WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.080 And welcome to this afternoon's session and presentation by Professor Fiona Stanley, 2 00:00:04.780 --> 00:00:08.860 entitled Before the Bower Breaks, Doing More for Our Children in the 21st Century. 3 00:00:09.300 --> 00:00:12.720 My name's Simon Sharple and I'll be chairing this afternoon's session. 4 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:17.940 And before I do the introductions for Professor Stanley, 5 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:21.660 I just want to give a little bit of context for this session this afternoon. 6 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:25.460 Firstly, and for those of you that have been part of previous sessions, 7 00:00:25.520 --> 00:00:26.680 you'll be quite familiar with this, 8 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:31.880 that the point of these sessions is not only to impart some information and some knowledge 9 00:00:31.880 --> 00:00:36.600 and to stimulate some thinking, but also to generate some debate and some questions. 10 00:00:36.680 --> 00:00:39.860 So we'll be relying on you in the second part of this session 11 00:00:39.860 --> 00:00:43.100 to come up with some incisive points and some questions, 12 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:47.820 and there'll be an opportunity, certainly in the last 15 to 20 minutes, for you to do that. 13 00:00:48.220 --> 00:00:50.660 Just a little bit about the content of the session first. 14 00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:54.620 I think there's a growing awareness, quite clearly at the moment in the community, 15 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:56.420 that we're not establishing. 16 00:00:56.680 --> 00:00:59.800 We're not establishing the right and certainly not establishing the best foundations for our children. 17 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:02.780 And this is being evidenced in a variety of ways. 18 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:06.680 Certainly, for something that is very close to my heart, 19 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:10.780 the rising statistics in child abuse and neglect across Australia 20 00:01:10.780 --> 00:01:13.780 presents a very disturbing picture. 21 00:01:14.100 --> 00:01:18.960 And I would posit it's probably worse now than at any time in our history as a nation. 22 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:23.980 Over the last decade alone, we've witnessed something like a 28% increase 23 00:01:23.980 --> 00:01:26.420 in the number of notifications of child abuse. 24 00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:32.760 And I think that's despite some fairly fancy footwork 25 00:01:32.760 --> 00:01:34.620 from a number of state and territory governments 26 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:36.940 to make changes to the way that information is collected. 27 00:01:38.380 --> 00:01:41.420 Over the same decade, and probably more tellingly, 28 00:01:41.460 --> 00:01:46.700 we've seen a 23% increase in the number of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect. 29 00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:50.300 A 23% increase in 10 years. 30 00:01:50.900 --> 00:01:53.940 There were over 30,000 young people and children 31 00:01:53.940 --> 00:01:56.660 who were the subject of confirmed cases of abuse and neglect. 32 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:57.140 There were over 30,000 young people who were the subject of confirmed cases of abuse and neglect. 33 00:01:57.140 --> 00:01:58.260 in 2001, 2002. 34 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:02.940 That's 30,000 young people who could not live safely in the community, 35 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:07.100 whose current human rights were effectively being disregarded. 36 00:02:08.300 --> 00:02:12.420 There are, of course, other dimensions to the issue of child development and child welfare 37 00:02:12.420 --> 00:02:14.060 that are of growing concern as well. 38 00:02:14.980 --> 00:02:19.040 These include the treatment we provide to many refugee families and asylum seekers 39 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:22.100 through mandatory detention and the failure to find an alternative 40 00:02:22.100 --> 00:02:26.160 to locking up children for months on end in dehumanising institutions. 41 00:02:27.880 --> 00:02:32.220 It also extends to concerns about the physical and mental health of our children in Australia, 42 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:37.020 including issues such as the growing levels of obesity amongst our children, 43 00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:40.200 perhaps itself another more insidious form of neglect. 44 00:02:40.980 --> 00:02:45.640 Very interesting, just looking at some recent stats from the South Australian Social Health Atlas 45 00:02:45.640 --> 00:02:50.080 that indicated that almost 20% of young girls aged four 46 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:54.760 were either overweight or seemed to be obese. 47 00:02:56.680 --> 00:02:58.640 However, on a more positive note, 48 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.380 the movement to bring about a new understanding and approach 49 00:03:01.380 --> 00:03:03.880 to promoting the healthy development of our children 50 00:03:03.880 --> 00:03:06.960 is gaining renewed momentum right across Australia. 51 00:03:07.380 --> 00:03:09.620 I think one of the principal reasons for this 52 00:03:09.620 --> 00:03:12.520 is the role played by a group of quite influential advocates. 53 00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:16.100 This afternoon, you'll hear from one of the most passionate 54 00:03:16.100 --> 00:03:19.620 and one of the most powerful of these advocates, Professor Fiona Stanley. 55 00:03:20.740 --> 00:03:24.500 Professor Stanley is a specialist paediatric epidemiologist. 56 00:03:24.740 --> 00:03:26.080 I've been practising that all morning. 57 00:03:26.680 --> 00:03:26.900 I'm not sure if you can hear me OK. 58 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:30.020 And a researcher who has had a distinguished career 59 00:03:30.020 --> 00:03:34.320 in finding cures for a range of major childhood diseases and birth defects 60 00:03:34.320 --> 00:03:39.520 and has done a lot of very prominent work within our Indigenous communities in Australia. 61 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:43.100 She has championed the cause of early intervention and prevention 62 00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:44.440 in child health and wellbeing 63 00:03:44.440 --> 00:03:47.840 and argued strongly for increased attention and investment 64 00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:51.460 in programs aimed at building stronger families and communities 65 00:03:51.460 --> 00:03:54.760 as well as services that respond to the developmental needs 66 00:03:54.760 --> 00:03:56.300 of younger children. 67 00:03:56.380 --> 00:03:56.660 Thank you. 68 00:03:56.680 --> 00:04:00.060 In 1990, Professor Stanley became a founding director 69 00:04:00.060 --> 00:04:02.560 of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research 70 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:06.040 and in 2002 was appointed the Chief Executive 71 00:04:06.040 --> 00:04:08.820 of the New Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, 72 00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:11.340 affectionately known as ARACING. 73 00:04:12.180 --> 00:04:15.060 Professor Stanley is a Companion of the Order of Australia, 74 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:18.040 was Western Australian of the Year in 2002 75 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:22.340 and a member of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. 76 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.200 She's published more than 200 papers for journals 77 00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:28.780 authored countless reports and monographs 78 00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:30.820 and written three books. 79 00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:32.960 So to address us today 80 00:04:32.960 --> 00:04:33.640 on the challenges 81 00:04:33.640 --> 00:04:34.360 of how we must 82 00:04:34.360 --> 00:04:34.780 do more 83 00:04:34.780 --> 00:04:35.100 for our 84 00:04:35.100 --> 00:04:35.440 children 85 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:35.620 in 86 00:04:35.620 --> 00:04:35.660 the 87 00:04:35.660 --> 00:04:36.160 21st 88 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:36.520 century 89 00:04:36.520 --> 00:04:37.200 could 90 00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:37.320 you 91 00:04:37.320 --> 00:04:37.480 please 92 00:04:37.480 --> 00:04:37.880 welcome 93 00:04:37.880 --> 00:04:38.080 the 94 00:04:38.080 --> 00:04:38.240 current 95 00:04:38.240 --> 00:04:38.660 Australian 96 00:04:38.660 --> 00:04:38.920 of 97 00:04:38.920 --> 00:04:39.020 the 98 00:04:39.020 --> 00:04:39.260 year 99 00:04:39.260 --> 00:04:39.920 Professor 100 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:40.380 Fiona 101 00:04:40.380 --> 00:04:40.680 Stanley 102 00:04:40.680 --> 00:04:41.720 Thank 103 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:46.200 you 104 00:04:48.840 --> 00:04:49.380 Simon 105 00:04:49.380 --> 00:04:49.540 Thank 106 00:04:49.540 --> 00:04:49.760 you 107 00:04:49.760 --> 00:04:49.960 very 108 00:04:49.960 --> 00:04:50.360 much 109 00:04:50.360 --> 00:04:50.660 for 110 00:04:50.660 --> 00:04:50.840 that 111 00:04:50.840 --> 00:04:51.140 lovely 112 00:04:51.140 --> 00:04:51.660 introduction 113 00:04:52.220 --> 00:04:52.760 I 114 00:04:52.760 --> 00:04:53.540 would 115 00:04:53.540 --> 00:04:54.100 just 116 00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:54.260 like 117 00:04:54.260 --> 00:04:54.400 to 118 00:04:54.400 --> 00:04:54.560 say 119 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:54.900 again 120 00:04:54.900 --> 00:04:55.240 how 121 00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:55.660 grateful 122 00:04:55.660 --> 00:04:55.840 I 123 00:04:55.840 --> 00:04:55.940 am 124 00:04:55.940 --> 00:04:56.020 to 125 00:04:56.020 --> 00:04:56.180 you 126 00:04:56.180 --> 00:04:58.120 I've been invited to this fantastic festival. 