Carla Raynes doesn’t just show up, she takes charge. If she’s not already on your radar, Carla is the founder of Bridge It: a leading non-profit that provides young women who have experienced out-of-home care or homelessness with a home, a community, and the support they need to thrive.
Earlier this year, Carla was recognised by the YMCA with the Victorian Mother of the Year Annual Award, which celebrates extraordinary mother figures and caregivers who are working to create a more just world. For someone who is humble and rarely seeks the spotlight, the recognition is a testament to Carla’s unwavering dedication to young women who are often left behind by systems meant to protect them.
We recently caught up with Carla to talk about motherhood, leadership, and the urgent reforms needed to better support women and young people. Her answers were so beautiful that we just couldn’t cut them for this piece – so enjoy.
How has being a mother influenced the way you approach your work — whether on the front line, or as a leader?
Becoming a mum has fundamentally changed me.
I’m softer and find myself getting emotional more easily. I think working in homelessness for 20 years, to a certain degree, the walls have to go up a little — which was a defence mechanism from all of the trauma I was surrounded by. Now I am a mother, I think I allow myself to feel these emotions more deeply. I am always coming back to the idea that if these young people were my daughter, what would I do? This supports my team and me to courageously care about the young people, hug them when they are sad, and create real relationships with them that I rarely saw working in the homelessness sector.
Motherhood has also deepened my empathy. I used to approach systems reform like a strategist. Now I approach it like a mum — fierce, determined, and unstoppable.
As a leader, motherhood has taught me to let go of control — which, to be honest, I have been a big fan of in my life. My kids remind me daily that I can’t control everything; even getting my daughter Billie to put on her socks can be a challenge that consumes 30 minutes of my day. For six years I have had broken sleep from pregnancy and children waking me up through the night.
By the time I get into work in the morning, I have often had hours of running around, feeding, calming, teeth cleaning and juggling, and rock up at work ready for a big day ahead. I think this has supported me to work on time management, multitasking, and also being kind to myself. I also think it’s helped me to share and be more vulnerable as a leader. I think it’s important to share these types of challenges with my team.
Has motherhood changed the way you see the systems you’re working to improve, especially in terms of vulnerability and care?
Motherhood has made the cracks in our systems feel even more personal. The young people we support have been removed from their mothers, or have not experienced having a mother who was able to be there to protect them. That makes me want to fight to make sure that we back them as much as we can.
Too often, our systems respond to young people impacted by homelessness with rigidity or bureaucracy. As a mum, I just can’t accept that. I want to build systems that mirror the best parts of parenting: responsiveness, consistency, warmth, and belief in a person’s potential — even when they’re struggling. I remember once a trauma expert coming to the Cocoon, and he said that he felt very emotional as he had “never seen anything like this before”, and then went on to say that this is corrective parenting.
Sometimes I feel that my team and I are collectively parenting our young people. We all play our different roles in their lives, and I guess I mirror the provider role, in that I am out earning the money to make the home run. I don’t always get to play the nurturing role, but I love it when I get a moment to just be with the young people at the Cocoon, hearing about their lives.
What do you hope your children learn from your work with Bridge It?
I hope that they become caring and compassionate people who recognise their privilege and have a fire in their bellies to make the world a better place.
What systematic changes do you most want to see that would better support women and mothers — especially those facing homelessness or disadvantage?
We need to see big shifts to move towards parenting and home responsibilities being less gendered.
For example, implementing use-it-or-lose-it parenting payments that don’t focus on the “primary” parent. If we can get men to parent equally from the start, they are much more likely to continue in this way. This will support women to be able to stay in the workforce and we will see more women in leadership roles. Making childcare free would also help to support more mothers to be able to work and lead.
Domestic and family violence is a leading cause of homelessness, with women being significantly more likely to experience this than men. We need to do something about the epidemic in family violence to reduce the number of women and children flowing into homelessness — for example, a significant increase in refuges and programs that rapidly provide housing to survivors of violence.