Launch of Children’s Right’s Report
A brief overview:
A CREATE Young Consultant, Adam Johnston, with a long out of home care experience was the MC for the launch – he was awesome 🙂 – Improving young people’s help seeking behaviour is the key…
…Welcome to Country was humorously delivered by Elder Uncle Allen Madden from the Gadigal Country of the Eora Nation.
Highlight: A quote Megan Mitchell cited from a young child asked to define resilience: “when you don’t cry about the little things”.
Sad statistics from Tracy Adams, CEO of Boys Town reporting a doubling of contacts with young people seeking help for self-harm with /without a suicide intent….keen to encourage more help seeking behaviours…acknowledging the courage they need to reach out…and how imperative it is for us to respond effectively.
Ministers speech – Senator the Hon Scott Ryan – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education
Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, opened the launch.
Message was strong throughout to forge stronger links between research and practice – Professor Philip Hazell is Head, Discipline of Psychiatry and Conjoint Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with the Sydney Medical School. He is in addition Director of Infant Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for the Sydney and South Western Sydney Local Health Networks and Director of the Rivendell Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Service. He reported that in every classroom 2-3 girls are likely to be self-harming and 1 boy. Spoke about the need for us to look at the factors that prevent self-harm. What should we be providing ? How do we prevent clusters? The fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander children were excessively over represented in suicide and self-harm presentations. One of the issues with research in this field is the barrier provided by Ethics Committees who a resistant to give approval for research in this area.Also need cooperation with different government bodies/ NGO’s providing services to share the data they have.
Megan Mitchell’s address was passionate and can be summarised: “one child under 18 in Australia dies by suicide every week, and 50 to 60 are admitted to hospital every week as a result of a self harm incident. We also found a massive jump in suicidal behaviour between the years 12 and 13, and 14 and 15”
I also found out that there were these resources for schools: “Human Rights Commission released a range of new resources designed to teach children and young people about human rights. Find out about these practical teaching resources linked to the school curriculum for primary and secondary students.
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/education/human-rights-school-classroom
….and there was a call for an e safety commissioner especially since a lot of young people prefer to seek help online yet are open to abuse online too.
What was especially fabulous is that a child-friendly version of Australia’s progress in terms of the Rights of the Child is available:
Megan shared: “To celebrate 25 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF and I got together to produce these child and youth friendly versions of the 2012 concluding comments of the United Nations Committee on Australia’s progress on implementing children’s rights.”
Also the importance of explaining Privacy Laws to children…and the fact that a third of children with gender variance are self-harming – 16% attempt suicide.
Recommendations:
– Research – national agenda focusing on:
– improving surveillance and what are the effective interventions and ways of preventing self-harm
– Availability of disaggregated data about suicide and self-harm for children under 18 & on an annual basis.
– Develop consistent recording protocols for suicide related information in police and coronial systems.
– update guidelines for the management of deliberate self-harm in young people
– promote resilience and help – seeking in young people with careful attention to the developmental needs/ brain development of children
For more info
twitter.com/MeganM4kids “out of this mettle of danger we must plus the flower of safety” Henry IV Part 1.