Supporting the mental health of children living in out-of-home care

Disclaimer: The following transcript has been autogenerated and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies resulting from the automated transcription process.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:00:01):

Hello everybody and welcome to tonight’s webinar. It’s wonderful to have you all with us. And hello to the viewers who might be watching this later as a recording, my name’s Nicole Rollbusch. I’m a practise development officer with Emerging Minds, and it’s my pleasure to facilitate tonight’s session. Before we begin, I’d just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and the seas and the waterways across Australia upon which a webinar presenters are. And I am as well. I’m here on Kaurna Land in Adelaide, and extend that acknowledgement to all of our participants as well and where you are located. And just want to pay my respects to elders past, present, merging and acknowledge the memories and traditions and cultures and hopes of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And if you would like to acknowledge the land that you are on tonight, please feel free to do so in the chat as well.

(00:01:05):

So this is season seven. It’s the second webinar of the seventh series on Infant and Child Mental Health, which is presented by Emerging Minds and MHPN. So far. We’ve had today’s webinar and webinar on trauma as well, and we’ve got some upcoming ones on disasters, suicidal ideation, school refusal, and play with infants and toddlers. And if you’d like to join us at any of those, you can subscribe via Emerging Minds or via MHPN as well and you’ll get an opportunity to register for those. Just a quick recap on using the platform, if you are not familiar with it or it’s been a while since you’ve joined us, to interact with the platform and access resources, you can click the supporting resources button and in there you’ll be able to access the slides that we’re showing you this evening. We’ve also got a list of helpful resources as well, and the survey is in there too, which we really appreciate you completing because it means that we’re able to continue to provide these webinars to you and just making sure that we can do it in the way that you would like us to. And you can access the chat, so just look for the speech bubble, which is at the top right hand side corner of your screen and you can interact with your fellow participants this evening. So we have our learning outcomes, so you would’ve seen those when you registered, so I won’t go through them one by one, but just to say this is those, and I think our three panellists do a really good job of meeting those, so I’m really excited to introduce them now.

(00:03:06):

So you would’ve seen the panellist bios, which were disseminated with the webinar invitation, so please feel free to jump back into those to learn a bit more about our panellists. But tonight we have Felicity, Kime, Candice Butler, and Kate Headley joining us. And Candice, I wanted to start by asking you, you are the director of the Centre of Excellence at QATSICPP for the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Protection Peak Body. You’ve been leading some research and evaluation recently. Can you share some of the main findings from the research you’ve been working on?

Candice Butler (00:03:45):

Yes, thank you so much Nicole, and thank you for that question. As an Aboriginal woman, I’d first and foremost, very like to acknowledge that I’m joining you on the lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera people here in Meanjin/Brisbane, and I join you as a person who’s standing on the shoulders of giants, so I just want to acknowledge that. What we’re hearing from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sector in particular with our research and evaluation and when it comes to our young people, most importantly is this important of our young people having voice and choice in decisions that impact upon them as well as ensuring that we are looking at ways to heal their social and emotional wellbeing.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:04:31):

Great, thanks Candice, and thanks so much for joining us. It’s great to have you with us. And Kate, welcome. Now you’re a speech pathologist. What do you see as the biggest challenge when working with children and families in Out-of-Home Care?

Kate Headley (00:04:49):

Hello. Thanks Nicole, and good evening to everybody. Look, there are a lot of challenges I think people can reflect on working as allied health practitioners in this space. Whether it’s the biggest, I’m not sure, but one of the biggies that I often reflect on is knowing how to navigate when there’s competing priorities for different adults and different service systems around a child. And I think you can feel a real pressure in that as a clinician in that space and just how you might be able to move forward in that kind of context and feel like you can hold a child’s needs at the centre of all of that and be true to trying to prioritise the child holistically in amongst all those kind of competing priorities.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:05:50):

Thanks, Kate. Thanks for being here. It’s great to have you and Flick. Now you’re a peer worker and a parent advocate working in the care system and child removal space. What do you see as the biggest opportunity to improve outcomes for children and families in Out-of-Home Care?

Felicity Kime (00:06:11):

Yeah, thanks Nicole. I feel like not just for a peer worker, but as a human in Australia, one of the biggest opportunities that we all have is getting children connected to family in some form and meaningful connection to family. It’s pretty simple.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:06:27):

Yeah. Great. Thanks. Thanks Flick. Great to have you here as well. So what we’ll do now is each of our panellists will give a short presentation and then we’ll jump into some question and answer between the panel as well. So I’ll hand over now to our first speaker, Candice. Thanks Candice.

Candice Butler (00:06:49):

Thank you, Nicole. Good evening again everyone. So this evening what I thought I wanted to share with you all is our resource about healing our children and young people, a framework to address the impacts of domestic and family violence. Children are placed at the centre of this trauma-informed strength-based framework, and it upholds self-determination and will support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to experience increased physical, social, emotional, cultural and spiritual safety in their homes and communities. This framework helps to outline the importance of culture and identity as well as voice and choice. We were motivated to create this framework for our children, and I think that this tool could be used by workers working alongside Jenny. So our case study in particular that has been shared as well as foster carers and the psychologist who I’ll speak a bit more about and how the framework could be implemented in that space. And I would like to preface also by saying that although the framework highlights it’s for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, I believe that it’s a framework that can be implemented for all children and young people. Next slide please.