127 00:04:58.680 --> 00:05:00.860 I've always wanted to come to one, and here I am. 128 00:05:01.220 --> 00:05:05.780 And all of you coming so fully to these sessions, 129 00:05:05.940 --> 00:05:09.840 the doors being closed on people who are still trying to come in, 130 00:05:09.900 --> 00:05:12.840 which is amazing that so many of you turned out. 131 00:05:13.200 --> 00:05:15.000 I also want to acknowledge the Kani people, 132 00:05:15.260 --> 00:05:16.720 the traditional owners of this land, 133 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:22.140 and in acknowledging them, acknowledging that it's what we have done to them 134 00:05:22.140 --> 00:05:25.100 that is really responsible for many of the adverse things 135 00:05:25.780 --> 00:05:27.400 I'm going to show you, some of these, 136 00:05:27.500 --> 00:05:30.160 but that we're seeing in child and youth problems 137 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:31.940 in those Aboriginal communities today. 138 00:05:32.100 --> 00:05:34.100 I mean, we have to share that responsibility. 139 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:39.060 So what I want to do is to really give you a snapshot 140 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:40.720 of Australia's children and youth, 141 00:05:40.880 --> 00:05:44.780 so a bit of a very brief snapshot of how we're travelling 142 00:05:44.780 --> 00:05:48.080 in terms of our key indicators for children and young people. 143 00:05:48.500 --> 00:05:50.820 I want to then talk about modernity's paradox, 144 00:05:50.960 --> 00:05:54.700 the fact that these things that Simon alluded to are happening at a time 145 00:05:54.700 --> 00:05:55.080 where we're not able to do anything about it. 146 00:05:55.080 --> 00:05:57.800 When we are economically better off and a more wonderful country 147 00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:01.620 than we've ever been, so that paradox is something we must answer and address. 148 00:06:01.980 --> 00:06:05.460 And the third is to, I've been told that this is the Sunday of hope, isn't it? 149 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:06.940 We've got to end with the hope, 150 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:09.560 and you can all march out the door feeling better. 151 00:06:09.860 --> 00:06:11.760 I don't know that I'm going to make you feel better, 152 00:06:11.800 --> 00:06:15.520 but I have lots of good hope, I think, 153 00:06:15.640 --> 00:06:19.060 at the end of this presentation to share with you. 154 00:06:19.500 --> 00:06:22.320 So what I want to do is look at Australia's children and youth, 155 00:06:23.200 --> 00:06:24.180 and of course, interesting, 156 00:06:25.080 --> 00:06:26.780 look at indicators of health and wellbeing. 157 00:06:27.260 --> 00:06:29.460 Epidemiologists like me start off with things like death 158 00:06:29.460 --> 00:06:31.140 and other terrible things. 159 00:06:31.320 --> 00:06:36.600 But these are the sort of indicators that I've tried to amass for you. 160 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:40.040 I'm quite happy with any baby making any noise in any auditorium, 161 00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:40.460 so don't worry. 162 00:06:40.580 --> 00:06:42.860 I can easily override any baby. 163 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:47.500 And if you want to breastfeed, I would love it too. 164 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:51.100 Masturbate away, as somebody said in the previous thing. 165 00:06:53.220 --> 00:06:53.660 But... 166 00:06:53.660 --> 00:06:55.060 And I haven't got... 167 00:06:55.060 --> 00:06:56.420 I haven't got data on all of these to show you. 168 00:06:56.500 --> 00:07:00.120 I just wanted to get a bit of a snapshot so you'd see that. 169 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:01.760 And many of you may know these trends, 170 00:07:01.860 --> 00:07:04.120 and I apologise if you've seen them any times before. 171 00:07:04.400 --> 00:07:06.460 But I do want to just illustrate to you 172 00:07:06.460 --> 00:07:07.860 that things are not travelling well 173 00:07:07.860 --> 00:07:09.580 for children and young people in this country, 174 00:07:09.700 --> 00:07:13.040 and that really we have to get a bit of this fear around, 175 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:17.300 because it was things like fear of HIV-AIDS, for example, 176 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:21.520 which drove the most successful activity in this country 177 00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:22.720 to contain that epidemic. 178 00:07:22.980 --> 00:07:24.420 And if we can do it for HIV-AIDS, 179 00:07:24.420 --> 00:07:25.540 I reckon we can do it for kids. 180 00:07:26.300 --> 00:07:29.000 So these are the kinds of things that I've got some data on, 181 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:30.360 and I'll just go through them very quickly. 182 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:32.260 I've taken out all the deaths, 183 00:07:32.340 --> 00:07:33.780 but I could have shown you death rates 184 00:07:33.780 --> 00:07:36.300 which were travelling very well for Australian children. 185 00:07:36.760 --> 00:07:38.520 And so when economists say, 186 00:07:38.640 --> 00:07:41.840 well, globalisation's terrific and the economic bottom line's terrific 187 00:07:41.840 --> 00:07:45.280 and life expectancy's really going up and child death rates are down, 188 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:47.620 but if you look at Aboriginal child death rates, 189 00:07:47.660 --> 00:07:49.080 they are in fact not going down, 190 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:52.340 and in fact the most preventable causes of child mortality 191 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:54.400 we are not achieving well for our Aboriginal children. 192 00:07:54.420 --> 00:07:56.640 But look at low birth weight, 193 00:07:56.700 --> 00:07:59.020 the most important predictor of life chances, 194 00:07:59.300 --> 00:08:04.380 and here we have no improvement from 1991 to 1998, 195 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:07.080 but over the last 40 years we haven't seen any improvement. 196 00:08:07.400 --> 00:08:11.700 But what we do is make more and more neonatal intensive care units 197 00:08:11.700 --> 00:08:15.580 to treat more and more very low birth weight and very preterm infants, 198 00:08:15.660 --> 00:08:18.820 and on the front page of the paper you'll see a 24-week medical miracle, 199 00:08:19.580 --> 00:08:21.280 which has meant that this child has survived, 200 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:24.280 and yet the most important question that mum and dad want, 201 00:08:24.280 --> 00:08:25.720 and I want to know is why did this happen to me? 202 00:08:26.260 --> 00:08:31.140 And let's think about what we can do to prevent preterm births and low birth weight. 203 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:33.920 And if we look at the Aboriginal disparity, 204 00:08:34.260 --> 00:08:37.420 there are two things that I want to travel with this year as Australia of the Year. 205 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:38.740 One's children and young people. 206 00:08:38.840 --> 00:08:40.540 The other is Aboriginal disparity. 207 00:08:41.540 --> 00:08:46.160 And you can see here that there's the rate of low birth weight 208 00:08:46.160 --> 00:08:49.700 in the last 20 years for non-Indigenous babies, 209 00:08:49.920 --> 00:08:51.700 and then you can see the one at the top, 210 00:08:51.780 --> 00:08:54.260 three-fold higher for Indigenous children, 211 00:08:54.280 --> 00:08:55.160 and rising. 212 00:08:55.700 --> 00:08:58.240 So we are really concerned about this disparity, 213 00:08:58.340 --> 00:09:00.700 but also the fact that we haven't been able to improve this. 214 00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:04.720 If we look at the last 100 years, I think, Simon, 215 00:09:04.900 --> 00:09:07.720 we are seeing suicide rates in our young people, 216 00:09:07.760 --> 00:09:10.540 which are four times higher than they were 100 years ago, 217 00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:13.460 in spite of the poverty and the problems 100 years ago. 218 00:09:13.620 --> 00:09:17.260 Now the good news is that if you look at the male rate, 219 00:09:17.340 --> 00:09:18.800 which is the top rate there, 220 00:09:21.060 --> 00:09:23.260 attempted suicide is more common in females, 221 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:24.260 but males don't. 222 00:09:24.280 --> 00:09:25.940 They choose very effective ways of killing themselves, 223 00:09:26.060 --> 00:09:29.260 and so it tends to be higher in males that are complete suicide. 