Transcript for
What does the future hold for children’s mental health in Australia?

Hali (Guest) (00:00):

Mental health is the way that my emotions and my social wellbeing impacts the way I think, feel and react in my daily life.

Gabby (Guest) (00:09):

I think mental health is more than just psychological wellbeing, but also centres around our holistic wellbeing and focuses on our unique experiences. When I am in a good place, I feel self-aware and motivated, socially connected to others, and also willing to learn and participate in everyday life.

Luke (Guest) (00:29):

Growing up around drugs and fighting and domestic violence and stuff, I thought it meant just holding yourself together, being strong in yourself. And now I see it, it’s more about having a safe, calm environment that you’re around and people you can trust to talk to and stuff, not just trying to hold it in yourself, sort of thing.

VO (00:48):

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (00:51):

Hi, everyone. My name is Jacquie Lee, and you’re listening to the Emerging Minds Podcast.

(00:56):

Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is being recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and thank them for the care they have taken of this beautiful country. I also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors, and Elders past, present and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia.

(01:20):

This marks our 200th episode of the Emerging Minds podcast; 200 conversations focused on understanding, supporting and promoting the mental health of infants, children and young people, and the wellbeing of their parents and families. Back in 2022, we celebrated our 100th episode by reflecting on the discussions, stories and insights that had been shared over those first four years of the podcast. For this two-part series, I wanted to look to the future of infant and child mental health in Australia. What do practitioners, service leaders, politicians and policymakers need to do to improve outcomes for children and families? What does an ideal future even look like?

(02:02):

In these episodes, you’ll hear from a range of professionals, including the National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, Dr Billy Garvey, and Professor of Indigenous Health at the University of Melbourne, Cath Chamberlain. You’ll also hear from parents and young people with lived experience of family and domestic violence, substance use and mental health difficulties. While some of what is shared may echo your own thoughts and experiences, we hope these conversations also offer new ideas and galvanise you in the fight for better mental health and wellbeing outcomes for young Australians.

(02:36):

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Emerging Minds, which began as a conference led by what was then known as the Australian Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Association. I sat down with Emerging Minds Chair and Founder, Phil Robinson, and director Brad Morgan to find out how priorities for supporting children’s mental health have changed between then and now.

Phil Robinson (Guest) (02:59):

Well, I think in those early days, and in the, say, mid-’90s, there was a lot of commentary around the idea of promotion, prevention, early intervention, but in fact, the majority of the money went into the adult mental health sector. In child adolescent mental health, for example, we’re probably getting 7% of the mental health dollar to service 30% of the population. So what we could see was that there was a great need to be able to develop these early intervention programs. There was a lot of data to say that it would be appropriate to do, but there was no money to do it.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (03:33):

And so, Brad, how do those priorities look today?

Brad Morgan (Guest) (03:38):

When I think about groups that come together now around children and young people’s mental health, it’s actually normal and natural to expect to be part of a multidisciplinary shared experience. Learning about this and working on that, that’s actually something that has changed. I think some of the other areas that maybe haven’t had as much change yet is getting the balance right with our emphasis on what needs we are focusing on in relation to infants and children and young people. So quite often, we are still talking about the crisis, which is still a very big and important focus for us, but it’s maybe not as balanced with how we are addressing and supporting mental health promotion or prevention, early support still within that population.

(04:14):

And I think the other bit is ensuring that we still maintain visibility on the unique needs of infants, children and young people. I think we can still get trapped into just thinking about what adults need, and not viewing adults even themselves as part of families, or parents, or connected with children. And certainly there’s work that is progressing in that area, but it’s going to take some time and a lot of effort from systems to deliberately support that to be an expectation. I think at the moment I’ll sort of say we have already strong pockets of examples of this, but it’s not unified and it’s not national, and as a consequence, families don’t experience probably a wraparound that we would like to see.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (04:53):

Anne Hollonds is the National Children’s Commissioner, based at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Through research, consultations with children and young people and other stakeholders, advocacy and education initiatives, she works to protect and promote the rights of children across Australia. When I asked Anne what she sees as the key priorities for improving infants’ and children’s mental health in Australia today, she echoed Brad’s reflections.