(00:08:13):

So this slide highlights the pillars and elements to implement our framework to support children and young people. So to support you in implementing each of the pillars of the framework, we have outlined critical questions and thinking that will support you to support our children, families, and communities to overcome any trauma or even just to make sure that their social and emotional wellbeing as well as their mental health is strong. I’m going to use aspects of the pillars and in particular link that to the case study that we have. So when we look at safety and the importance of supporting safety, of course the safety of our children is non-negotiable. They need safe approaches including safe people, safe places and safe language to support them in accessing safety. But when we think of safety, safety is not just about physical safety, it’s about the importance of emotional safety and physical and cultural safety too as well for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

(00:09:20):

We believe that when our children’s social and emotional wellbeing is strong, they thrive having a strong cultural identity, we know the strength of cultural identity and the power of cultural knowledge and wisdom, and this helps us all to heal even as adults. And so culture is also an important protective mechanism for our children and young people. When we talk about strong deadly relationships, I think this is where the case study really comes to fruition because if we see Jenny and we read about Jenny, and Jenny is experiencing so much emotion because her herself, she’s feeling that those deadly relationships that she’s built at school, that strong culture from school like her school can be a culture in of itself. And then also that community centre. So we need to really work alongside Jenny to understand and support her to ensure that her identity, she’s feeling safe, that she has family, still has contact and family time or even time with her friends from school because that’s really important.

(00:10:33):

That’s one thing that we hear quite regularly, even though yes, I work at a peak body, but we hear this quite regularly about children who are moved between placements or schools. They lose that connection and that’s really important to them. And we think of ourselves when we move cities or we move towns or even move suburbs, we ourselves, our sense of safety, our sense of belonging is being impacted. So that’s why I believe that this framework is a framework that can be implemented for all children and young people. And just quickly touching on that importance of strengthening spirits, I’m really heartened that in the case study that people have thought to refer Jenny to a psychologist. However, if we need to make sure that for all children that support that’s being provided is safe, is therapeutic, and it is meeting the social and emotional wellbeing needs of our children and young people. Next slide please.

(00:11:39):

Thank you. So implementing this healing framework requires important skills and attributes that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners from across Queensland have shared with us as to how we can support the healing as well as social and emotional wellbeing of our children and young people. So I’m just going to highlight a couple. This is by no means an exhaustive list and I know that Kate and Flick will also, they will build upon what I’ve shared with you. So I don’t want to make sure that I’m not doubling up with what everybody else is saying too as well, although I’m sure we all have very important things to share with each and every one of you. So it’s really important that when we are working alongside our children and young people, that we are acknowledging our communication skills, our engagement strategies, especially alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people.

(00:12:39):

We need to ensure that how we talk to children and young people will be in age appropriate ways. And I know that Kate will really highlight that in particular. And also how we can talk to children and young people about managing big emotions. There’s a lot of emotions even when children are going well in life, there’s still big emotions. So we need to work through that. So overall, I think the attributes are that we listen, that we respect that we are reflective. So we think of ourselves as practitioners throughout this process and that we keep safety and good communication at the forefront because I think that’s what’s been some of the issues for Jenny, is she’s not feeling heard and she’s not feeling as though her voice is being heard in decisions. So how can we make sure that we’re bringing our children and young people into decisions so that then they’re feeling their social and emotional wellbeing is recognised.

(00:13:41):

So in closing, I genuinely believe, and next slide, sorry. In clothing, I genuinely believe that our hearts and minds must be engaged when we’re working along children and young people who are having issues or with their social and emotional wellbeing or even just feeling not heard. So we need to recognise their strength that they come to the table with. We need to ensure that they’re able to ask questions and to review any services that are provided to them. Let’s always embrace a message of hope and optimism, and I genuinely believe that in that way the rights of our children will be upheld. Thank you, Nicole.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:14:27):

Thanks, Candice. Really appreciated that. And I like this idea of voice and choice that you speak about. And point of reflection for me was when you said, when we move, when we all move, we all experience feelings of uncertainty and things like that. So I think it’s really important to reflect on what that’s like for children in the out-of-home care space. So thanks Candice. So I wanted to invite Kate next. Thanks Kate.

Kate Headley (00:15:01):

Thank you. So I guess building on exactly what you and Candice were just talking about, I also was reflecting on the fact that any transition for children including transition into out-of-home care, whether it’s short or long-term can be a really stressful time for children. So as an allied health clinician, I want to support children’s mental health at that time by ensuring that my engagements with children feel safe and that through those engagements I’m learning about them as people and what’s important to them. And in order to do that well, I need to understand their communication skills and I need to understand if they’re experiencing any challenge with their communication skills. So children might be experiencing challenge or difficulties with communication skills that can be twofold. So there may be more short term and difficulties that are associated with the stress, the impacts of stress on their language skills that we all experience at times of high stress.

(00:16:14):

But equally, children might also be experiencing more persistent language difficulties. And the research tells us there’s very high rates of persistent language difficulties upwards of about 80% in children living in out of home care. I think it’s really worthwhile noting that sometimes children who experience those persistent communication difficulties develop really adaptive strategies to manage those as they grow. So sometimes the only clue we might see for those persistent language difficulties are behavioural differences in a child. So when I read about Jenny in the case study, I’m really curious about her language skills and potentially some unmet support needs in that area of her development. I’m thinking about her ability to express herself, especially at times of high stress. And if I was engaging with her, I would want to ensure that I was modifying how I spoke with her to ensure that I was supporting her to understand information and so I could feel confident that her thoughts and her opinions were being accurately captured in that interaction. Next slide, please.

(00:17:42):

It’s really important for us to understand that there’s this compounding relationship between communication difficulties and mental health, whereby unmet communication support needs can add to the risk of the onset of mental health disorders, but equally mental health conditions can negatively impact communication skills. So in our case study, Jenny is showing signs of declining in mental wellbeing, as Candice was saying, she’s understandably stressed about changes that are happening and decisions that are being made without her feeling a sense of participation or control around those decisions. And in her situation, protective factors for her mental health such as her relationship with her sister and her relationship with her school friends aren’t being prioritised in the decision-making around her. Next slide please.