224 00:09:29.580 --> 00:09:31.560 But you can see this encouraging fall. 225 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:34.800 And this is adolescent males aged 15 to 19. 226 00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:37.020 There's been no fall in the females, 227 00:09:37.080 --> 00:09:40.120 and the female rate's gone up about two-fold in the last 30 years. 228 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:44.920 And so this is encouraging, this fall here, 229 00:09:45.620 --> 00:09:48.880 and it may well be due to some of the community development projects 230 00:09:48.880 --> 00:09:52.140 and the school-based projects that are trying to get 231 00:09:53.140 --> 00:09:54.260 at dental schools, 232 00:09:54.260 --> 00:09:56.000 and identifying and trying to prevent children 233 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:58.180 who are doing self-harm and so on. 234 00:10:00.300 --> 00:10:05.000 But the sad thing is that the peak age for suicide 235 00:10:05.580 --> 00:10:09.900 is now in the 20 to 30-year age group amongst males. 236 00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:11.340 So this is moving into, 237 00:10:11.520 --> 00:10:13.720 this is the epidemic that we knew was going to happen 238 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:15.180 in the 21st century, it's happening. 239 00:10:15.380 --> 00:10:16.740 And as Richard Eckersley said, 240 00:10:16.880 --> 00:10:23.600 these rates of suicide are not a tip of unhappiness 241 00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:27.400 in a sea of happiness, they are in fact a tip of unhappiness 242 00:10:27.400 --> 00:10:29.120 in a sea of unhappiness as well. 243 00:10:29.380 --> 00:10:32.380 This just shows you again the rates, the disparity rates 244 00:10:32.380 --> 00:10:34.480 that I want to try and give you a sense of as well. 245 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:37.420 This shows for the little red stripey bars, 246 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:43.140 this is the age-specific suicide rates for three states 247 00:10:43.140 --> 00:10:47.220 in which we're able to count indigenous data. 248 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:50.380 Some other states don't even count things by race. 249 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:53.580 I don't know why they can't count things for age. 250 00:10:53.580 --> 00:10:55.880 Aboriginal children, and we need to look at that. 251 00:10:55.940 --> 00:10:58.800 That's another abrogation of children's rights, 252 00:10:58.860 --> 00:11:00.580 I think not to count outcomes 253 00:11:00.580 --> 00:11:02.340 by their racial characteristics. 254 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:05.400 But you can see that those red bars shows you 255 00:11:05.400 --> 00:11:08.420 that very high rate between the 25 and 34-year-old males. 256 00:11:09.060 --> 00:11:11.280 And then when you look at the suicide rates 257 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:13.960 in the green bars, they're for Aboriginal boys, 258 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:16.660 and you can see this incredibly high rate 259 00:11:16.660 --> 00:11:19.340 amongst very young Aboriginal children. 260 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.200 But both of these rates are very worrying, 261 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:22.340 just shows you the disparity 262 00:11:22.340 --> 00:11:23.560 between the two. 263 00:11:23.560 --> 00:11:25.080 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. 264 00:11:25.280 --> 00:11:27.460 And this is the rates from the Kimberley. 265 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:31.380 Just numbers, sorry, not rates of deaths from the Kimberley. 266 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:32.920 You can see how they've gone up dramatically, 267 00:11:34.340 --> 00:11:37.540 particularly for Aboriginal children in the Kimberley. 268 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:41.520 And the encouraging thing is how they're 269 00:11:41.520 --> 00:11:42.680 starting to come down again. 270 00:11:43.020 --> 00:11:44.520 And it's really fantastic. 271 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:48.140 We've been doing some wonderful partnership projects 272 00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:52.080 with Aboriginal communities in the Kimberley from our institute 273 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:53.540 and with the support of the National 274 00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:56.080 Youth Suicide Prevention Committee, 275 00:11:56.200 --> 00:11:57.440 which we run from our institute. 276 00:11:57.780 --> 00:12:00.220 So there's some hope that I'm instilling in this, 277 00:12:00.300 --> 00:12:02.140 that these numbers are now starting to come down. 278 00:12:02.540 --> 00:12:03.820 And that's really important. 279 00:12:03.900 --> 00:12:06.380 We must work out why, and we must ensure that that happens. 280 00:12:06.700 --> 00:12:08.820 So here's a little bit of the sea of unhappiness 281 00:12:08.820 --> 00:12:09.480 that I mentioned. 282 00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:13.160 This is the results of our West Australian Child Health Survey, 283 00:12:13.280 --> 00:12:15.800 where we sampled one in five West Australian children. 284 00:12:16.100 --> 00:12:20.500 And you can see that nearly 18% of children in 1992-93, 285 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:23.160 and their carers and their teachers, 286 00:12:23.160 --> 00:12:25.780 which has all reported a level of mental health problems 287 00:12:25.780 --> 00:12:27.560 that interfered with their daily lives. 288 00:12:27.820 --> 00:12:29.540 This is nearly one in five children. 289 00:12:29.620 --> 00:12:31.720 It's one in five males and one in six females. 290 00:12:31.860 --> 00:12:34.200 So 20% of males and 15% of females. 291 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:37.900 And even in four to 11-year-olds, it's 16%. 292 00:12:37.900 --> 00:12:39.280 And these rates have been confirmed. 293 00:12:39.340 --> 00:12:40.220 They're similar in Canada. 294 00:12:40.360 --> 00:12:42.040 They've been confirmed in a recent study 295 00:12:42.040 --> 00:12:44.400 that Michael Sawyer here in Adelaide was there, 296 00:12:44.400 --> 00:12:47.900 and Beth Raphael in Sydney have recently 297 00:12:47.900 --> 00:12:52.940 been part of a nationwide survey of mental health in children. 298 00:12:53.980 --> 00:12:57.160 And this just shows you the disability-adjusted life years. 299 00:12:57.220 --> 00:13:00.200 It's a measure of the burden of mental health problems 300 00:13:00.200 --> 00:13:01.980 in children aged 0 to 14. 301 00:13:02.020 --> 00:13:05.600 The top one is the suicide, so that is years of life lost. 302 00:13:05.900 --> 00:13:09.220 The rest are years of life of disability. 303 00:13:09.400 --> 00:13:12.400 And you can see the incredibly high rate of burden 304 00:13:13.160 --> 00:13:15.960 of some of these things which are increasing so dramatically 305 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:19.880 and worryingly, like this group of autistic disorders 306 00:13:19.880 --> 00:13:22.460 that we are now not knowing whether it's a real increase 307 00:13:22.460 --> 00:13:24.080 or whether it's a redefinition. 308 00:13:24.980 --> 00:13:27.100 Depression and the attention deficit disorders, 309 00:13:27.240 --> 00:13:29.600 which is a ragbag of things from... 310 00:13:29.600 --> 00:13:32.280 You know, we might be able to pick up that on a question, 311 00:13:32.400 --> 00:13:34.660 but it is a very, very broad set of conditions 312 00:13:34.660 --> 00:13:38.640 and certainly one that we're not researching very well, I don't think. 313 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:42.080 Simon mentioned the increase in child abuse. 314 00:13:42.160 --> 00:13:45.500 I don't need to labour to accept that it's something that anguishes me greatly. 315 00:13:45.640 --> 00:13:48.120 It's very easy for a person in epidemiology 316 00:13:48.120 --> 00:13:49.760 to just say these are the statistics. 317 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:52.140 Behind these statistics I'm showing you 318 00:13:52.140 --> 00:13:53.820 are families and children. 319 00:13:54.140 --> 00:13:57.640 And I'm sure that if I asked any one of you, asked this audience, 320 00:13:57.860 --> 00:14:00.920 to put up your hand if you knew somebody whose child had suicided 321 00:14:00.920 --> 00:14:04.060 or whose child had actually been on drugs or something, 322 00:14:04.180 --> 00:14:05.500 all of you would put your hands up. 323 00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:07.620 You all have experienced this now. 324 00:14:08.180 --> 00:14:10.560 So behind the statistics, you have to remember 325 00:14:10.560 --> 00:14:13.060 that there are families who are facing these tragedies. 326 00:14:13.240 --> 00:14:16.700 So you can see the very large reported numbers of child abuse cases 327 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:21.380 rising in Australia between 1995, 1996 and 2000 and 2001. 