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A message from Professor Harriet Hiscock
I am delighted to be leading this Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Childhood Adversity and Mental Health, working in partnership with Australian experts in paediatrics, psychology, psychiatry, general practice, and community practitioners and families with lived experience of adversity.
So what do we mean by adversity and why does it matter? As many as 1 in 3 children in Australia are living with adversity. Childhood adversity comes in many forms- family violence, parent mental health problems, family breakdown, bullying or housing problems, just to name a few. We know that adults who have experienced adversity as children are 6-10 times more likely to go on to develop mental health disorders later in life. We also know that there are good, evidence-based mental health strategies for early childhood emotional and behavioural problems that lead to later mental health disorders, but many Australian children miss out on these interventions.
As a paediatrician for 20 years, I have cared for many children and families living with adversity. I have experienced the frustrations of trying to get help for these families, coming up against a system which is siloed across health and education and social sectors, services that focus on the child or the adult but not both, or services where clinicians do not feel confident to ask the sensitive questions about family adversity and as a result, children continue to suffer in silence.
This CRE aims to improve the health sector response to adversity by drawing on community assets and social services. We are co-designing community hubs with parents and frontline providers, where parents can get help for their child’s behaviour or emotional difficulties or support for their parenting, their own mental health, gambling, legal problems, housing problems – the whole range of adverse experiences which we know can damage children’s mental health and wellbeing.
We are working with families and existing services, to pull together the evidence for what works best to help children, then deliver this evidence through services and supports for the range of adversities that families face.
We are working in the communities of Wyndham Vale in Victoria and Marrickville in NSW and with our research partners across the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the Universities of Melbourne, Monash and NSW, the Parenting Research Centre, Sydney Local Health District, Children’s Health Queensland, IPC Health and Health Justice Australia.
This CRE comes at a time where prevention and early detection matter most. Children are living in unsurpassed times and the COVID-19 pandemic is widening the inequality gap and making it even harder for families experiencing adversity to access supports. Mental health concerns resulting from COVID-19 was the top concern raised by children contacting Kids Helpline between January and April 2020 and in The Royal Children’s Hospital’s National Child Health Poll in June 2020, more than one-third of parents reported the pandemic has had negative consequences on their children’s mental health.
We are excited to be shaping a system that better supports and responds to the needs of children and families facing adversity. We see this investment by Beyond Blue and the National Health and Medical Research Council as a triple investment - for young Australian children now, the adults they will become, and the parents of our next generations. I look forward to sharing our progress with you through this regular newsletter.
New resource
The CRE’s Summary of interventions to prevent adverse childhood experiences and reduce their negative impact on children’s mental health: An evidence based review is now available.
A glimpse at our recent publications
- Commentary - Are the kids alright? Social isolation can take a toll, but play can help by Pasi Sahlbrg and Sharon Goldfeld
- Letter to the Editor – Adverse childhood experiences should be priority in global response to COVID-19 by Berhe Sahle, Richard Ofori‐Asenso and Andre Renzaho
- Commentary – Health justice partnership in a time of pandemic by Tessa Boyd-Caine and Lottie Turner
- Campbell, T., Reupert, A., Sutton, K., Basud, S., Davidson, G., Middeldorp, Naughton, M., & Maybery, D. (in press). Prevalence of mental illness among parents of children receiving treatment within child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS): a scoping review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
- Ward, B., Kippen, R., Reupert, A., Maybery, D., Aguis, P., Quinn, B., Jenkinson, R., Sutton, K., Weimand, B., Goldsmith, R., & Dietze, P. (in press). Parent and child co-resident status among an Australian community-based sample of methamphetamine smokers. Drug and Alcohol Review.
- Berger, E., & Reupert, A. (in press). The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia: Lessons learnt. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
- Tennant E, Miller E, Costantino K, Souva D, Coupland H, Fotheringham P, Eastwood J. A Critical Realist Evaluation of an Integrated Care Project for Vulnerable Families in Sydney, Australia. Research Square; 2020.