(00:18:45):

So emerging minds promote shifts in our perspective that can support us in our work when engaging with children who’ve experienced trauma. And when we accommodate for any communication difficulties that children might be experiencing. This then positions us to empower them to educate us on how they perceive their experiences and what their beliefs are around those experiences. It empowers children to provide, we can provide them with a pathway through which they can share their knowledge with us. We can provide opportunities for children to be active contributors in problem solving what they need and how they can meet their needs and it can help us to learn about children’s context. Next slide please.

(00:19:46):

So there’s lots of ways that we can modify the way we work with children in order to ensure that they are understanding their interactions with us and that they are empowered to experience successful participation. And I guess I just want to flag that really importantly, there’s no risk to implementing these types of strategies if children are not experiencing communication difficulties. So in that way, these kind of strategies can become almost like universal practise strategies for all children. I suggest that it’s helpful to use simpler words and explain any terminology that you need to use, check in understanding, but in really genuine ways, not just by asking a child to tell you back what they’ve been told. Use natural pausing and slow gentle rate of speech to provide some extra time for processing information. Repeating and rephrasing information can be helpful. And then using pictures, writing and drawing can be helpful.

(00:21:00):

Additions to children only listening to information. I mean on this slide I’ve got different examples of ways that I’ve supported children in interactions. I’ve used everything from formal kind of printed supports through to scribbling. Clearly I’m an artist as we can see there, but it adds meaning to the words up the top there. My perfect school, that was just one way that I helped break down a really complex topic for a child into more bite-sized chunks that we worked through. And then I use sticky notes constantly as a way that is really accessible to set up visual scales with children or to give them power to give an opinion or to categorise their thoughts on things. Different supports will work for different children, but just observing what helps them with their interaction tells us what we should be doing as practitioners with them. And next slide.

(00:22:10):

In supporting the mental health of children living in out of home care, it’s really imperative to involve all adults in the child support, networking, collaboration, shared learning, sharing of concerns and successes, and also in creating a shared agreement on support strategies for that young person. So on the right of the slide, that’s a format that I’ve kind of put together to help guide when I’m in those conversations or might be leading some of those conversations. It really draws on a combination of research from child and family centred practise research, but equally research that explores helpful health practises in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I find it can be a really helpful framework for importantly creating mutual respect for the different knowledge that everyone around a child holds. And I feel really passionately that we need to capture that knowledge that everyone around a child holds. And equally it can help shape a discussion about how we centre the needs and goals of a child at the centre of all decision-making regardless of the different perspectives that might be shared by people around a child. And I think in that way, we can ensure that we’re prioritising the protective factors for a child’s mental wellbeing.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:23:47):

Thanks me, Kate. Thank you. I really appreciated those creative ways that you’ve been able to help children communicate and communicate with them in ways that were meaningful. So thank you for sharing some of those. Now I want to invite Flick. Thank you.

Felicity Kime (00:24:08):

Yeah, thanks Nicole. And just before I start talking about me and my children and a personal story, I just want to acknowledge that my mom was in the system in 1960 as a child and I was also in the system as a child, and so have my children been in the system. So we actually had three generations of child protection and just alone in that the amount of trauma our family hold and carry on a daily basis is absolutely huge and family means a lot to us. So when this topic come up and I was thinking about different parts of our life, what I thought about was my children, they were removed at six years old, five years old, and my son was 11 months. Both my girls come home five years later and my son, he is now 14 and he is in guardianship with his carer.

(00:25:05):

Only a couple of years ago I remember I got a phone call off a child protection worker saying that my son would like some questions answered about why he was removed if I loved him, if his siblings loved him. And there was a list of questions. I was asked to answer them questions and hand them to the psychologist so she could work with my son and give him the answers. I found it really, really inappropriate that my voice wasn’t heard in that room. And I asked if I could actually work with the psychiatrist to be able to answer these questions with my son in the most friendly way possible. I was actually told that my son didn’t want that and it wasn’t acceptable. As a mom, I was really heard about that and I chose not to answer them questions. So I said no, that I would not be a part of this.

(00:26:02):

So I do not find this. And I went away and I thought, what could I actually do? And I spoke to some social workers and another peer worker and we just thought about how could we deliver this? And so we thought of a storybook. I got some photos of when he was born and I got some photos of my father that’s passed away and got some photos of his siblings. And I started writing out stories about each person and it ended up answering all of my son’s questions. I have this beautiful book done, we are really impressed with it, and I’m not a writer, so I was really super impressed. And then the caseworker told me that I wasn’t allowed to deliver it to my son, that it actually had to go back to the psychologist again. And I said, no, that it will not be happening like that.

(00:26:55):

So what happened was I asked when it was family time, if I could read this out to my son and it was told that the psychologist had to read it, the caseworker had to read it, the case manager had to read it, and the foster carer had to read it before anyone gave me permission to actually do this on family time. So again, I was heard again and I emailed everybody a copy. I worked out how to put it together in A PDF and I got it sent to everybody and everyone agreed and there was some hesitation, but everyone agreed. So what that looked like was family time, looked like my son and my son’s foster carer and myself all sitting at one table. And again, it was not personalised at all. So what happened was I had a support person come with me, Lou Johnston, she sat with the carer at one table and I sat with my son at another table and we went over this book and it was really beautiful.

(00:27:49):

I was intimidated, I was scared of his reaction, I was scared of my emotions, but I just knew it was something that my son wanted. So I went ahead and we took in turns reading different lines and having a laugh about different things in the book and reminding him who his pop was and he was the favourite grandchild. I know we shouldn’t have favourites and just had this really meaningful time together while answering his questions. And I forgot they were even questions. It was just this whole life story. And after that we both went back over to the table with my support worker and his carer and we played his favourite board game to end family time. And my son was so satisfied with that. The other big learning factor from that I didn’t realise is when I left that family time and got in the car with my support worker, I actually turned around and I had said that I need to ring the assessor for guardianship.