328 00:14:21.380 --> 00:14:25.400 The children placed in out-of-home care has risen to 18,000 now 329 00:14:25.400 --> 00:14:27.660 during the same sort of period of time. 330 00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:30.260 These are data that I have to update. 331 00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:31.580 They finished in 1994. 332 00:14:31.660 --> 00:14:35.020 You can see the non-accidental injuries, the purple bars at the bottom. 333 00:14:35.060 --> 00:14:41.740 The child sexual abuse is the other bars going up, the maroon bars. 334 00:14:42.620 --> 00:14:44.980 And so these are new cases. 335 00:14:45.980 --> 00:14:48.300 And... Sorry, I should go back one. 336 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:50.240 And this just shows the disparity. 337 00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:51.940 I hope you can pick up these. 338 00:14:52.120 --> 00:14:54.540 But the dark bar... 339 00:14:54.540 --> 00:14:58.900 The first two bars in each of these years from 1996 through to 2000 340 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:01.520 are for under-nine-year-olds. 341 00:15:01.620 --> 00:15:04.280 And this is child sex offences against girls. 342 00:15:04.420 --> 00:15:07.300 And the first two are under nine, and the black bar is Aboriginal 343 00:15:07.300 --> 00:15:10.820 and the non-black bar is Caucasian, non-Aboriginal. 344 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:14.520 And the next two bars are Aboriginal 10 to 17 345 00:15:14.520 --> 00:15:17.020 and non-Aboriginal 10 to 17. 346 00:15:17.400 --> 00:15:19.620 But any one of those bars is unacceptable. 347 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:21.880 But you can see what's happening there 348 00:15:21.880 --> 00:15:25.980 in terms of the increases in child sexual abuse, 349 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:28.860 but particularly high in Indigenous kids. 350 00:15:28.980 --> 00:15:31.640 So, again, the disparity is very clearly evident. 351 00:15:33.180 --> 00:15:35.940 One of the most dramatic changes that have happened, 352 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.580 there are a couple of overall trends that are happening here. 353 00:15:38.940 --> 00:15:41.760 One is we're seeing increases in many of these problems. 354 00:15:42.200 --> 00:15:45.480 The second thing is that it's occurring at younger and younger ages. 355 00:15:46.220 --> 00:15:50.220 And the third thing is that girls are much more vulnerable, 356 00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:56.040 risk as boys. And this has been a dramatic change in things like substance abuse in the last, I'm 357 00:15:56.040 --> 00:16:00.060 talking about a long time, you know, 30 years now. I remember when I was at university, we never went 358 00:16:00.060 --> 00:16:06.440 to pubs, and seeing a drunk woman was very unusual, a drunk student. Now we're seeing a dramatic 359 00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:11.140 increase in female smoking and drinking in the last 20 years or so. I put 50 years there, but of 360 00:16:11.140 --> 00:16:15.820 course, even in the last 20 years, smoking rates for girls are now higher than they are for boys. 361 00:16:16.300 --> 00:16:20.080 Drinking rates for girls are equal to those of boys. I'll show you in a minute. This has been 362 00:16:20.080 --> 00:16:24.620 a major social change, and it's a major public health concern because of what will happen to the 363 00:16:24.620 --> 00:16:29.560 next, even if it's not damaging to that girl, is damaging to the next generation of somebody who 364 00:16:29.560 --> 00:16:36.160 might be addicted to these noxious things. And of course, one could go into debates about what the 365 00:16:37.920 --> 00:16:42.180 multinationals are trying to do to increase the number of kids smoking and so on. So this just 366 00:16:42.180 --> 00:16:47.060 shows alcohol use, and this is hazardous drinking, which is basically defined as a binge drinking 367 00:16:47.060 --> 00:16:49.360 episodes in the last two weeks. 368 00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:54.700 So this is the first part of the interview time. And this goes from 1983 into the dark purple bars 369 00:16:54.700 --> 00:17:00.680 in 1996. And you can see that for 16-year-old blokes, between about 40 to 50% of them are 370 00:17:00.680 --> 00:17:06.160 drinking hazardously. Going down to the 12-year-olds, it used to be quite low, below 10%, 371 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:12.100 but in the last 1996, since it's David Hill's data, you can see it's up to 20%. And if you think 372 00:17:12.100 --> 00:17:17.920 that that's only in the boys, here are the girls. So the girls are drinking almost as hazardously 373 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:20.060 at age 16, but look at the girls. So this is the first part of the interview time. And this is 374 00:17:20.080 --> 00:17:20.480 the first part of the interview time. And you can see that for 16-year-olds, it's only about 40% of 375 00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:25.460 those 12-year-old girls. So it's getting younger and younger as well, as I mentioned. 376 00:17:26.020 --> 00:17:30.580 And this just is a rather poor slide, but it does show you for amphetamines, injecting drugs, 377 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:35.560 ecstasy and designer drugs and marijuana, with very different axes. So the injecting drugs are 378 00:17:35.560 --> 00:17:43.260 very much lower rates than the marijuana, which is much higher. That's sort of 12, 14, 16%, etc., 379 00:17:43.260 --> 00:17:48.240 where this is 0.4, etc. But the general trend is absolutely there, that as far as we know, 380 00:17:48.300 --> 00:17:50.020 this is the best Australian data that we have. 381 00:17:50.080 --> 00:17:54.780 have at the moment on illicit drug use, you can see that these rates are going up. What's the 382 00:17:54.780 --> 00:17:59.500 impact of that on things that relate into the mental health problems I've talked about and the 383 00:17:59.500 --> 00:18:06.300 increase in drug-addicted mothers that we're seeing coming in to childbearing age? This just 384 00:18:06.300 --> 00:18:10.000 shows, I'm trying to work through all these key indicators quickly, but this just shows now 385 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:19.020 juvenile crime and this shows the very high rate amongst Indigenous youth, 10 to 17, in juvenile 386 00:18:19.020 --> 00:18:24.740 detention. You can see that rate's coming down, which is good news. You can see that the dotted 387 00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:30.800 line at the bottom is the non-Indigenous rate and the bars is the ratio, the rate ratio between 388 00:18:30.800 --> 00:18:36.660 Indigenous and non-Indigenous. And you can see that's around 300 times still, even though the 389 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:43.500 rates are coming down. 300 times as many Aboriginal children aged 10 to 17 are put into detention. 390 00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:47.560 I'd like any of you to give me evidence that putting kids in detention actually 391 00:18:47.560 --> 00:18:49.000 deterred them from doing it. 392 00:18:49.020 --> 00:18:55.660 There is no evidence. In fact, it probably increases their... They told me that... I was 393 00:18:55.660 --> 00:19:01.920 speaking to one of my Aboriginal friends and he said that you increase... You can actually 394 00:19:01.920 --> 00:19:06.920 decrease the time you can get into a Holden Commodore by 19 seconds in your first week in jail. 395 00:19:08.760 --> 00:19:14.680 This is secondary education completion rates. And so these are for children who went into year 11 396 00:19:14.680 --> 00:19:18.700 in Western Australia. This is data from Ken Wyatt, a wonderful Aboriginal educator in Western 397 00:19:18.700 --> 00:19:26.480 Australia. And these are kids who got into year 11 completing year 12. Okay, so 56% of non-Indigenous 398 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:31.420 students and 18% of Indigenous students. And, you know, that's some of my Indigenous colleagues. 399 00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:35.620 Again, so this is good. It's great. 