Commissioner Anne Hollonds (Guest) (05:17):

This is a very big topic, but just in summary, when you’re thinking about the mental health of children and young people, we are still failing to invest in an evidence-based fashion, particularly for younger children and their families, you know, under 12. We need to be providing help to children and their families in those earlier years, because while we know that 50% of adult mental health problems have emerged by the age of 14, they don’t suddenly emerge on the night before their 14th birthday. They are progressively emerging all through those younger childhood years. And it is the fact that parents and children are unable to get the help that they need from the various upstream systems, such as the health system, the education system, or human services more generally. We are waiting and waiting until things become escalated to a crisis, which tends to happen in those adolescent or early adult years.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (06:22):

But what do young people themselves think? You heard from Gabby, Hali and Luke at the top of the episode, talking about what mental health means to them. I asked them if there are particular things that worry them about the future.

Gabby (Guest) (06:34):

There definitely are. I think things that I would be worried about would be things like getting a secure job that would fit into my lifestyle, even environmental concerns like climate change, which is very clearly rapidly progressing. I also realise that social media is increasingly taking a toll on young people and their mental health, and contributes to social isolation within communities, and also has flow on effects, the development of social skills at such a young age.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (07:04):

Are there particular things about social media that concern you the most?

Gabby (Guest) (07:10):

Just the really strong influence that influencers can have on young people, and these young people often look up to social media icons, I guess, and sometimes that’s not always a positive thing.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (07:23):

Hali is 16 and in Year 10. She described the pressure of trying to fit in with a friendship group that’s constantly in flux.

Hali (07:31):

Well, things that worry me right now, because I’m getting into the higher levels of senior school, is what I’m going to do after school and deciding if you need any prerequisites for the course that you’re going to do at uni. At a young age, it’s hard. And then also, a lot of other things that you struggle with can be fitting in at school, or also trying to do your best and being up to standards are what people think. You don’t necessarily fit in with those friends, but then you go and hang out with other people, but then you don’t fit in with them, and it’s just hard to find your group and make sure that you have a stable group, I guess. It’s just fitting in [with] who people want you to be and not who you want to be.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (08:16):

Hali’s mother, Michelle, echoed these concerns about social pressure and the influence of social media on young people’s wellbeing.

Michelle (08:24):

I think there’s a lot of social pressure around them, flowing on from social media, the ability to have the latest clothes, have the right appearance, be with the right people, be accepted by the right group of people. And I find also that they’re quite disposable with how they treat each other in some of their environments today. It’s like, you’re sort of in one minute and you’re out the next minute, for not any real concrete reasons. And look, there’s a lot of good wellbeing things on social media as well. So I feel we look at the doom side of it, versus what is good on there. And there’s a lot of great people that are on there as well now, talking about wellbeing, and people that are dedicated to helping younger people. There’s lots of advocates out there for consent now, and they are amazing to listen to, and I think the kids pay attention to it. That message gets through to them better in that space, on socials, versus like an adult sitting there having a lectured conversation with them. So it’s got to be a balance.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (09:34):

Luke shared how growing up around parental mental illness, substance use and family and domestic violence shaped his concerns for the future.

Luke (Guest) (09:42):

When I was younger, the only worries I sort of had was, I would worry about Mum, if she was okay, if Dad was fighting with her. I was always looking out for Mum, “Are you all right, Mum? Is everything okay?” sort of thing. I worried. We always talked a lot. Even if one of us would be yelling, next minute, we could be coming back saying, “I’m sorry, I love you, are you all right?” sort of thing. So we cared for each other a lot, but at the same time there was still drugs and fighting, violence at home.

