment of legacy for me and I’m sure for Bernie too.

Emerge in Toowoomba is about to take its last breathe, closing its doors and a big hearty chapter. Jen Shaw, youth worker/ founder and what Emerge takes shape as next… well whatever it takes to help as many young people having a hard time as we can.

With gratitude,

🌸 J

Address

Toowoomba, QLD
4350

Website

http://www.emergeyouth.org.au/

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