18% of our kids are getting through year 12. If you look at 400 00:19:35.620 --> 00:19:42.800 the 1,300 kids who entered year 1 13 years ago, 70 of them got into year 12 and six of them got 401 00:19:42.800 --> 00:19:48.480 their tertiary entrance examination. So we have to accept that at the moment we're not able to educate 402 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:54.820 Aboriginal children in our system as well as we need to. And everyone knows, any Aboriginal people 403 00:19:54.820 --> 00:19:59.580 you talk to, parents, that what they want is education for their kids. And here we are, I think, 404 00:19:59.600 --> 00:20:05.800 failing our Aboriginal children, particularly in this very important stepping stone to their future 405 00:20:05.800 --> 00:20:14.000 capacity. And just to say... I don't know whether to leave this slide in or not, but Aboriginal children 406 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.460 not only get more of things that all kids get, but they get more of the things that they get. And so 407 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:22.300 we're going to have to get things at very high rates that kids don't get anymore, like rheumatic 408 00:20:22.300 --> 00:20:28.640 heart... This is rheumatic heart disease. This is rheumatic fever. We just don't see rheumatic fever 409 00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:35.880 now in normal kids, in kids that are not Indigenous. And, of course, having rheumatic fever as a child 410 00:20:35.880 --> 00:20:43.500 is a very important predictor of related heart disease, of renal failure and so on. And so this 411 00:20:43.500 --> 00:20:48.300 is what I... You know, these are the unacceptable disparities that I really want to put before you, 412 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:56.200 this year, because this is just unacceptable in Australia today. This is the slide that I 413 00:20:56.200 --> 00:20:59.660 presented to the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, because I 414 00:20:59.660 --> 00:21:06.140 thought the most important way to convince people who really are interested in R&D and the economic 415 00:21:06.140 --> 00:21:13.220 bottom line, as much as anything, that we need to put it in their sort of terms. And I tried to get 416 00:21:13.220 --> 00:21:18.220 an economist, even Sue Richardson didn't have time to help me with this one, to help me with it. So 417 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:22.360 this is really the only slide, I guess, I showed to the Prime Minister's Science Council that was faked. 418 00:21:22.700 --> 00:21:27.200 But that's all right. I think it was basically correct. It's just the data aren't quite there to prove it. 419 00:21:27.660 --> 00:21:32.680 So this just shows you the population by age in Australia. And everyone is aware of the welfare-dependent 420 00:21:32.680 --> 00:21:37.100 age, the increase in the proportion of the population who will be welfare-dependent because of age. 421 00:21:37.220 --> 00:21:40.980 I have this great, wonderful belief that all the old people are going to actually be much healthier, 422 00:21:41.080 --> 00:21:44.700 and we're going to actually have a fantastic group of old people solving all the problems for the young 423 00:21:44.700 --> 00:21:48.460 people in this society. But anyway, that's what's driving a lot of our thinking, isn't it? 424 00:21:48.460 --> 00:21:54.520 The concern that we have to support with a dwindling fertility this welfare-dependent age in the future. 425 00:21:54.700 --> 00:21:59.180 All of the data that we have is suggesting an increase in the welfare-dependent young. 426 00:21:59.660 --> 00:22:05.420 I've not shown you the rates of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, obesity, et cetera, that's increasing, 427 00:22:05.520 --> 00:22:10.080 that Simon also referred to. I've shown you some of the mental health stuff. There's more kids who are 428 00:22:10.080 --> 00:22:13.180 drug-addicted, there are more kids who are unemployable, there are more kids falling out of the education 429 00:22:13.180 --> 00:22:18.440 system. This is very costly to Australian society, even if that's the only way you want to 430 00:22:18.440 --> 00:22:23.840 measure it. And it is going to affect every one of us because in the middle we've got this group of 431 00:22:24.600 --> 00:22:30.620 educated workforce that's going to have to support these two welfare-dependent people and also compete 432 00:22:30.620 --> 00:22:35.520 on a global stage where knowledge is going to be the way we're going to succeed. So everyone's going to 433 00:22:35.520 --> 00:22:40.760 be affected by this. If you aren't already, which you actually are because you're all paying for this, 434 00:22:40.940 --> 00:22:46.900 but services, at the same time as all these things are happening, services for children are being cut. 435 00:22:48.420 --> 00:22:58.180 And the response of governments on the whole to these problems has been to put money into the end of the 436 00:22:58.180 --> 00:23:04.480 pathways. So services too late when it's... And then people will say things like, we've poured all this money 437 00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:09.880 into Aboriginal services, into mental health, and nothing's changed. But if you pour it into the end of a 438 00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:16.880 pathway of causality, of course you're not going to do anything other than perhaps increase demand and there's 439 00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:18.740 nothing that will therefore make it look as increase. I've just got to get some water. 440 00:23:21.020 --> 00:23:25.000 So it's too little too late, or even a lot too late, which isn't going to make any difference. 441 00:23:27.780 --> 00:23:34.260 So now I want to talk about modernity's paradox. And modernity's paradox was coined by Keating and Hertzman, 442 00:23:34.340 --> 00:23:41.000 who were two very good researchers in Canada. And they wrote a book called Developmental Health and the Wealth of 443 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:46.860 Nations, again trying to convince people that the future wealth of nations depends on the 444 00:23:46.860 --> 00:23:52.120 social and human capital and growing children's brains better than we're doing it. 445 00:23:52.420 --> 00:24:00.100 And basically modernity's paradox is the increasing wealth and opportunity that our GDP is allowing us, and 446 00:24:00.100 --> 00:24:05.920 Australia's a really good example of this. And at the same time, all of the increases and all the problems in 447 00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:11.840 children and young people that I've shown you, but only given you a brief snapshot of, but increasing social 448 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:16.320 disparity. Because weren't we promised that with this increase in wealth in our society, 449 00:24:16.320 --> 00:24:20.740 that everyone would have a wonderful opportunity, that we would actually be leveling the bar, 450 00:24:20.940 --> 00:24:24.540 and everyone would have this opportunity, there wouldn't be the haves and the haves not. 451 00:24:24.760 --> 00:24:33.000 What we've actually seen is the opposite, we have seen an increase in disparity, we are seeing more problems in 452 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:37.560 disadvantaged and fewer problems in advantaged than we've ever seen since federation. 453 00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:44.440 It's been dramatic. So this is the paradox, why haven't we delivered from this increase in wealth? 454 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:45.400 . 455 00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:46.300 . 456 00:24:46.300 --> 00:24:51.060 going to go into a lot of the wealth data. 457 00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:55.380 There was all these sort of, you know, arguments about how we define poverty and all the rest 458 00:24:55.380 --> 00:24:55.560 of it. 459 00:24:55.780 --> 00:24:57.300 You can define poverty however you want. 460 00:24:57.440 --> 00:24:58.400 I'm not going to define it. 461 00:24:58.400 --> 00:24:58.920 I'm not an economist. 462 00:24:59.140 --> 00:25:03.360 I can just show you that we have seen adverse outcomes over time. 463 00:25:03.480 --> 00:25:06.880 This just shows you, however, the percentage of households that have a lone parent, which 464 00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:13.460 has gone up from around 10% to about 17.5%, from 82% to 98%. 465 00:25:13.980 --> 00:25:21.440 This just shows you those jobless households, the households with children and unemployed 466 00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:21.860 parents. 467 00:25:22.020 --> 00:25:24.980 And you can see those lone parents, between 40% and 50% of them are unemployed. 468 00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:29.120 And even all families, there's an increase in those who are unemployed. 469 00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:32.860 So we're seeing actually, and if you take these figures right back to the 50s, I think 470 00:25:32.860 --> 00:25:34.260 we had about 1% to 2% unemployment. 471 00:25:34.620 --> 00:25:39.020 Now it's all around 7% to 8% going up perhaps to 10% in these families here. 472 00:25:39.420 --> 00:25:41.380 So it has been a dramatic change over time. 473 00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:43.440 And this just shows a little bit of the... 474 00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:44.180 The increasing disparity. 475 00:25:44.920 --> 00:25:49.600 And so these are couples with dependents, age 0 to 14, and their income. 476 00:25:49.820 --> 00:25:51.660 And this is average household net worth. 477 00:25:52.020 --> 00:25:56.000 And this just shows the increasing disparity between lone parent with dependents. 478 00:25:56.280 --> 00:25:59.780 So I'm sure there are economists who are going to be able to measure these things better 479 00:25:59.780 --> 00:26:00.160 than I. 480 00:26:00.340 --> 00:26:02.100 But this is just some of the data I've got out. 481 00:26:02.500 --> 00:26:04.540 So let's look at some of these social disparities. 482 00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:09.080 The most important predictor, as I've said, of your future life capacity in many ways 483 00:26:09.080 --> 00:26:11.120 is the birth weight that you have. 484 00:26:11.620 --> 00:26:13.140 And it would be great if we were all born... 485 00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:14.180 with a good birth weight. 