(10:06):

So that made it complicated, in a way. We could talk, but then it didn’t feel safe all the time, because Dad could have been on edge, or Dad could have been angry, or Mum could have been worried. It didn’t feel safe all the time, even though you felt like I could trust someone to talk to, it still didn’t feel safe. And I think that’s important for people to understand. A family can be close, but still be a hard place for a young person to grow up in.

(10:30):

I knew in myself I didn’t want to become that person. Seeing that life, I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted something different in my life, like stability and a better future. And so, I think that growing up my whole life, I wanted just somewhere where I felt stable and had a better life for my future.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (10:47):

Luke’s mum, Fiona, echoed his thoughts.

Fiona (Guest) (10:50):

I feel like they’ve always worried about the domestic violence. They never wanted to be like that, so they’ve talked to me about that. But I worry about social media. I think social media is a terrible thing. I worry a lot about learnt behaviours, because with intergenerational patterns, with DV [domestic violence] and stuff, yeah, it does, worries me about DV, for some in particular. Others of my kids are good, but some, yeah, it’s been a struggle through life. You’ve got to just wait and watch them grow up, and just be there to support them all the way. Just be there.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (11:26):

Here’s Commissioner Hollonds again.

Commissioner Anne Hollonds (Guest) (11:29):

What kids and families are telling me is that kids are worried about the adults in their families being unable to access help for domestic and family violence, for drug and alcohol problems, and mental health issues. And it’s the mental health and wellbeing of the adults is affecting the wellbeing of children. So not only are the services for kids scarce on the ground, the kids also worry about the adults in their families not being able to get help.

(11:55):

There’s also access to material basics, such as housing, food, clothing and public transport are an issue that comes up again and again when I go out, and it almost doesn’t matter what the topic is, the lack of access to basic material needs comes out. And of course, in the last few years, very much the cost of living is a problem, and the fragmented services that are not fit for purpose for these children and families who have complex needs.

(12:25):

So in summary, the stress of all of this, the lack of access to basic services, and the fragmentation which makes them not fit for purpose, really has a cost on the wellbeing of parents and children. And we seem to, despite being a rich and developed country, despite, we are not hampered by war or famine or government corruption, we don’t have any of those problems, we still struggle to be able to design and implement evidence-based upstream services to meet the needs of children and their families in the most vulnerable of circumstances. And probably, this is the thing that keeps me up at night the most.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (13:04):

The Commissioner went on to tell me about the Help Way Earlier report, which was tabled in Parliament last year. The report stemmed from a project involving community submissions and consultations with experts, stakeholders and 150 children around Australia, many of whom were in youth detention.

Commissioner Anne Hollonds (Guest) (13:21):

The title, Help Way Earlier, comes from what I heard from a lot of these children and young people. They said, “We need help way earlier.” So we would sit on the floor with a big sheet of paper and we draw a river in the middle of the sheet of paper, and on one side of the river we would ask, “how come young people and children get into trouble with the police?” And on the other side of the river, “how come other children and young people don’t get into trouble with the police? How come they stay out of trouble?” So listeners will recognise these two questions as really being about the risk factors and the protective factors in their lives.

(13:56):

Basically, what they told us was that what they needed to stay out of trouble with the police was just the things that everyone needs for a good childhood. They need safe housing, food, clothing, families to support them. They need to feel that they belong at school. A lot of them, they want to go to school, but they don’t feel they belong there, or they don’t feel safe at school. These are just really basic things that they told me were missing from their lives. When you ask them, how do young fellas start out doing crime? And they say it’s because they’re hungry. So this is about poverty. It’s about really serious disadvantage and trauma in the lives of these children.

(14:40):

What we sort of realised was, and this also echoes the international evidence, is that crime by children is a symptom of unmet needs and underlying issues that we in Australia are failing to address through the upstream systems, I call them the early warning systems, of health education and social services or human services.

(15:02):

And one young person put it to me this way, he was a First Nations young person on an advisory group we met with, and he challenged me and he said, “Commissioner, you’re asking the wrong questions.” Which was great. I really loved his challenge. He said, “You’re asking about why are First Nations kids over-represented in the youth justice systems? Everyone asks that question.” He said, “What you should be asking is why are First Nations children under-represented in those upstream systems?”