(00:28:50):

I had been saying I’m not happy with it. And I remember getting in that car saying, you know what? I need to back this little boy. This is what this little boy wants. And it come from the most meaningful communication because up until this point, we weren’t allowed to discuss guardianship with each other. It might upset him. We weren’t allowed to say very much to each other. So there was never any communication and that’s all this boy needed. And he didn’t know how to say that. I need the communication. Some things he was a little bit intimidated by and anxious by and scared of. But we didn’t realise until after we’d done this, we just needed to sit down as a family and communicate. And what happened from that is my son is with his carer where he actually wants to be full time.

(00:29:38):

We were able to have a meaningful connection. So the importance of connection and communication, but involving family in this, we can seem to find that when a child is removed, it’s just the parent’s fault, the child’s not safe, let’s just put the child over here and away from family and family over here. And we separate them and we isolate them from each other. And then what we do, we all have what we need to be done and we tick boxes. Yep, each other’s seen each other once or twice or whatever that looks like and it becomes a tick boxing and does not become meaningful. And no one actually sits down to ask what does the child want and what does the family want and how can we all work together to get them? And I’m not just talking about face-to-face, sometimes it’s not safe, but there’s letter writing, there’s emails, there’s photos, there’s a telephone.

(00:30:30):

We have lots of different internet ways where it’s really safe for children, but we’re not having them communications with everybody. It might be safe that a child has their parents at the school so they can get an award in front of mom and dad, but we are not having these actual meaningful conversations. And sometimes children dunno how to say, I want my parents in the room while we have this discussion. Sometimes they dunno how to say we don’t want them. I’ve got adult girls that don’t want me around some of their conversations today. So sometimes a child can’t speak up and sometimes a parent can actually speak up for the child and advocate for the child. We just need to create that space for family to be able to do that in a safe way possible. And when a family don’t know how to do that, I believe my peer role is to educate, guide and build a family up to be able to self-advocate for their child.

(00:31:21):

And what we do know that if we support family, it is the best outcome for children. And if we can go to the next slide, it brings it to the eight domains of wellbeing, which everybody knows this framework for children and best outcomes for children. And what I find a lot working with families is they sit in these case plan meetings for their child hopefully every six to 12 months. Sometimes it’s delayed, but they sit in these case plan meetings not understanding what this is actually generally about. It’s never been explained to families. So how can family comment on their own child about how they’re going in these different areas of their wellbeing? So I strongly sit with parents in workshops and I teach them what the domains of wellbeing is and what I see after one day and it’s only six hours and it’s not six hours about domains of wellbeing, it’s probably about half an hour of this.

(00:32:20):

They have this light in their eyes of understanding how to speak about their children and their needs a lot clearer, how to advocate what they need for their education, their wellbeing, their culture. And I remember I had families going, my child used to have a roast dinner on a Sunday, but no one ever asked a family that stuff and the child was used to that stuff. So communication is huge in this with children and sometimes, like I said, sometimes a child doesn’t want to go to a caseworker. They might not want to have a milkshake after school and be embarrassed or they don’t want to tell the foster carer or the kinship carer, they want mom or dad or in some cases in my cases, my son actually didn’t want me. He wanted his siblings, he wanted to discuss stuff with them. So it’s about us as human beings being open and knowing there’s more than just myself that can help my children that other people in the community can and organisation. So it’s not a one person’s responsibility because it actually takes a village to raise a child. So why aren’t we working in that factor for a child and their mental health? Thanks Nicole.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:33:29):

Thanks Flick. And thank you for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate you being generous with that. So thank you. Just wanted to jump to the q and a session now. So if any questions have come up throughout the presentations, you’ll see and ask a question button. So click on the three dots there and you’ll be able to ask a question of our panellists. And thank you so much for those of you who’d submitted a question when you registered. Unfortunately we’re not going to be able to get to all of them so we don’t have enough time, but we really appreciate those coming through. So I just wanted to ask you a quick question, Kate, that’s come through off the back of your presentation. So Amrita asked about when, so she’s based in Tassie, they’re based in Tasie and they don’t always have speech pathologist access. So the question was around are there assessments that other allied health professionals can undertake around communication or training or something like that that they might be able to access?

Kate Headley (00:34:48):

Yeah, sure. So yes is the short answer to that. There’s a whole range of freely available screening tools that are really appropriate for different age groups. So there are standardised screening tools that can be with some training, they can be delivered by non speech pathologists, educators, other allied health professionals, but equally there’s really good qualitative screening tools that can be delivered by anyone. I even talked to parents and family members, if you’ve got some concerns, see some activities to try, I’m not sure, Nicole, what’s the best way to kind of link people with those kind of resources?

Nicole Rollbusch (00:35:49):

Maybe that’s a good question. I’ll find out. Yeah, I’ll find out and see if we can get some resources to participants.

Kate Headley (00:36:00):

Yeah.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:36:01):

Yeah, great.

Kate Headley (00:36:01):

Well I’m really happy to share some, yeah.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:36:04):

Great. Thanks Kate. Thank you. And so I wanted to open up the discussion with everybody with the three of you, and I know it’s important to acknowledge that there are a lot of challenges in the work in the out-of-home care system, but what we really wanted to focus on tonight were the things that practitioners can control within their sphere of influence. So what are some of the things that you as panellists have been able to do to support children despite the constraints that may exist within the wider system? Someone want to jump in?