486 00:26:14.260 --> 00:26:17.320 And that's something we're trying to find out more about. 487 00:26:17.620 --> 00:26:21.160 But you can see here this incredible disparity between the most disadvantaged 488 00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:22.700 and the least disadvantaged. 489 00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:27.180 And this incredible disparity in most of the epidemiological sort of work 490 00:26:27.180 --> 00:26:30.740 that I've done before is actually tried to control for this and get rid of it 491 00:26:30.740 --> 00:26:33.860 so that we can look what the real factors are in terms of low birth weight 492 00:26:33.860 --> 00:26:36.160 instead of saying, why are we getting this gradient? 493 00:26:36.340 --> 00:26:38.840 What is it telling us about these things? 494 00:26:39.300 --> 00:26:42.920 This just shows you parental income and mental health problems. 495 00:26:43.140 --> 00:26:45.160 From our WA Child Health Survey. 496 00:26:45.420 --> 00:26:47.420 There are just a couple of problems here I want to point out. 497 00:26:47.480 --> 00:26:48.580 Again, you've got this gradient. 498 00:26:48.820 --> 00:26:52.880 We've got much evidence that this gradient is actually increasing, not decreasing. 499 00:26:53.340 --> 00:26:57.980 The interesting thing here is that even in the most advantaged, 500 00:26:58.040 --> 00:27:01.140 and you can see those two with fourth and quintiles and highest, 501 00:27:01.380 --> 00:27:03.380 it's around... it's nearly 15%. 502 00:27:03.940 --> 00:27:05.140 And the same in Canada. 503 00:27:05.380 --> 00:27:09.140 I mean, vulnerable children are occurring right across the social spectrum. 504 00:27:09.680 --> 00:27:12.960 And it makes... that's very important for how we then influence, 505 00:27:13.140 --> 00:27:16.500 what are the implications of that for things like services. 506 00:27:16.700 --> 00:27:22.860 And really, targeting high risk is not going to really help the whole thing. 507 00:27:23.100 --> 00:27:25.400 Targeting high risk can stigmatise and all those things. 508 00:27:25.500 --> 00:27:29.200 These have got to be universally applied opportunities for families 509 00:27:29.200 --> 00:27:32.380 to improve these outcomes, not targeted just at the high risk. 510 00:27:33.620 --> 00:27:36.440 So if you look at these gradients, which I find quite fascinating, 511 00:27:36.860 --> 00:27:38.080 they're very powerful. 512 00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:39.280 They're pervasive. 513 00:27:39.540 --> 00:27:42.240 They're paradoxically stronger in wealthier countries 514 00:27:42.240 --> 00:27:43.120 than in the United States. 515 00:27:43.140 --> 00:27:43.880 In poorer countries. 516 00:27:44.360 --> 00:27:46.420 There are some paradoxes which Jack Corbill, 517 00:27:46.540 --> 00:27:49.560 who's a wonderful social scientist in ANU, 518 00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:52.840 who did this wonderful study several years ago now, 519 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:54.440 where he looked at the paradoxical countries, 520 00:27:54.500 --> 00:27:55.860 those with very high GDP, 521 00:27:56.080 --> 00:27:58.460 but they had very high rates of problems in children, 522 00:27:58.580 --> 00:28:01.720 and those with very low GDP, but had very low rates of problems. 523 00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:03.480 And that latter one was Cuba. 524 00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:08.060 And of course, what they had done 525 00:28:08.060 --> 00:28:13.020 is to put a huge amount of funding into health, education and welfare. 526 00:28:13.140 --> 00:28:15.420 And supporting particularly female literacy. 527 00:28:15.660 --> 00:28:18.140 And the countries that were paradoxically very wealthy, 528 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:20.240 that had very high rates of children's problems, 529 00:28:20.360 --> 00:28:23.740 were the countries on the whole that were in Saudi Arabia with the oil. 530 00:28:23.940 --> 00:28:27.220 And of course, they didn't put much into female literacy at all. 531 00:28:27.520 --> 00:28:32.480 And so I think that still those kinds of things are very important to look at. 532 00:28:33.220 --> 00:28:35.440 And what's fascinating is, 533 00:28:35.520 --> 00:28:39.860 in spite of the very different rates of disease that occurred 100 years ago, 534 00:28:39.940 --> 00:28:43.120 which was dominated by infections and gastroenteritis and so on, 535 00:28:43.140 --> 00:28:45.140 the social gradients were still there. 536 00:28:46.040 --> 00:28:49.400 So the social gradients today are in things like chronic diseases 537 00:28:49.400 --> 00:28:50.820 and mental health problems and so on. 538 00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:52.840 It's interesting, isn't it, that it's so powerful, 539 00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:55.940 both for infectious disease, which we've always known was socially related, 540 00:28:56.140 --> 00:28:59.540 but here we're with these powerful gradients still in today's Australia. 541 00:28:59.860 --> 00:29:02.240 And people try and explain these kind of gradients 542 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:04.080 with things like individual lifestyles, 543 00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:05.900 so that people choose to smoke or take drugs 544 00:29:05.900 --> 00:29:08.320 or do things that are bad and so on. 545 00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:09.540 And then there's the physical environment, 546 00:29:09.680 --> 00:29:11.920 very powerful drivers of poor health, 547 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:13.120 particularly in Aboriginal families. 548 00:29:13.140 --> 00:29:15.240 The overcrowding, the poor hygiene, 549 00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:17.780 no access to fresh water, 550 00:29:17.880 --> 00:29:19.140 not being able to keep things in a fridge, 551 00:29:19.320 --> 00:29:20.600 not keeping clean, all these things. 552 00:29:20.740 --> 00:29:22.120 Physical environment, very, very important. 553 00:29:22.300 --> 00:29:23.100 Let's not forget that. 554 00:29:24.200 --> 00:29:27.640 And then this huge increasing and very exciting research 555 00:29:27.640 --> 00:29:29.480 that's come from developmental psychology 556 00:29:30.220 --> 00:29:32.740 and the social and economic scientists 557 00:29:32.740 --> 00:29:37.400 looking at the context in which families and neighbourhoods 558 00:29:37.400 --> 00:29:41.300 are able to provide that kind of nurturing 559 00:29:41.300 --> 00:29:43.120 that is so important for families. 560 00:29:45.840 --> 00:29:48.800 And then the social and economic psychosocial conditions 561 00:29:48.800 --> 00:29:49.900 is really very important. 562 00:29:50.320 --> 00:29:52.440 And then differential access to services. 563 00:29:52.740 --> 00:29:54.240 I mean, people sort of say, you know, as I said, 564 00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:57.120 we keep on putting all this money into Aboriginal health and et cetera, 565 00:29:57.260 --> 00:30:02.100 and yet we still, I mean, if you look at any Aboriginal services, 566 00:30:02.420 --> 00:30:06.560 it is still much less than for non-Aboriginal services. 567 00:30:06.900 --> 00:30:08.800 So differential access to services is really important 568 00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:10.780 in many of these gradients that we see. 569 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:12.380 The two things that aren't, 570 00:30:13.140 --> 00:30:15.860 are causing these social economic gradients are genetics, 571 00:30:16.340 --> 00:30:19.000 people with different genes being in different social strata, 572 00:30:19.080 --> 00:30:20.280 that's not been shown at all, 573 00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:22.060 and the other is self-selecting, you know, 574 00:30:22.060 --> 00:30:23.980 that people who are in low social class 575 00:30:23.980 --> 00:30:26.620 are the ones who are self-select for schizophrenia, for example, 576 00:30:26.620 --> 00:30:27.460 or something like that. 577 00:30:28.300 --> 00:30:32.800 Now, I'll put this, what I call a causal pathway up, 578 00:30:32.860 --> 00:30:35.500 but it's a lot of research now is showing 579 00:30:35.500 --> 00:30:39.440 just these trajectories that are so very important, 580 00:30:39.600 --> 00:30:42.700 and this is why I am sort of stressing this, 581 00:30:43.140 --> 00:30:46.320 the early importance of brain development in children. 582 00:30:46.740 --> 00:30:49.360 And we're starting to look at some of these pathways. 583 00:30:49.600 --> 00:30:51.660 It's much more important to look at pathways 584 00:30:51.660 --> 00:30:53.420 than single risk factors for things. 585 00:30:53.560 --> 00:30:55.020 Everyone wants a single risk factor. 586 00:30:55.160 --> 00:30:56.640 Oh, you know, you just have to do this 587 00:30:56.640 --> 00:30:58.000 and your kid's going to be okay forever. 588 00:30:58.500 --> 00:30:59.460 We're complex. 589 00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:02.700 It's a complex interactions of genes and environment 590 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:09.380 during development that is going to guide your outcomes 591 00:31:09.380 --> 00:31:10.720 in terms of many of these things. 