(15:32):

And that was very early on in our project, and that question really stayed with me, and he was absolutely right, that we are not focused enough on how fit for purpose are those upstream services, that really, they’re funded by taxpayers, and they’re meant to be helping the most vulnerable kids, First Nations, but other kids as well. And the kids who most need the help are under-represented. They’re not accessing those services. Either they’re not available or they’re not appropriate to their needs.

(16:02):

And I’ll just give one example of that. In one regional area, I heard that there was no detox services at all for kids, and there was an increasing problem of usage of hard drugs like ice in that area. So basically, I was told by the government officials, in order for a kid to get a detox service, they have to commit a crime first, and then they get sent to the Youth Detention Centre, which is many hundreds of kilometres away, and they get the health service there. But in our area, there’s no drug detox services for children.

(16:36):

So that was the first thing. But the second thing was, there were mental health services available in town, but they were operating on a model of you have to make an appointment, let’s say 2:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. But the young people, it doesn’t kind of fit for them. They’re not able to get themselves to an office in town at a certain time. They don’t have the family support to help them get there. And so the service, because it was structured on that model, they weren’t getting the most vulnerable kids, who were left with no services, then.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (17:14):

Cath Chamberlain is a Trawlwoolway woman from Tasmania. She’s the Professor of Indigenous Health at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at University of Melbourne, the Chief Midwifery Officer for the College of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, and Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Lowitja Journal. Her work is focused on improving care during pregnancy, birth, and the first couple of years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing trauma. We spoke about how trauma-informed pregnancy care is essential to addressing the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the youth justice and out-of-home care systems.

Prof Catherine Chamberlain (Guest) (17:50):

So we know that babies’ brains start developing straight away from conception, and that anything that happens to babies’ brains can impact across the whole lifetime, and that evidence even suggests that things that have happened to mothers and grandmothers before conception can have a real impact. So we need to be bearing that in mind and doing everything that we can to support mothers and babies’ wellbeing.

(18:11):

We also know that any stress, including PTSD and any complex trauma-related stress the mother experiences can impact the baby through the release of stress hormones and those kind of things. And also after birth, there’s just volumes of research showing how mother’s wellbeing impacts on children’s wellbeing, and then that can impact people right across their lifespan, including when they become parents themselves, which partially explains what people talk about when they’re talking about intergenerational cycles of trauma.

(18:41):

So all of these are really important things, and importantly, when we’re thinking about the lifelong effects and intergenerational cycles, we need to remember that pregnancy, birth and the early years is a really critical factor for parents experiencing trauma, and a real opportunity for healing and preventing that. It’s a time when people are more likely to experience trauma-related distress, and that can be because the memories of their own people’s past experiences, your own memories can be stirred up. People can have birth trauma, other pre-existing mental illnesses. There’s increased homelessness, domestic violence at this time, a whole range of reasons why. And just the hormonal changes that happen during this time can make us more likely to experience distress.

(19:26):

But despite all that, we know it’s a really important time for healing. There’s also a lot around the neurobiology and science of attachment and connections and bonding. And so, we really want to do everything we can and provide that trauma-informed perinatal care to be able to support that loving and nurturing that is such a healing thing for families, and so important for children. And we know that perinatal care is definitely not trauma-informed or safe, experienced as safe for a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, and it can be re-traumatising.

(19:58):

So first of all, really understanding the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, I think, and getting real consensus on the types of support that parents want and need. Establishing safety, having trusting relationships before having any of these discussions, making sure people have the capacity to respond. Incorporating cultural methods of talking about sensitive issues gently, using real strength-based and hope-inspiring approaches is really critical.

(20:26):

So one of the things with all this trauma-informed care is that we need to understand it but not talk about it in some ways, unless it’s in a forum like this. But when we are certainly working with parents and families, the language needs to be really strength-based and hope-inspiring, because it can be really deficit-focused and harmful to be talking about trauma all the time, and make people feel like there’s something wrong with them, which is the opposite of what you’re trying to do with trauma-informed care.