Kate Headley (00:36:58):

Yeah, I can start with that. Yeah. Look, first of all, I think you are absolutely right. I think sometimes it’s incredibly important for our wellbeing as workers in this space, but also critically important for the children and families we work with to focus on the can do. What is it that we can do? What is in our sphere of influence? I think for me in a speech pathology role, one of my learnings has been that people can have a concern for scope of practise in their role and ensuring that they’re working within their scope of practise, which of course is important clinically, but I think we also need to recognise that sometimes this work requires us to work in a transdisciplinary way and to utilise skills that we have that sit within our skillset. Things like researching supports or advocating for a child or connecting a family with a resource or a support. And I had an example of that recently where I was just really aware that an aboriginal child I was working with wasn’t connected in any way to cultural supports, even though this was something she actively was asking about. And I just had to think, well, you know what, I’m not going to play the line of, that’s not in the scope of my role. We all have a role to protect children’s mental wellbeing. And so just using those trends, disciplinary skills I think is really important in this space.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:38:43):

Yeah, great. Thanks Kate. And what about for you Candice? What sort of comes to mind for you in terms of how it can work in this space despite those challenges?

Candice Butler (00:38:55):

Yeah, I think it comes back to one of our key principles and that’s about the importance of being honest and authentic with families and children who you’re working with. And it’s exactly what Kayden also Flick touched on in their presentations, but even just Kate just then it’s about being honest with what you can do and what you can’t do as a practitioner. I think back to when I worked out in Alice Springs in particular and the young people that I had the benefit of working alongside, whenever there were questions that I didn’t have the answer to or that I couldn’t answer straight away, I would tell them if they were asking me for something that might seem a bit out of the box as children and young people like to do, especially when you’re a new caseworker, it’s about just really checking in with them and being like, oh, actually I can’t do that, but I can do this.

(00:39:56):

And children and young people and it really, Flick’s example is a perfect example where it highlights that importance of if you actually listen to children and young people and listen to their voice and actually try to get to the bottom of, well what is it are they asking for? Nine times out of 10 what the young people that I was working alongside and the children that I was working alongside what they were asking for was more time with family and was more time in community and going out to community too as well and having that cultural connection. So it’s on me as a practitioner as well as on my team leaders to find ways and management and whoever it might be to find ways to ensure that children are connected to kin, community and culture.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:40:45):

Great, thanks. Thanks Candice. And Flick, did you have any advice for practitioners around how they can work within that sphere of influence or despite those challenges that the system presents? And you touched on some of those challenges in your presentation around those layers of consent that had to occur when you were wanting to share that storybook with your son.

Felicity Kime (00:41:14):

I think anyone working with children and family, the biggest tip I have is actually get to know the family, not just read the piece of paper or papers and then make up your mind what this parent or this family is about or what they look like. Remembering everybody’s a human being and child protection or not. Everyone’s got a life story, sit down and ask about that stuff because when you sit down and ask a mom or a dad or a family member that stuff, you’re going to find out information how to support that child even better. This is where all this stuff gets lost when we are just going from one piece of paper to the next to the next and we’re actually not hearing stories from families and mostly in them stories family actually have answers for their children. Now, I remember when my children removed, not one person asked me what my children were allergic to,

(00:42:06):

How was anybody going to know in the first God knows how long if my children were allergic to anything or not? They never knew because they never asked if someone would’ve actually just sat down with me, they would’ve known that lucky my children are not allergic to anything which would’ve benefit my children. It’s very, very simple. We need to build working relationships with families for the best outcome of children. And when children see everybody communicating together and working alongside each other, they’re going to want to be a part of that. And then they have so many different more safety networks in place to keep them safe and supported.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:42:45):

Right. Thanks Nic. Thank you. I wanted to jump back to Candice and just get you to expand a little bit on some of the things you were saying before around, so oftentimes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, perhaps their links to kin and community might be unknown due to removal or past policies. And I wanted to know your take on how practitioners can support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to make those connections even if perhaps that past isn’t known.

Candice Butler (00:43:24):

Thank you so much for that question, and it’s a really important and really valid question too as well. And it’s one that I do get asked quite regularly, and I think that’s why it’s so important to have connections with your local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled organisations like your ACCOs in your space. Even within our child safety department here we have cultural practise advisors and their role is to try their very best to locate kin and family, but our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community controlled organisations are the place to reach out to as a practitioner in particular and just ask them who is best within that organisation to speak to. They’re normally able to find connection somehow for children and young people and whether that even be that they actually have relatives working within that ACCO. And so I think it’s important to not think that when we’re practitioners that we’re the only ones. There are a network of people out there who can help children and young people, and there’s some amazing organisations too that can help our families who feel as though they’ve lost that connection to culture. And those are places like linkup and so really encourage people contact linkup because they’re a fantastic organisation who are able to connect people to kin community and culture that they may have lost through those past policies. So yeah, thank you for that question.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:45:03):

Great. Thanks Candice. Thank you. And I wanted to stay on that theme of collaboration and just jump back to you Flick and ask you about something that came up in your presentation. I was thinking about you were such a strong advocate for yourself and for your children whilst they were in care. I know that a lot of parents might struggle with that, and I just wanted to know if you had any advice for practitioners around how they might be able to support parents to advocate for themselves and their children in the system?

Felicity Kime (00:45:41):

Yeah, that is really great. I think generally the first point of course is giving the parents the space to be heard by you yourself and acknowledging them as human beings and asking them, what is it that you need me to help you with? I’ve travelled all around Australia doing focus groups with parents for many, many years, and I keep hearing is this service wants me to do this. This service thinks this is best for my child, this, this and this. I remember sitting with an Aboriginal grandmother in WA and she said, the department said, I don’t know how to feed my grandchildren. I’ve been feeding them for X amount of years. And she was quite upset. Instead of asking this grandmother, what is the grandchildren’s favourite food? What is a dish that you normally cook, something polite to get information instead of just saying you can’t do it well, et cetera, et cetera.