592 00:31:10.840 --> 00:31:12.760 And that complex interaction of things is happening, 593 00:31:12.760 --> 00:31:13.760 and it's happening all the time. 594 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:15.620 It's even happening in all of you, 595 00:31:15.700 --> 00:31:18.360 even though you're way beyond the eight or 10 years of age 596 00:31:18.360 --> 00:31:20.000 that these data are around. 597 00:31:20.760 --> 00:31:22.960 But you can see that these factors that are here, 598 00:31:23.540 --> 00:31:26.600 internal infections, drug use, exposures, diet, nutrition, 599 00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:29.440 adverse parenting, exposure to violence, et cetera, 600 00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:31.400 going through into the school years 601 00:31:31.400 --> 00:31:33.920 with all of the difficulties that can happen there, 602 00:31:36.660 --> 00:31:39.900 inappropriate response to loss, depression, alcohol, drugs, 603 00:31:39.980 --> 00:31:41.500 violence and crime, suicidal behaviour, 604 00:31:41.500 --> 00:31:42.740 these are the pathways. 605 00:31:42.900 --> 00:31:45.700 And so if you look, if you think of that in terms of social gradients, 606 00:31:46.680 --> 00:31:49.680 all of the things that are highest in disadvantaged families, 607 00:31:49.720 --> 00:31:51.380 this isn't just about poverty. 608 00:31:51.760 --> 00:31:54.280 People who are disadvantaged live in disadvantaged areas. 609 00:31:54.500 --> 00:31:57.480 They're more likely to have exposure to these sorts of things, 610 00:31:57.680 --> 00:31:59.480 whereas people who are in advantaged areas 611 00:31:59.480 --> 00:32:03.120 are more likely to have these sorts of environments for their children. 612 00:32:03.220 --> 00:32:05.160 This just shows pathways to resilience. 613 00:32:05.240 --> 00:32:06.640 If you like, it's the flip side. 614 00:32:07.020 --> 00:32:09.320 You're all supposed to be watching this in great detail 615 00:32:09.320 --> 00:32:10.740 and reading it all as it goes up. 616 00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:14.860 Because all of you had such good early intervention, 617 00:32:15.140 --> 00:32:16.760 early brain development when you were young, 618 00:32:16.820 --> 00:32:18.280 and you're pretty good at doing this. 619 00:32:18.380 --> 00:32:21.480 But you can see here all of the things that are really important, 620 00:32:21.620 --> 00:32:25.080 that interact in an environment that is important 621 00:32:25.080 --> 00:32:26.820 for how our children are growing up. 622 00:32:27.240 --> 00:32:29.840 And you can start to think about how these things 623 00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:33.440 may be easy or hard to deliver in the environments 624 00:32:33.440 --> 00:32:34.820 in which you know about, 625 00:32:35.100 --> 00:32:37.680 and how hard it is for some parents to do that. 626 00:32:37.880 --> 00:32:40.280 This is why I say it takes a village to raise a child. 627 00:32:40.360 --> 00:32:41.040 This is why, 628 00:32:41.040 --> 00:32:44.380 we can't just leave it as Moira Rayner said so beautifully today, 629 00:32:44.600 --> 00:32:47.160 we just can't leave it to parents alone. 630 00:32:47.460 --> 00:32:49.980 Because some parents, all parents want to be good parents, 631 00:32:50.060 --> 00:32:52.560 but so many things get in the way of that. 632 00:32:52.820 --> 00:32:56.040 And so it's about the way in which we can start to think about 633 00:32:56.040 --> 00:33:00.520 putting kids and families in the middle of how we think about Australia 634 00:33:00.520 --> 00:33:01.680 and what we need to do, 635 00:33:01.760 --> 00:33:05.140 and start to make these pathways the more common pathways. 636 00:33:05.660 --> 00:33:09.760 And put kids back on a trajectory to resilience and capacity, 637 00:33:10.040 --> 00:33:11.020 rather than, 638 00:33:11.040 --> 00:33:11.960 on trajectories, 639 00:33:12.020 --> 00:33:16.520 which means they end up feeling very low in self-esteem 640 00:33:16.520 --> 00:33:19.560 and so bad about themselves that they will take their own lives. 641 00:33:21.600 --> 00:33:23.100 So, where to from here? 642 00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:24.580 I'm going to finish quickly. 643 00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:27.260 And I want to end with a whole lot of hope 644 00:33:27.260 --> 00:33:29.240 about what we're going to do about this. 645 00:33:29.560 --> 00:33:34.340 Because I want you to feel as though we actually can do something. 646 00:33:34.460 --> 00:33:36.320 I don't want you to be paralysed by the fear, 647 00:33:36.440 --> 00:33:38.340 I'd like you to be galvanised by the fear. 648 00:33:38.880 --> 00:33:40.440 Because it is terrible, I think, 649 00:33:40.440 --> 00:33:42.280 what's happening to children and young people. 650 00:33:42.420 --> 00:33:45.260 It's not anywhere near as bad as happening in other places, 651 00:33:45.300 --> 00:33:47.180 which are very, like, third world, 652 00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:49.180 but it's all the more awful 653 00:33:49.180 --> 00:33:51.820 because it's happening in this wonderful Australia 654 00:33:51.820 --> 00:33:53.760 that was going to deliver all this wonderful equality 655 00:33:53.760 --> 00:33:55.880 and the wealth was going to trickle down. 656 00:33:56.140 --> 00:33:57.860 We're still waiting for the trickle down. 657 00:33:58.580 --> 00:34:00.340 But I like putting this slide up 658 00:34:00.340 --> 00:34:03.520 because this is my causal pathway about Aboriginal health, 659 00:34:03.580 --> 00:34:06.920 which I referred to in acknowledging the traditional owners. 660 00:34:07.100 --> 00:34:09.500 And that is because of what we have done, 661 00:34:09.500 --> 00:34:12.580 the colonisation, the removal of culture, 662 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:16.300 the terrible conditions in which people are living, 663 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:20.360 taking children away, marginalisation, unemployment and so on. 664 00:34:20.440 --> 00:34:23.600 You can see that these are on a direct causal pathway 665 00:34:23.600 --> 00:34:25.620 to the problems we're seeing today. 666 00:34:25.800 --> 00:34:27.000 We have to acknowledge it. 667 00:34:27.100 --> 00:34:29.460 We share this. This is our problem. 668 00:34:29.740 --> 00:34:31.220 Not just their problem. 669 00:34:31.600 --> 00:34:34.320 And basically, when I was a sort of epidemiologist 670 00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:37.020 that thought very narrowly, I would do studies, 671 00:34:37.040 --> 00:34:39.480 and I've done studies which show that alcohol and substance abuse 672 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:42.520 in pregnancy cause low birth weight, rheumatic, you know, 673 00:34:42.540 --> 00:34:44.820 respiratory disease and ear disease in Aboriginal children. 674 00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:46.140 So we would go in. 675 00:34:46.180 --> 00:34:49.340 I mean, the logical sort of interpretation of that kind of information is, 676 00:34:49.420 --> 00:34:51.620 you know, well, we've taken your kids away, we've taken your land away, 677 00:34:51.720 --> 00:34:53.440 we've marginalised you, we haven't educated you. 678 00:34:53.500 --> 00:34:55.860 By the way, don't drink or smoke. It's bad for your kids. 679 00:34:57.000 --> 00:34:58.040 Sort of doesn't work. 680 00:34:58.840 --> 00:35:01.820 The kinds of interventions that go earlier 681 00:35:02.360 --> 00:35:05.080 and start to look at ways in which you can address 682 00:35:05.080 --> 00:35:07.400 some of these things earlier in the pathway 683 00:35:07.400 --> 00:35:09.280 are very powerful and effective. 684 00:35:09.500 --> 00:35:11.040 And we've got some models of those, 685 00:35:11.140 --> 00:35:12.780 and that's the kind of hope I wanted to give you. 686 00:35:13.080 --> 00:35:15.580 The other thing that this shows very clearly, doesn't it, 687 00:35:15.640 --> 00:35:18.880 that putting lots of money and effort down the bottom 688 00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:21.500 is actually not going to decrease the rates of those diseases. 689 00:35:22.180 --> 00:35:25.400 If you, in fact, gave more renal dialysis machines, 690 00:35:25.600 --> 00:35:26.700 actually, which we need to do, 691 00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:30.240 you'd actually increase the rate of renal failure 692 00:35:30.240 --> 00:35:31.160 amongst Aboriginal people, 693 00:35:31.240 --> 00:35:32.680 because more people who needed it would get it. 694 00:35:35.220 --> 00:35:37.880 And this is the thing that I've been on this rapid learning curve about 695 00:35:37.880 --> 00:35:39.480 in the last five, ten years, 696 00:35:39.500 --> 00:35:39.980 or so, 697 00:35:40.220 --> 00:35:43.580 and that is to step out of my rigid epidemiological thinking 698 00:35:43.580 --> 00:35:46.700 into a very much broader thinking about 699 00:35:47.400 --> 00:35:51.000 not only the factors in the child, in the family, 700 00:35:51.100 --> 00:35:53.300 and in the school, in the community, 701 00:35:53.320 --> 00:35:56.980 which impact upon child development, wellbeing, and health, 702 00:35:57.140 --> 00:35:58.700 and those are the things that we've always looked at. 703 00:35:58.860 --> 00:36:00.960 This is the Bronfenbrenner diagram 704 00:36:01.500 --> 00:36:04.080 rewritten by our indigenous researchers in our institute. 705 00:36:04.240 --> 00:36:05.740 He said, no, no, you don't put kids in the middle, 706 00:36:05.820 --> 00:36:07.340 you put community in the middle. 