(20:54):

And then finally, just the importance of having really respectful, caring, and compassionate caregivers. So there’s a lot of work around that to do. Second, I think focuses on those really critical elements of connectedness, wellbeing, and transition to parenting that I just talked about a minute ago. And the third is really having this focus on comprehensive, wraparound support. And I have to flag that a lot of these changes that are needed are really integral to some of the innovative birthing on Country models of care that we’ve seen, such as the Birthing in Our Community in Queensland. So we’d really strongly support authentic investment in these types of models.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (21:34):

I asked Cath what she’s found is getting in the way of improving perinatal care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents.

Prof Catherine Chamberlain (Guest) (21:41):

While there’s an increased awareness, people are still lacking the skills and knowledge about what to do in a practical way, so I think helping people to develop skills is really important. I think health services are just really stressful and traumatogenic environments in themselves. People are working under a lot of pressure, and it’s really hard to practise in a trauma-informed way. The other thing is that probably about 1 in 4 perinatal care workers are experiencing vicarious trauma themselves from the environment that they’re working in and the stress that people are under, and hearing other people’s experiences, being exposed to that. So it really impacts people’s capacity to be able to respond in a deeply trauma-informed way to somebody else who’s experiencing trauma-related distress, if you’re also distressed.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (22:26):

Dr Billy Garvey is a father, podcaster, author, founder of Guiding Growing Minds, and a developmental paediatrician with over 20 years’ experience with working with children and families.

Dr Billy Garvey (Guest) (22:37):

I saw something recently, it was like a professor in the States. It was like, “kids are born with personality traits that you’ll never change. We’re just shepherds. You can’t actually influence them. Stop wasting your time.” And I was just like, God, this is just awful information to be going out into the world, because there’s so much that we can do to influence the trajectory of kids. Things like temperament is set, attachment is not. We can give them skill sets like emotional regulation. We can prioritise community participation, feeling safe in the home environment, having their emotional needs met, all of that stuff. But I just wish that the public realised how important that is, how much it’s never lost, that it’s not something you should try and figure out on your own as a parent or an educator or someone like that, and where the actual evidence sits. The flashy things that cost lots of money are often just business models, not evidence-based strategies to support our entire community.

(23:33):

I think it does show how poorly some of the big institutions have handled it though, that people feel so lost at sea that they will go down those sometimes really expensive kind of influencer models or suggestions or products or whatever, because we as professionals with the expertise have just failed so poorly at getting to them. So I think that’s how we do that better. We don’t tell them how silly people are for listening to someone on TikTok. I’m saying how we need to do better when that’s the place that someone goes to get advice about how to parent, or how to identify signs of mental illness in their kids, or what to do about it.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (24:12):

These deterministic ideas aren’t the only misconceptions about infant and child mental health that persist today. I asked Brad and Commissioner Hollonds what misunderstandings they still come across, and how these misunderstandings affect the way we support children and families in Australia today.

Brad Morgan (Guest) (24:29):

Some of the misconceptions, I think, is that we still are learning a lot and still don’t know a lot about infant and child mental health. We’ve learned a lot more, but I think at the same time, the community, but also the workforce is catching up with that knowledge, and as a consequence, particular issues or particular presentations, they often dominate the community’s understanding of what things are, but also then our responses to those things. So what I’ll say is, we don’t have a shared understanding across our community or across our workforces, or even in government programs.

(24:59):

So we have a service for this presenting issue or this challenge, and another one over here for this type of thing, and we haven’t unified them under an organising framework. And I think the consequence of that for families is, you go here for something, and another place for something else, or I can’t find the support I need for these particular issues. And I think that’s been acknowledged in a lot of documents like the National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy and other things that sort of say, how do we bring together a lot of those programs and services under a unifying framework that’s organised at the moment, which we still need to progress?

