Please see Chloe Conroy

Please see Kate Renshaw

This presentation will focus on how mental health, wellbeing and safety can be supported within creative approaches that engage vulnerable young people in co-design, youth participation and voice opportunities. These approaches will be demonstrated through showcasing two recent youth participation projects undertaken by Brisbane Youth Service (BYS) with young people who have lived experience of homelessness. The first of these engaged young people in the digital and content design of the organisation’s new youth focused website; and the second focused on an intensive co-design process for an innovative new youth & family engagement funded program trial. This presentation challenges assumptions that youth participation is hard and ‘dangerous’, by illustrating key steps that were taken to support young people’s mental health, wellbeing and sense of safety during the workshops. The presentation will explore the dynamic use of creative strategies designed to elevate and maximise young people’s capacity to meaningfully engage in the process, draw out and share their lived knowledge and expertise, and mitigate the barriers that stand in the way of authentic youth participation. The use of fictional characters will be discussed as a highly successful approach to establishing and maintaining a sense of safety and provoking rich learning conversations amongst groups of young people. Using the fictional characters enabled the young people to share their voices, experiences and ideas through the characters, therefore creating distance from their own personal stories and supporting their feelings of safety within the discussion. This approach facilitated young people’s participation and contribution to the process and elicited rich and insightful ideas, which in turn, enabled BYS to develop an end result that was profoundly informed by the voices and experience of young people.

Is Children’s Behaviour ours to Manage? How to Plan for Fulfilment Instead of Positive Behaviour

Children & Young people living with mental health conditions and trauma are frequently the subject of positive behaviour support plans. While the child or adolescent is sometimes (rarely more than tokenistically) consulted in this process, the plans themselves are catered around the symptom, not the cause. What would happen if we stop writing these behaviour management plans for young people, and started planning for their wellbeing instead?

Participants will be encouraged to deeply listen to the behaviours the child is using, learn to identify an unmet need, and co-design a plan to meet it. It’s time to plan for fulfilment, not behaviour, and create meaningful wellbeing plans with and for children & young people.

Children & Young people living with mental health conditions and trauma are frequently the subject of positive behaviour support plans. While the child or adolescent is sometimes (rarely more than tokenistically) consulted in this process, the plans themselves are catered around the symptom, not the cause. What would happen if we stop writing these behaviour management plans for young people, and started planning for their wellbeing instead?

Participants will be encouraged to deeply listen to the behaviours the child is using, learn to identify an unmet need, and co-design a plan to meet it. It’s time to plan for fulfilment, not behaviour, and create meaningful wellbeing plans with and for children & young people.

With the introduction of NDIS, the role of parents and family, has become critical to achieve the best possible outcomes for children living with disability across Australia. Despite this, support for parent mental health is limited. Many express symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, that are left undiagnosed and untreated.
Supporting mental health of families as part of a wholistic approach, is a key factor to enabling parents and children to be safe, happy, and healthy contributors to their community. However new funding models and a move toward participant-focused funding, has left families feeling unsupported.
A survey of parents and providers found that parents, regardless of their child’s age or diagnosis, struggle to maintain positive mental health. Although over 70% stated they were concerned about their mental health, only 8% had ever sought professional advice. The survey found providers lacked confidence to raise wellbeing with families and did not have the skills or training to recognise when a family was reaching crisis. Providers believe this is a consequence of changing funding structures, increased time pressures and high staff turnover.
Families are experiencing higher levels of responsibility and expectation than ever before, but providers lack the capacity to respond. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of virtual service delivery has exacerbated this further.
To be their best and achieve the best possible outcomes, families need knowledge, confidence and support. This presentation will provide useful insight into building positive, impactful partnerships with parents to improve the lives of young people living with disability.

The presenters will demonstrate their findings from a case study using Pasifika Point (Mentoring) which is a holistic education mentoring program using ‘Real Talk’ aimed at Year 11 and 12 students and facilitated using thematic learning and a diverse cultural framework.

Purpose

The purpose of the program is to empower, guide and navigate students on their journey from High School and onto their chosen pathway.

Pasifika Point engages youth from the Pacific region introducing them to discussions around Health (Mental health), Wealth (Education is knowledge) Love (connecting with culture, loving self and respectful relationships) Happiness (gathering tools to lead a Happy life moving forward).

The program provides students open discussions around dealing with Mental Health issues (eg, anxiety, depression, stress, and other debilitating factors that are affecting their mental wellbeing.
Students also have the opportunity to access an onsite GP with a referral to Debriefing sessions with the Psychotherapist (main presenter) while onsite.

Education pathway discussions include Tafe, Ready for work and linking with Universities both in Queensland as well as Massey (for New Zealand citizens)


Findings

Students are willing to learn and engage when information is relevant to their current environment and is presented in a way they can relate to and understand (thematic learning and cultural diverse lens)

Students are willing to engage with (debrief sessions) counselling services when they feel comfortable with discussing their issues and have connected with a therapist who respects, and understands their cultural background and values.

