CRE Newsletter - May 2021
Child and Family Hub update
The Child and Family Hub team in Victoria have been busy undertaking co-design workshops. An intensive 10-week series of workshops were kicked off in March 2021. In these workshops, we co-designed the client experience through the Child and Family Hub in Wyndham Vale. We are feeding the findings from this process to ground the co-design in the local Wyndham Vale context and incorporate evidence-based strategies into the Hub. Tess Hall and Sandie Pullen from IPC Health co-facilitated the workshops with support from Hayley Loftus and Sarah Loveday. We worked collaboratively with seven community members and practitioners living and working in Wyndham Vale.
Pictured below is Sarah Loveday in Workshop 1, presenting the three client ‘personas’ and barriers arising through their service journeys derived from her interviews with families. We have used these client personas and journeys as a launching pad for designing solutions and components of the Hub.
Our other co-design workshops have focused on designing and testing prototypes for how we can get families into and engaged with the Hub.
Over the past few weeks, we have engaged with the community to “test” the ideas that have been generated so far through the co-design workshops.
We are particularly excited to share our learnings for co-designing Hub models of care given the recent release of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommending that three such Hubs be set up by the end of 2022. Watch this space!
The team in NSW have also been busy undertaking a needs analysis and interviewing key stakeholders. Information gathered from the needs analysis will inform their co-design process for the Child and Family Hub in Marrickville later this year.
The association between adverse childhood experiences and common mental disorders and suicidality
Our Evidence Review team, based at the University of Melbourne, summarised the available evidence on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that are associated with increased risk of mental disorders and suicidality.
The review identified 24 ACEs that were associated with increased risk of common mental disorders or suicidality: interpersonal loss, parental mental illness, parental chronic illness, suicide attempt by parents/friends, parental incarceration/immigration detention, divorce, inter-parental conflict, bullying, child abuse, childhood maltreatment, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, neglect, maladaptive parenting, reported racial discrimination, adoption during childhood, sexual orientation discrimination, military family deployment, exposure to violence/war, family history of sexual abuse, homelessness, living in refugee camps/displacement, and ACEs (unspecified).
ACEs were associated with approximately double the risk of anxiety disorders, depression and suicidality. This review highlights the importance of trialling interventions to prevent or reduce the negative impacts of ACEs on mental health outcomes.
You can read the published article here.
Evidence and Implementation Summit 2021
Congratulations to Suzy Honisett and Tess Hall who presented at the Evidence and Implementation Summit 2021 with panel members and CRE partners, Glenn Pringle, IPC Health, Alison Boylan, Victorian Department of Health and Ken Knight, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. The focus of this panel presentation was 'Child and Family Hubs: how context at multiple levels influences development and implementation' .
This interactive panel discussed the approach, preliminary insights and challenges involved when translating and implementing evidence into two integrated Child and Family Hubs for children and families living with adversity. Highlighting research, service and policy perspectives, the panel unpacked ‘context’ across multiple levels and settings in the co-design, testing, evaluation and scale-up of a new community-health service model. Pictured below is Suzy talking to the processes of knowledge systhesis, exchange, application and dissemination.
The presentation was excellent and 'wowed' the audience, who were left with wonder and excitement about what could be achieved and rushed back to their offices to implement a similar model in their own areas!
Partnerships- North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network (PHN)
We continue to grow our partnership with North Western Melbourne PHN. Recently The Royal Children’s Hospital and North Western Melbourne PHN have co-designed a Community of Practice model to help support and upskill local clinicians in assessing and managing mental health problems in infants, children and adolescents. Almost 80 clinicians registered for the pilot, with two groups meeting regularly for education and case discussions with two experienced child and adolescent psychiatrists from The Royal Children's Hospital.
The North Western Melbourne and Eastern Melbourne PHNs have also funded Mental Health Professionals Network to deliver two webinars which aim to support culturally responsive mental health practice:
Providing culturally responsive mental health care during COVID-19 and beyond
This webinar explores the compounding anxiety, grief, helplessness, trauma and shame people from Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds may be experiencing during COVID-19.
You can watch the first webinar in this series here.
An interdisciplinary cross-cultural conversation: exploring the meaning of healing and recovery
This webinar considers how diverse health and mental health beliefs associated with healing and recovery may affect the treatment and support sought by and provided to people from Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
You can watch the second webinar in this series here.
Recent publications
1. Beatson R, Molloy C, Perini N, Harrop C, Goldfeld S. Systematic review: An exploration of core componentry characterizing effective sustained nurse home visiting programs. Journal of Advanced Nursing.n/a(n/a).
2. Bryson HE, Price AMH, Goldfeld S, Mensah F. Associations between social adversity and young children’s hair cortisol: A systematic review. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2021;127:105176.
3. Bryson H, Middleton M, Huque H, Mensah F, Goldfeld S, Price AMH. Examining longitudinal associations between self-reported depression, anxiety and stress symptoms and hair cortisol among mothers of young children. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2021;282:921-9.
4. Goldfeld S, Bryson H, Mensah F, Gold L, Orsini F, Perlen S, et al. Nurse Home Visiting and Maternal Mental Health: 3-Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Trial. Pediatrics. 2021;147(2).
5. Smith J, Levickis P, Neilson R, Mensah F, Goldfeld S, Bryson H. Prevalence of language and pre-literacy difficulties in an Australian cohort of 5-year-old children experiencing adversity. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders. 2021;56(2):389-401.