Commissioner Anne Hollonds (Guest) (25:30):

In that project, which it was looking at kids who commit crimes, but what we found was that actually, the justice system can’t fix that problem. We take a very harsh, punitive approach. We’re punishing children with high levels of disabilities, learning problems, mental health issues and trauma. We’re incarcerating them in increasing numbers. We’re building more prisons. Bail laws are getting tougher and tougher, but nowhere in the world has that been shown to prevent crime by children.

(26:00):

So it’s completely not based on evidence, it’s going in the wrong direction compared to the rest of the world, and it just illustrates our misunderstanding of the problem and our failure to address the root causes and the unmet needs of these kids through those upstream early warning systems.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (26:18):

Yeah. Where do you think that misunderstanding comes from?

Commissioner Anne Hollonds (Guest) (26:22):

That’s a very big question. I think it’s political. It’s that politicians have to look like they’re being tough on crime, and that’s because the community doesn’t understand that that doesn’t work, and the politicians are not courageous enough to tell them, even when they know it too. And we’re seeing that roll out at the minute, that the state where they won the election being tough on crime, but they’re now quietly rolling out some attempts at preventative programs, but they almost have to do it on the quiet because the community doesn’t really know the truth. And the reason for that is often the media. When they report on instances, or alleged instances of crime by children, because that sells their papers or their online subscriptions. I’ve been told this directly by journalists. So crime stories sell, and there is no incentive to do stories explaining why these kids are doing crime.

(27:17):

We are very weak on the human rights of children in Australia. So what’s happening in a number of jurisdictions, we’re further harming kids who already have mental health issues and other unmet needs, and we are breaching their human rights in the states and territories, and the Commonwealth government is remaining silent about those human rights breaches, despite the fact that we ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other treaties a long time ago.

(27:45):

When we look overseas at youth justice approaches, there are countries like America and other places where, in some parts are closing youth detention centres, because they’ve chosen to invest in better drug and alcohol services, better mental health services, and more appropriate models of education. And so they’re getting in early, based on evidence of what works, and some of them have been able to close their youth detention centres.

(28:10):

We are actually preparing, or finalising, actually, our supplementary report to Help Way Earlier, which looks at six examples of promising practise with some evidence from Australia and around the world.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (28:24):

I also asked Gabby, Luke, and Hali what they wish adults better understood about children and young people’s mental health.

Gabby (Guest) (28:30):

That’s a tricky one. I think it’s really important for us to be open and honest with the people that we trust, because these are the people who can help us in times of need and support us in whatever way that they can. These people don’t know how we are feeling. It may be harder for them to actually understand how they can support us.

(28:50):

I think also the stigma associated with mental health can sometimes set us back, but I think if adults have an understanding of these barriers to seeking help, that they are able to be more aware of what to look out for. Obviously as a young person, this is an age where we are growing and developing and still learning ways to cope with everyday life.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (29:13):

Are there particular things that adults can maybe do to help with building that trust, so you do feel comfortable sharing that?

Gabby (Guest) (29:25):

Yeah, I think even just showing that they’re really supportive and non-judgemental, and creating a safe environment just for speaking openly. And also, like I said earlier, being a role model of these behaviours and kind of making it normal, I guess, for this to be a topic of discussion.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (29:44):

Yeah, absolutely. So almost like taking the first step in having those conversations.

Gabby (Guest) (29:50):

Definitely. Especially for young people, I think, because without a role model or someone showing them that’s a normal thing, it’s hard for them to see, that’s okay to feel that way.

Luke (Guest) (30:01):

Trauma doesn’t always come from mental health. I mean, doesn’t always come from neglect or parents who don’t care about their people. Sometimes families are close, but there’s still violence and drugs or instability in the family’s home, and then the young person can feel cared for and unsafe at the same time. And I think that’s something that people need to understand.