Recommendations

The presenters recommend exploring other methods of learning environments (thematic learning, using a diverse cultural framework) to engage students, especially when they are dropping out of or being cancelled by their school.
They also encourage open discussions on mental wellbeing.

The Teacher’s Optimal Relationship Approach (TORA) is a school-based, early intervention mental health and wellbeing strategy. This doctoral study incorporated teacher feedback to facilitate the development of the TORA and assess for efficacy. The voices and views of the teacher participants form part of the process of the TORA becoming an evidence-based approach. The novel component of this research is that teachers can be a therapeutic change agent for every child in the classroom, influencing social, emotional, behavioural and academic engagement. The TORA was originally conceived from the researcher’s clinical work in schools, where it became apparent through collaboration with teachers that every teacher could benefit from theoretical knowledge and skills derived from Play and Filial Therapy. Play and Filial Therapy are evidence based mental health approaches. Play Therapy combines both relational skills and the therapeutic powers of play to provide a developmentally sensitive mental health service for children and young people. Filial Therapy works on the premise that the most important people in the lives of children can learn some of the therapeutic skills used in Play Therapy. When children are at school, one of the most important people is their teacher. TheTORA acknowledges the pivotal role teachers play in the lives of children and provides teachers with skills to embed therapeutic qualities and playfulness into their daily relationships in school. As part of the research project, the voice of the teacher participants was essential in both continuing to refine the TORA and assess for its efficacy and suitability in Australian schools. Classroom observation and focus group data will be presented in this workshop to showcase how the researcher and teachers listened and learned together.

Adolescents with a serious or chronic illness, or disability are more likely than their peers to report poor mental health. In 2008, Starlight Children’s Foundation established Livewire Online (LWO) - a moderated, safe and secure online community for young people living with illness or disability, and siblings. It is a preventative intervention that allows young people, regardless of where they live in Australia or New Zealand, to connect with others and share lived experience, and encourages positive coping.

We conducted a pre-post evaluation with LWO members at sign-up (T0) and 3-months later (T1). At both timepoints, participants completed validated measures to assess depression and anxiety (PROMIS Emotional Distress – Depression and Anxiety), and peer-support (Cancer Peer Support Scale, adapted). At T1, participants also rated their acceptability of LWO (purpose-designed items).

Thirty-one participants have completed both timepoints (data collection still underway). At T0, participants were, on average, 15-years-old and diagnosed at 10-years-old (e.g. cancer, Anorexia Nervosa, Autism Spectrum Disorder). Most participants reported signing-up to LWO to ‘make friends’ and ‘have fun’. At T0, around half of the participants scored at least ‘mild’ depression (48%) and anxiety (44%). Depression, anxiety, and peer-support scores did not change over time. However, most participants rated LWO as ‘useful’ and ‘relevant’, with the main benefit being the opportunity to connect with others “who have gone through similar experiences and understand what it's like” and to learn about how others cope. Participants expressed the challenges of not being able to see friends and increased health anxiety due to COVID, which resulted in increased use of LWO.

Our data indicate that LWO is an acceptable intervention. While we did not find any statistically significant changes over time, LWO does appear to benefit members and may prevent worsening mental health. LWO may be especially valuable to members during COVID.

Background: Listening to children and young people (CYP) is necessary for high-quality paediatric healthcare. However, research highlights a gap between Australia’s stated commitment to CYPs’ right to be heard and the practical realisation of this. Starlight Children’s Foundation established the Listen Carefully Project, a national collaboration to explore the implementation of CYPs’ right to be heard in healthcare.

Methods: We conducted case studies with six Australian paediatric health services. These involved interviews with consumer engagement staff and clinicians (n=24), and young people (n=26). We conducted a thematic analysis of the case studies.

Results: Participants highlighted that listening to CYP benefits the patient, family and broader health system. They perceived that funding, having skilled staff members dedicated to consumer engagement, and executive-level champions was critical to their progress in this space. Youth Advisory Councils were a strength for many services. While Councils shared the same aim (i.e. to facilitate the voice of CYP aged ≥12 years), they approached this aim in distinct ways. Most participants considered their service was doing well to listen to adolescents but expressed challenges in meaningfully listening to younger children. Participants expressed uncertainty about ‘what’ feedback was useful to collect from CYP, and ‘how’ to collect this in a developmentally appropriate way. While many participants acknowledged the value of closing the feedback loop, they noted that these processes needed improvement. In addition to younger children, participants agreed that CYP from a culturally and linguistically diverse background and those with a developmental disability required further attention.

Conclusions: We found a strong commitment across Australia to improve how CYP are being listened to in the healthcare system. We conclude our presentation with suggestions for next steps for researchers, clinicians and health services. Our findings and suggestions are relevant for any institution that cares for CYP, including mental health services.