- Ride J, Huang L, Mulraney M, Hiscock H, Coghill D, Sawyer M, Dalziel K. Is 'minimally adequate treatment' really adequate? Investigating the effect of mental health treatment on quality of life for children with mental health problems. Journal of Affective Disorders Volume 276, Pages 327-334 doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2020.07.086
- Cheek J, Hiscock H, Craig S, West A, Lewena S. Emergency Department utilisation by vulnerable paediatric populations during COVID-19 pandemic. EMA 23 July 2020 doi: 10.1111/1742-6723.13598 PMID: 32705775
- Hiscock H, Connolly AS, Dunlop K, Perera P, O’Loughlin R, Brown SJ, Krieser DM, West A, Chapman P, Lawford R, Cheek JA. Understanding parent-reported factors that influence children’s anxiety and depression presentations to Emergency Department: A multi-site study. 2020 Emergency Medicine Australasia doi: 10.1111/1742-6723.13486
- Goldfeld S. The potential of proportionate universal health services. Acta Paediatrica. 2020. doi: 10.1111/apa.15279
- Woolfenden S, Galea C, Badland H, Sheedy H, Williams K, Kavanagh A, Dinah R, Goldfeld S, Lingam R, Badawi N, O'Connor M. Use of health services by preschool-aged children who are developmentally vulnerable and socioeconomically disadvantaged: testing the inverse care law. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2020. doi: 10.1136/jech-2019-213384
- Bryson H, Mensah F, Goldfeld S, Price A, Giallo R. Hair cortisol in mother-child dyads: examining the roles of maternal parenting and stress in the context of early childhood adversity. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 2020.
- Danchin M, Goldfeld S. COVID-19: how can we ensure the kids all right? InSight. https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/14/covid-19-how-can-we-ensure-the-kids-are-all-right/.
- Sahle B., Reavley N., Morgan A., Yap M., Reupert A., Loftus H., Jorm A. Communication Brief: Summary of interventions to prevent adverse childhood experiences and reduce their negative impact on children’s mental health: An evidence based review. Centre of Research Excellence in Childhood Adversity and Mental Health, Melbourne, Australia, 2020
Podcasts and other resources
- HSRAANZ Interview Series - Prof Harriet Hiscock on Health Services Research during COVID-19
- MCRI’s Parenting in the age of coronavirus
- The Parenting Research Centre’s Reframing Parenting eLearning Course
- Prevention United’s ‘Flattening the curve of mental ill-health’ webinar series
- UPCOMING: Social Isolation and Social Prescribing 3 Part Webinar Series (12-1pm on 29 Oct, 26 Nov and 18 Feb)
Meet our team
Introducing Glenn Pringle
General Manager, Innovation and Community Care at IPC Health
Tell us about yourself? I look after our community care service delivery teams, innovation, people & culture, marketing & business development, quality and risk and ICT. I’ve worked in leadership positions in health for 15 years and am passionate about helping disadvantaged and marginalised groups, and using approaches that seek to understanding and help the ‘whole person’, not just their clinical needs. I also love to cook – my wife’s Dad is Italian and she thinks my Italian cooking is so good she’s convinced I have some Italian genes.
What do you hope the CRE will achieve? Earlier identification of needs, better outcomes for families who need support, and ideally, perhaps idealistically, equipping families with capabilities and capacity that remove the need for the service in the first place.
What are you currently working on in the Centre? Co-design and implementation of the Wyndham Vale hub for young families and at risk kids aged 0-8.
You can find out more about Glenn and IPC Health here.
Recent grant success for CRE investigators
2021-2025: Eastwood, J., Hiscock, H., Goldfeld, S., Gillespie, J., Haber, P., de Leeuw, E., Katz, I., Page, A., Huckel Schneider, C., & Cunich, M. A Centre of Research Excellence for Integrated Community Care of People with Complex Multi-morbidities. NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence ($2,500,000)
2021-2026: Devlin, N., Norman, R., Viney, R., Ratcliffe, J., Dalziel, K., Mulhern, B., Hiscock, H., Street, D., & Chen, D. Measuring and valuing changes in child health to facilitate robust decision making. Medical Research Future Fund ($2,352,349)
2020-2022: Dalziel, K., Devlin, N., Herdman, M., Rivero-Arias, O., Huang, L., & Hiscock., H. Developing and testing a version of EQ-5D-Y for use in children aged 2-5 years using a mixed methods approach. EuroQol Research Foundation ($141,403)
2020-2021: Boyd, L., Sheen, J., Reupert, A., Olsson, C., & Tchernegovski, P. Investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Victorian healthcare workers and their families. Department of Health and Human Service, Victorian COVID-19 research fund. ($518, 385)
2020-2022: Piché, Geneviève, Villlatte, A., Clement, M.E., Morin, M.H., Reupert, A., Cyr-Villeneuve, C., Maybery, D., Leblanc, L., Fournier, L., Clourler, R., & Richard-Devantoy, S. The family-centered approach in favor of parents of children with mental disorder: investigation and development of practices in adult mental health in Quebec. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). CanD 181,201.
PhD scholarship opportunities
QUality Of Life in Kids (QUOKKA Project)
This is an external project and is funded by the Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF). The aim of the project is to strengthen tools and evidence on health outcomes in paediatric populations for use in decision making. Find out more here