Hali (30:22):

I wish adults understood that no one’s problems are bigger than another’s. I know adults have financial stress and other things like that, but it’s nothing that can be actually compared to what we go through, because everyone goes through something that’s different to another person, and it’s not something that can be… Problems aren’t something that can be compared. It’s something that you seek help for.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (30:47):

Absolutely. Do you think that adults understand how adult problems like financial stress can affect young people as well?

Hali (30:57):

Yeah, and I think that’s overlooked, because they’re worried about themselves. But then obviously, because our frontal lobe hasn’t developed yet and we don’t really know what’s going on, they have more life experience than us. It’s, “what is going on? Is this my fault? Have I done something that’s impacted this?” And it’s just being in an environment where they’re not telling you what’s going on, and then when they do tell you what’s going on, it’s just a big wave, and they haven’t told you at the very start, so it’s just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (31:30):

And so, by the time they’re telling you, it’s this massive thing, but it would be better if they kind of talked to you about it closer to the beginning, when it was first happening?

Hali (31:39):

Yeah, and then it won’t feel as heavy on the child as it is.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (31:44):

And what do parents wish professionals or services better understood when it comes to parenting and children’s mental health? Here’s Michelle.

Michelle (31:51):

Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. Some of my experience with health professionals in the mental health space is, a lot of them are textbook-driven and like one size fits all. And it’s like, you need to really understand the personality of the person that you’re dealing with and the issues that they have. So unpack that, get the right level of skills to be able to treat that person. You need to find that personalised relationship that fits the personality of who they’re dealing with, and make sure they’ve got an enormous level of empathy as well. Because it goes hand in hand. If you actually have the courage and the bravery to engage in a service like that, I think it needs the right level of effort put into it, as well.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (32:44):

When I posed this question to Fiona, she echoed Brad’s call for a more cohesive approach to service delivery.

Fiona (Guest) (32:49):

To be honest, for a long time, I didn’t feel safe to tell the truth, so I lied to doctors, I lied to services, I lied to police, because I was terrified if I admitted how bad things really were, Child Safety would step in and I would lose my kids. So the fear of that kept me quiet.

(33:08):

I just did everything that I did separately. I took one of my kids, at one stage, he had ADHD, I took him to a psychiatrist. I took another child to an Exploring Together program. And so, then I went and saw drug and alcohol services on my own. And so then I would be judged from drug and alcohol, or I’d be judged from, or I wouldn’t speak about the domestic violence, because I thought, no, the kids are gone for sure then. It’s scary, because if you go to separate services, then they only know you are this or you are that. You could be working on everything and protecting your children the best you can in your situation.

(33:42):

But what eventually helped me was when I met services that would talk to me more holistically, like knowing that, hang on, you’re not just keeping your kids in domestic violence. Hang on, you’ve got mental health issues. You’ve got the… And just look at me like more of a holistic person. And it just made me feel safe to talk to people.

(34:02):

I believe that parenting, if there’s substance abuse, there’s normally an underlying cause for the substance abuse. So maybe in my case, my bipolar or the DV that I was living, so I’m using drugs to cope and things. I just wish that professionals and services understood that there’s reasons. There’s reasons behind all of these behaviours.

(34:24):

So if I told a GP that I was using drugs and alcohol, or if I told them there is DV, or they knew that I had mental health and I was working mental health with this, and they were all reporting back to my GP, and so my GP knew, Fiona’s working on this, on this, on everything. And so, when I’m supported, then I’m able to support my family and support my children, because I can be open, I can be honest.

(34:51):

I want to share my lived experience voice about this, so that families like mine don’t fall through the cracks, because people don’t understand, our family was not a normal family, so it’s not the normal textbook help that we need. We needed a different type of help.

Jacquie Lee (Host) (35:08):

Thank you for listening. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, and that you’ll join us next fortnight for part two of the conversation, when we’ll continue to explore models and strategies for more collaborative service delivery, ideas for engaging communities and mental health support, and our hopes for the future of infants’ and children’s mental health in Australia.

VO (35:26):

Visit our website emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health. Led by Emerging Minds, the Centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.