6. Elek C, Gibberd A, Gubhaju L, Lennox J, Highfold R, Goldfeld S, et al. An Opportunity for Our Little Ones: Findings from an Evaluation of an Aboriginal Early Childhood Learning Centre in Central Australia. Early Childhood Education Journal. 2021.
7. Molloy C, Moore T, O'Connor M, Villanueva K, West S, Goldfeld S. A Novel 3-Part Approach to Tackle the Problem of Health Inequities in Early Childhood. Academic Pediatrics. 2021;21(2):236-43.
8. McLean K, Hiscock H, Scott D, Goldfeld S. Foster and kinship carer survey: Accessing health services for children in out-of-home care. J Paediatr Child Health. 2021;57(1):132-9.
9. Paton K, Gillam L, Warren H, Mulraney M, Coghill D, Efron D, et al. Clinicians’ perceptions of the Australian Paediatric Mental Health Service System: Problems and solutions. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. 2021:0004867420984242.
10. Mulraney M, Lee C, Freed G, Sawyer M, Coghill D, Sciberras E, et al. How long and how much? Wait times and costs for initial private child mental health appointments. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. 2021;57(4):526-32.
11. O'Connor M, Ponsonby A-L, Collier F, Liu R, Sly PD, Azzopardi P, et al. Exposure to adversity and inflammatory outcomes in mid and late childhood. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health. 2020;9:100146.
12. Sim WH, Toumbourou JW, Clancy EM, Westrupp EM, Benstead ML, Yap MBH. Strategies to Increase Uptake of Parent Education Programs in Preschool and School Settings to Improve Child Outcomes: A Delphi Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021;18(7):3524.
13. Sim WH, Fernando LMN, Jorm AF, Rapee RM, Lawrence KA, Mackinnon AJ, et al. A tailored online intervention to improve parenting risk and protective factors for child anxiety and depression: Medium-term findings from a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2020;277:814-24.
14. Sung V, Williams K, Perlow E, Hu YJ, Ahern S, Said JM, et al. Enhancing Value and Uptake for Whole-Population Cohorts of Children and Parents: Methods to Integrate Registries into the Generation Victoria Cohort. Children. 2021;8(4):285.
15. Sahle BW, Reavley NJ, Li W, Morgan AJ, Yap MBH, Reupert A, et al. The association between adverse childhood experiences and common mental disorders and suicidality: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2021.
Other resources
Members of the team have been busy in other areas relating to mental health. This includes the HSANZ Webinar Series: Are people-centred mental health services acceptable and feasible in Timor-Leste? A qualitative study
Time to celebrate
Congratulations to Dr Alicia Montgomery who has now joined the CRE as an Associate Investigator. Alicia is a paediatrician in the Sydney Local Health District who will co-lead the roll out of CRE activities for the NSW Child and Family Hub in Marrickville. Alicia has a background in integrated care, co-design, and mixed methods evaluation of complex interventions.
Grants awarded:
Our team has also had a number of successes in new grants!
2020 – 2022 Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) COVID-19 Mental Health Research Grant: Mobilising and empowering parents in the COVID-19 mental health response: A single-arm trial of an enhanced online parenting intervention to improve parent risk and protective factors for adolescent mental health
Investigators: Marie Yap, Tony Jorm, et al.
Amount: $610,922.75
2021 – 2023 Suicide Prevention Australia Innovation Research Grant: Co-Creation and Pilot Evaluation of a Therapist-assisted Online Parenting Strategies (TOPS) Program for Youth Suicide Prevention
Investigators: Marie Yap, Glenn Melvin, Tony Jorm, et al. Investigators:
Amount: $100,000
2020-2021 Beyond Blue: Educator wellbeing
Investigators: Reupert, A., Berger, E., Morris, Z., Diamond, Z., Hammer, E
Amount: $125,000
2021-2026 MRFF: Measuring and valuing changes in child health to facilitate robust decision making
Investigators: Nancy Devlin, Richard Norman, Rosalie Viney, Julie Ratcliffe, Kim Dalziel, Brendan Mulhern, Harriet Hiscock, Deborah Street, Gang Chen
Amount: $2,352,349
Meet our team
Introducing Anthony (Tony) Jorm
Tell us about yourself? My name is Anthony Jorm, but most people call me “Tony”. Although I am officially ‘retired’ and in an Emeritus position, I work full-time as a researcher in an unpaid capacity in the Centre for Mental Health at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.
I was an NHMRC Fellow for over 30 years, but decided not to reapply for further salary funding, as I have had a very good run and wanted to pass on the opportunity for NHMRC salary funding to younger researchers. My salary now comes from superannuation and you could describe me as a ‘Unisuper Fellow’.
What is something people don't know about you? In the 1970s, when I was a student, I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital as a ‘pseudopatient’. This involved faking a mental illness to find out how patients were treated. A diary I kept of this experience is now in the National Library of Australia.
What do you hope the CRE will achieve? I would like to see reduction in adverse childhood experiences become a national health goal for the Australian government.
What are you currently working on in the Centre? I am the leader of Theme A, which involves reviewing the existing evidence. We are looking at the impact of adverse childhood experiences on the mental health of Australians and what interventions look most likely to reduce their occurrence or ameliorate their impact.
What inspires your work? Despite a huge increase in the provision of treatment, the mental health of the Australian population, including children, adolescents and adults, has not improved. I think a major reason for this is that we have put all our eggs in the treatment basket and have neglected prevention. I believe that there will not be any major gains in the mental health of the population until much greater resources are put into prevention. Given that adverse childhood experiences are major risk factors for a wide range of mental health problems across the life span, they need to be a major focus of prevention efforts.