(00:46:38):

So I think it’s having that space and being genuine about creating that space. What I find is social workers will come to a family when they need something answered and they can’t get it anywhere else, and they’ll create that space just for that one question, but then close off. And by doing that, what are we actually teaching our children? We are not teaching our children how to communicate and how to communicate in a healthy way. And sometimes parents actually need that help. I know I needed help from the department on how to communicate. I could not communicate with them In the beginning, I was grieving, I was hurting, I was scared for my own children’s safety. They were with strangers though in foster care placements that I knew nothing about. So I didn’t know how to communicate either. And in the last 10 years, lucky I’ve had the right supports and they’ve helped educate me on how to communicate my needs, how to my voice about my children to the world.

(00:47:32):

And today I’m able to stand in different places like Parliament and different organisations and actually speak and advocate for my children and advocate for other children in Australia and for change for family as well. But that wouldn’t have happened if someone didn’t take the time to help me do that stuff and teach me how to do this stuff. And first, they actually had to listen to my story and it wasn’t in the most healthy way and it probably wasn’t appropriate for many people to hear either. But one woman, Lou took a risk by listening to me and then she realised there was stuff that I needed help with on how to interact with my children, et cetera. And we work from there and we navigated, but we navigated on a respectful relationship. People seem to think that as workers, we can’t have working relationships with family. We can actually have meaningful working relationships with parents and families. There is no harm in that at all. And we are not just here for the child. Again, if we help family, we help the children. So we should not be having to pick between family and children. We should be putting them both in the centre, working with them both. So it’s one big community and connection to just treat people like human beings.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:48:45):

Thanks, Flick. Thank you. Yeah, that makes sense. And Kate, I wanted to jump to you a bit of a different question around infants and toddlers. So we’ve talked a bit about parents and we’ve talked a bit about children being able to communicate as well, but what about infants and toddlers? Because obviously their ways of communicating are different. How can we ensure that even very young children can have a voice and be heard?

Kate Headley (00:49:19):

Yeah, yeah. I think young children are some of the most vulnerable in our society, aren’t they? Because they don’t actively talk and very literally have a voice of their own. However they are communicating, they’re just communicating in different ways. So when we think about infants and toddlers, we really need to think about how they’re communicating through their actions and their behaviour. And I think in those situations I would want to be working with a team of people who are really attuning to that child’s behaviour. So we may, I’ll be working with adults who know children, those infants really, really well to be looking at the clues that child’s behaviour may be giving us. So here we’re talking about things like the child’s regulation. We’re talking about their sleep, their hunger patterns, their attachment patterns. But it needs to be in a really informed way because I have had the negative experience and seen families have the negative experience of really misinformed judgments being made about an infant’s behaviour without really good knowledge of infant development and context being brought to that decision making. Infants are incredibly vulnerable because of their lack of voice, but also because their wellbeing is so context specific as well. So really understanding the context around children and little young infants is so vitally important and links to exactly what Flick was just talking about, truly genuinely understanding people’s contexts. But certainly when we can work with adults who are attuned to infants and we’re responding to an infant’s behaviour, that’s how we’re actually giving that infant voice in a situation when we let that help drive our decision making around that infant.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:51:46):

Yeah, thanks Kate. And relatedly, another challenge that comes up is when practitioners are faced with challenging behaviours, I think things like violence and aggression can switch people off to children’s voices. So how do we make sure that when these things do happen that practitioners can still connect with children and young people and that their voices are still being heard?

Kate Headley (00:52:19):

I feel really strongly, and I know I sound a little bit like a broken record on this, but one of my core belief systems is that behaviour is communication and we need to recognise that in order to drive our curiosity around children and their needs. So when a child demonstrates violent or aggressive behaviour, we want to be committed to looking behind that behaviour to try and understand the contributing factors that have led to that behaviour, but not in a simplistic view. It is never this one thing caused this behaviour and that kind of belief system’s never going to be helpful in this space. It’s about having that really, I guess, informed understanding that stress is cumulative. And so if we genuinely want to understand what might be contributing, what a child’s behaviour is communicating to us, then we really need to be looking at all points of stress for children and young people in their lives. And I think the challenge is sometimes stressors are things we can’t see because they’re an emotion for the child. We know very sadly, that often children entering and living in the out-of-home care system might experience feelings of shame around that embarrassment, worthlessness a whole lot of really strong, difficult emotions. And so I think once we acknowledge that a child’s behaviour is communicating to us, then we can better position the child to be an active contributor in problem solving what it is that they need and giving them that active voice and choice in their life.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:54:33):

Absolutely. Thanks Kate and Candice, I wanted to extend on that a little bit further. And so when we are talking to children and young people about what they would like to happen and involving them in decision making, how do you balance the things that the child is asking for and the things that the child needs, and then perhaps some of the obligations within the system because a child may ask to go home and that’s not possible. So how do you balance all of those things that are happening in those requests, I guess?

Candice Butler (00:55:15):

Yeah, I think just to jump back to what Kate was just yawning about in terms of that importance of the reasons why we’re seeing behaviour of our young people being whether it be violent or whatever, or just really heightened with our framework that we developed, that was exactly why we also developed it too, because people just didn’t ask children and young people, why are you feeling that way? Why are you acting in this way? And so that in itself has with our research, what we found is that contributed to then the ongoing cycle of domestic and family violence because people just never listened to that young person or listened to that child when they were acting out and having those behaviours. So just wanted to chuck that little bit in there. But on that question about how do we manage and prioritise when children do ask those, it’s really difficult questions of us when we are practitioners, and I think those sorts of questions are asked in my experience and my observations, those questions are asked when children haven’t been involved in the decisions from the very beginning, even if that’s all the way from that intake stage when there has been a notification, like children aren’t told why, oh, all of a sudden you’re at school and then bless you are actually now being removed from this school being placed in a place that you don’t really know the person at all.

(00:56:49):

There’s no opportunity to get to know your caseworker because let’s be honest, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but sometimes a child can see five, maybe six different caseworkers in that first initial contact that they have with the department. And so how do we ensure that we’re sharing with children and young peoples the reasons why, Hey, at this time it’s not safe for you to live with mum or dad or mum and dad, but I think it’s still important to speak with them about, well, if you can’t stay with mum and dad, who is it? Who else that you could stay with? Is it your auntie? Is it your uncle? Is it your cousin? Is it your sibling? Who else could you be with? I think that that’s when those sorts of questions gets asked is because children and young people, their voices haven’t been heard from the very beginning, but that doesn’t discount that we have an opportunity to do it now if we ourselves are stepping in a place and we’re knowing, oh, actually, that then comes back on us as practitioners to make sure that our role is to include them in those decision making going forward.

Nicole Rollbusch (00:58:04):

Right. Thanks Candice. And I just wanted to pick up on one of the things you said there, and we’ve had a couple of questions come through about this is how can caseworkers have some of those initial conversations with children about why they’ve been removed? I know from some of the reading that I’ve done that about half of children sort of report not knowing the reason why they’re in care. So you can kind of imagine what that would be like for a child when they’re being removed and not understanding what’s going on. So yeah, a couple of people have asked about the role of perhaps caseworkers within those conversations, so I might get you to comment on that Candice and then open it up to Flick and Kate as well.

Candice Butler (00:58:56):

Yeah, I’d be super keen to as well to hear from Flick and also Kate with this one too, but I think just kick it off. I think that importance of, I think it comes back to Flick sharing her story and how important it was that we need to balance though the safety and that sharing that story is going to have on the child or young person in the initial stages. And if we are best placed to be the one to share that story with a child or young person, it might actually be better bringing along a youth worker or bringing along if it’s safe enough to do so. Bringing to that, I think sometimes as caseworkers we do feel like we’re put on the spot with those sorts of tricky questions. And sometimes it’s okay to be the young person, actually, I just want to take this and then next time when we come we will yarn this through. But I think we do. You can yarn with children and young people about that, but you have to first and foremost build relationship and build rapport with that young person. You can’t have that difficult conversation on your first visit with a young person. That’s just not going to fly because you haven’t built that rapport or relationship.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:00:26):

Yeah, great. That’s important points. Thanks Candice. What about for you, Flick?

Felicity Kime (01:00:35):

Yeah, I can’t stress it enough. Honest communication. I don’t know how, like I said, my children entered the system 14 years ago and it wasn’t about honest communication at all. My children did not know why they were in care. And I remember very clearly my children thought it was their fault and their words was, if we behave, can we come home? And no one ever corrected that. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to say this, I wasn’t allowed to say that. It was made very, very clear on my family time and caseworkers weren’t correcting that either. So for a long time my children felt at fault. So I believe from the very start, we need to be very honest and upfront with children. And if you ask children, if you do research on these children want to know the honest stuff. They don’t want to be told lies or they don’t want to be told a roundabout story either.

(01:01:25):

And part of that process could be involving the family on how can we deliver this stuff? How would you like it delivered? There was many stuff said about me as a mother that no one actually spoke about. No one actually checked if every detail was true before disclosing stuff to my children. And a lot of the time it wasn’t even healthy the way it was disclosed to my children. I remember when my children were coming home and a caseworker told my daughter, oh no, sorry, your mom’s not filing for you at court. She’s filing for your sister. Never explained that my child had over 10 placements and she was coming home first. I could only have one child home while my other child was very happy where she was very settled. So I chose this child to come home first, but no one explained it like that. They just said, your mom’s not filing for you at court. That’s not appropriate.

(01:02:17):

I had to actually explain this on family time, my big two hour family time with upset children. My whole two hours was to explain this to my child and to try to settle her. And I was able to do that. I had the skills to do that, so why wasn’t I included in the beginning? It would’ve saved my child a lot of heartache. So again, bringing family in, and I’m not just saying mom or dad. It could be auntie, uncle, brother, sister, a neighbour down the road that’s very close to the children, bring other people into this. We don’t actually have to take all the responsibility of having all the answers and knowing how to do everything a hundred percent. Let’s get everybody’s ideas on the table and let’s deliver the best stories to the children that are going to be helpful, not add more trauma to these children’s lives.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:03:08):

Yeah, fantastic. Thanks Flick. Really important points. And Kate, was there anything you wanted to add?

Kate Headley (01:03:17):

I think the only thing I was reflecting on as well is I think that question really gives us pause to think about also our broader community roles around conversations with children around safety. Very often children, it’s not that they’ve never had contact with an adult outside their family before they go into out-of-Home Care. So whenever there’s conversations about concern for a child’s wellbeing, I think the more people in our community who feel well equipped on how to have supportive, honest check-ins with children, that becomes part of the education process for children. So if it does come to a point where they’re going into out of home care, it’s not a surprise. There has been touch points along the way to help them to maybe understand whatever some of the current barriers or challenges are to them living at home. That’s kind of where my mind went to as a kind of whole of community view.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:04:30):

Yeah, yeah, it’s really that message of collaboration, isn’t it, that’s coming through and really appreciated Flick, just that mention of that we don’t have to have all of the answers and know everything and do everything perfectly as well, and that there are other people we can connect in with as well. And just a Flick, I wanted to ask you just to touch a little bit more on what you were saying and something you mentioned earlier as well, that not all parents will be able or be ready to be involved in decision making processes or those conversations that we’ve been talking about, but what would you say to practitioners about how they could identify when a parent is able and ready to be part of those processes?

Felicity Kime (01:05:27):

Well, actually asking the parent if they’re ready, are they actually able to do this in 14 years? I dunno how many times. There wasn’t too many, but there was a few times where I had to say, you know what? I actually can’t do this anymore. I need to step away from, and it was this fight with the department and it was this fight with the foster carer and I had to say, you know what? I can’t actually do this with my child and this situation at the moment, and I had to remove myself for a couple of months and get my mental health in check while raising other children in my home. But not a lot of parents can say, Hey, I need a moment. Because the stigma is if we’re not there right up front fighting for our children, doing everything, the department’s telling us everything, maybe the carers telling us and everybody else is telling us if we’re not doing that, we’re not showing society.

(01:06:19):

We love our children. If we say, hang on a second, I need a moment, people are going to think we don’t love our children. When I disclosed to the community that my son went into guardianship and I actually backed that because my son asked me and I told him that I don’t want to do that, but I’m going to do this because I hear you. People said to me, I can’t believe you’re not fighting for your child. You don’t love your child. Could you do this? People didn’t understand why I chose to back my child, and that’s okay. They don’t need to understand. But we need to actually remember that when we are dealing with parents in this situation, it’s not so black and white. Ask parents, how did they come up with these decisions? Do they need a moment? If they can’t get to a family time, why aren’t they seeing their children?

(01:07:05):

And what we find a lot around Christmas, a lot of families don’t show up because they can’t afford gifts, they can’t afford food. So can we supply the food? Can we go buy some toys? What can we do to help? And if we’re helping this parent, this child’s going to have the best Christmas, right? If we don’t, everyone is going to be uncomfortable, sad, and it’s not going to be a great Christmas, it’s not going to be a great time. But instead of wondering why parents aren’t doing something, why don’t we think, what can we do to help? So I know now times is changing and parents are feeling a bit more confident that I’ve worked with saying, you know what? I need help. You know what? I need some financial help. You know what? I can’t actually do this. Maybe I’m not the best primary parent at the moment.

(01:07:49):

Maybe I can’t go for restoration for my child. Maybe I need to work myself more. And this is really great outcomes. The parents aren’t just sitting in the dark trying to hope that everyone thinks that they can do this and then their children come home and they’re all struggling. So I think if we can build parents up, especially parents to say, Hey, these are the areas I need help in, and if I can get this help, it’s going to be best outcomes for my child and best connection. And just remember too, if a child can’t go home, it doesn’t mean that that child doesn’t need connection with family. My son still needs to know me. My children that are at home still class him as their brother because it is their brother. So we still need actually connection and meaningful connection where we actually all generally know each other in one form or another. It’s actually not okay for children not to know their family, not to know their history. And by taking that stuff away and not supporting that in the best practise, we’re not doing the right thing by children.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:08:54):

Thanks Flick. Thank you for that. Those comments. So I just wanted to start wrapping up actually because we are running out of time. I wanted to just go around the panellists just to share a final message or a takeaway message that’s come from tonight. So Candice, I might invite you to jump in.

Candice Butler (01:09:21):

No worries. Thank you. I think for me, one of the key takeaways is the importance of remembering at the end of the day that our children and young people are that they are children and young people. We can’t expect that they’re going to be able to make adult decisions, but what they can do is they can participate in decisions that impact upon them and they can have voice and choice in decisions. But as all the other, as both Flick and Kate have highlighted, we do need to ensure that family, that those who are supporting them are involved in those decisions too as well. But let’s just remember, at the end of the day, they are still children and young people.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:10:06):

Thanks Candice. And what about for you, Kate?

Kate Headley (01:10:11):

I feel like a bit of an echo to Candice in the sense that I think so strongly tonight everyone’s been talking to the need to centre the child and the child’s needs around decision making and let that child have voice and be heard. But equally, I think the other really resounding reflection I’ve had is looking for every opportunity within a service system that could improve for opportunities where more people who know children well are involved in all decision making around children.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:10:53):

Great, thanks Kate. And what about for you, Flick? What’s your take home message?

Felicity Kime (01:11:02):

Sorry. Yeah, so definitely just remembering children need everybody. Not just family, not just workers community as well. And the only way that’s going to happen in the most healthiest way for a child is if all parties start working together for the best outcome for that child. And in saying that stuff, and I didn’t mention it through it, is the child can be in the room with all this happening too. There’s no harm in a child being in the room watching all adults communicate and work together around their safety. And if anything, while we’re doing that, we’re teaching children new skills that they may have never seen before. So just remembering as a human being, what I’m role modelling to somebody else that this child’s going to pick up. So let’s just do this in the best practise possible and let’s bring family into it.

Nicole Rollbusch (01:11:50):

Right? Thanks Flick. Thank you. Thanks to all three of you for all of your comments in your presentations tonight. And thanks to our audience also for submitting some questions as well and participating. So just a couple of housekeeping things at the end here. So you’ll have a Statement of Attendance, which will be emailed to you within a week. Please make sure you complete the feedback survey before you log out. You’ll also receive a link with the recording and associated resources next week as well. We have a few more webinars coming up. So our final webinar of the year with Emerging Minds and MHPN is a whole child approach to disaster recovery. And that’s coming up on the 4th of December. MHPN also have a podcast as well, Mental Health in Focus. And the latest release is a four part creative arts therapy series. So you can jump on MHPN website and look at the podcast on there or access it through your usual players. So MHPN supports over 350 networks across the country where mental health practitioners can meet in person or online. If you’d like to join a network, jump onto the MHPN website. Or if you’d like to create one yourself, there’s opportunity to do that as well.

(01:13:22):

And so, as I mentioned, this webinar was co-produced with MHPN and Emerging Minds for the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health Project, which is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health. And before I close, I just really want to acknowledge the lived experience of people and carers who have lived with mental illness in the past, and those who continue to live with mental illness in the present and really want to acknowledge the contribution of our child and Family Partners Flick tonight for sharing your story. Really appreciate that. And thank you to everybody for your participation and to our panellists. Again, thank you very much. Goodnight everyone.