707 00:36:07.820 --> 00:36:08.900 So I think that's very good. 708 00:36:08.900 --> 00:36:09.720 So I use this one. 709 00:36:09.820 --> 00:36:11.880 But not to ignore, in fact, 710 00:36:11.880 --> 00:36:16.180 to really start to think about the larger socio-structural, 711 00:36:16.220 --> 00:36:19.800 political, economic, dare I say, spiritual environment in Australia 712 00:36:19.800 --> 00:36:21.960 that are the powerful drivers 713 00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:25.100 either towards making all these things very positive 714 00:36:25.100 --> 00:36:27.080 or making them incredibly negative 715 00:36:27.080 --> 00:36:29.060 for our families and young people. 716 00:36:29.240 --> 00:36:31.860 So I reckon this is a great diagram to start thinking about. 717 00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:33.980 We've got to think about that big picture 718 00:36:33.980 --> 00:36:36.900 in our research, in our policy, in our practices, 719 00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:38.880 as well as in our society. 720 00:36:38.900 --> 00:36:40.480 So we've got to think about the things that are in the child, 721 00:36:40.520 --> 00:36:41.440 in the family, et cetera. 722 00:36:41.600 --> 00:36:43.440 So we can't just keep on blaming parents 723 00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:47.120 that it's their parenting that's caused the kids' behaviour problem at age 10. 724 00:36:47.640 --> 00:36:50.860 It takes all of us to provide environments. 725 00:36:51.220 --> 00:36:53.840 The NIH, the National Institutes of Health in America, 726 00:36:54.040 --> 00:36:56.900 have just done a wonderful document about this. 727 00:36:56.920 --> 00:36:58.160 And do you know what they've called the document? 728 00:36:58.460 --> 00:37:01.720 From neurons, brain cells, to neighbourhoods. 729 00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:05.640 What is it about neighbourhoods that can nurture our children 730 00:37:05.640 --> 00:37:07.580 and encourage their brain development? 731 00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:09.080 Really terrific. 732 00:37:09.420 --> 00:37:11.420 I love this quote. I don't know if it's quite up here. 733 00:37:11.520 --> 00:37:13.580 Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance 734 00:37:13.580 --> 00:37:15.220 or conscientious stupidity. 735 00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:19.340 And basically it's about broadening ourselves 736 00:37:19.340 --> 00:37:21.440 so that we get on board a lot of this information. 737 00:37:21.500 --> 00:37:24.040 It's not that difficult to get to grips with. 738 00:37:24.240 --> 00:37:26.640 And the hope that I want to leave you with is a couple of things. 739 00:37:26.780 --> 00:37:29.260 One is the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, 740 00:37:29.460 --> 00:37:32.060 which I think I've probably given you a rationale for. 741 00:37:32.760 --> 00:37:35.220 The fact that we've seen the increases in many of these problems, 742 00:37:35.520 --> 00:37:37.540 the causal pathways are many and varied, 743 00:37:37.580 --> 00:37:39.160 we've got these multiple outcomes. 744 00:37:39.380 --> 00:37:41.080 I mean, these are complex interaction of things, 745 00:37:41.180 --> 00:37:43.560 but it has to take into account this big picture. 746 00:37:43.740 --> 00:37:45.460 We all do research in silos. 747 00:37:45.580 --> 00:37:46.920 We compete against each other. 748 00:37:47.020 --> 00:37:48.100 We don't share our databases. 749 00:37:48.480 --> 00:37:52.280 Policy is developed in silos very remotely from the people 750 00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:55.400 who need to actually participate in that policy and practice. 751 00:37:55.720 --> 00:37:58.540 I mean, it's a... You know, I love Aboriginal humour. 752 00:37:58.700 --> 00:38:01.260 There's a terrific resilience factor here with Aboriginal humour. 753 00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:02.820 They laugh at this stuff. 754 00:38:03.220 --> 00:38:06.000 And I'd laugh too if it wasn't so bloody tragic. 755 00:38:06.220 --> 00:38:07.380 But it is funny. 756 00:38:07.580 --> 00:38:09.940 What we're doing, we're so illogical 757 00:38:10.580 --> 00:38:12.680 in what we're providing or not providing. 758 00:38:13.340 --> 00:38:15.100 So... And the fragmented databases. 759 00:38:15.120 --> 00:38:18.680 So what the Alliance is going to do is try and actually turn all this around. 760 00:38:18.980 --> 00:38:20.500 And we're a national collaboration. 761 00:38:20.580 --> 00:38:23.820 We've established to facilitate, coordinate and support 762 00:38:23.820 --> 00:38:25.960 the development of knowledge and its effective use 763 00:38:25.960 --> 00:38:29.460 to enhance the wellbeing and life chances of children and young people. 764 00:38:29.600 --> 00:38:34.100 Because what I've discovered in my research experience over the years 765 00:38:34.100 --> 00:38:36.540 is the power of data and evidence. 766 00:38:36.540 --> 00:38:41.900 And we want to be such providers of such powerful data and evidence 767 00:38:41.900 --> 00:38:44.620 that's so credible and to have all of the people 768 00:38:44.620 --> 00:38:47.860 who really care about this in Australia working together instead of competing, 769 00:38:48.120 --> 00:38:51.100 that, in fact, people will have to take notice of us. 770 00:38:51.140 --> 00:38:52.500 This is the naive way forward. 771 00:38:52.580 --> 00:38:53.620 But anyway, I don't think it's naive. 772 00:38:53.680 --> 00:38:55.820 I think, really, we might get there if we do it. 773 00:38:56.480 --> 00:39:01.560 And so we are very, very excited about the response to the Alliance. 774 00:39:01.680 --> 00:39:02.880 We've been going for a year. 775 00:39:03.920 --> 00:39:05.160 We've been incorporated. 776 00:39:05.160 --> 00:39:07.400 We've got Michael Chaney chairing our board. 777 00:39:07.480 --> 00:39:08.260 He's a top businessman. 778 00:39:08.520 --> 00:39:09.860 We're engaging the business community. 779 00:39:10.140 --> 00:39:11.420 We're engaging bureaucracy. 780 00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:14.200 We hope we've engaged government and governments 781 00:39:14.200 --> 00:39:16.720 because this is not just about federal government. 782 00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:17.840 It's about state government. 783 00:39:17.900 --> 00:39:20.160 But particularly, it's about local government 784 00:39:20.160 --> 00:39:24.240 and getting them back on board for children, neighbourhoods, parents, childcare, 785 00:39:24.920 --> 00:39:28.920 you know, safe playgrounds, lots and lots of things, libraries, lots of things. 786 00:39:29.260 --> 00:39:32.940 So I want to leave you with a couple of images 787 00:39:32.940 --> 00:39:34.160 and of projects. 788 00:39:34.340 --> 00:39:34.980 I want to leave you with a couple of images 789 00:39:34.980 --> 00:39:37.560 of projects that have really been incredibly successful. 790 00:39:38.080 --> 00:39:39.880 And they're all Aboriginal examples 791 00:39:39.880 --> 00:39:43.020 to show you that even in the most disadvantaged group of kids, 792 00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:44.020 we are getting somewhere. 793 00:39:44.300 --> 00:39:48.340 I've just had the privilege of visiting the Torres Strait, 794 00:39:48.440 --> 00:39:51.260 the Northern Peninsula area, the top of Cape York Peninsula. 795 00:39:51.560 --> 00:39:53.740 And you all have heard terrible stories about Cape York. 796 00:39:53.960 --> 00:39:57.000 I visited Galiwinko on Elko Island. 797 00:39:57.120 --> 00:40:00.540 And I visited Hermannsburg as part of my Australian of the Year activities. 798 00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:02.400 And in each of these places, 799 00:40:02.400 --> 00:40:05.420 I have been bowled over by the success 800 00:40:05.420 --> 00:40:07.580 of what is happening in these communities 801 00:40:07.580 --> 00:40:10.680 with significant Islander or Aboriginal control, 802 00:40:11.780 --> 00:40:14.800 with fabulous provision of services and facilities. 803 00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:17.980 And they are itching to get a database around it 804 00:40:17.980 --> 00:40:19.660 that can prove how effective they are. 805 00:40:19.820 --> 00:40:22.200 There's a significant amount of Aboriginal leadership. 806 00:40:22.740 --> 00:40:25.540 You know, the person who heads up the entire health service 807 00:40:25.540 --> 00:40:27.900 for the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula area, 808 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:30.840 Philip Mills, is an outstanding Indigenous person. 809 00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:32.380 It is the best example of the kind of work that we do. 810 00:40:32.380 --> 00:40:34.520 And we are going to write to... 811 00:40:34.520 --> 00:40:36.860 My husband and I are going to write to John Howard and Philip Ruddock 812 00:40:36.860 --> 00:40:40.480 to give them examples of these very, very good programs 813 00:40:40.480 --> 00:40:44.760 where Aboriginal control is actually delivering the goods. 814 00:40:45.340 --> 00:40:46.460 It's very exciting. 815 00:40:46.700 --> 00:40:48.860 And now I just want to end with these two projects. 816 00:40:48.900 --> 00:40:50.180 This is our swimming pool project, 817 00:40:50.260 --> 00:40:51.900 which is a very good demonstration 818 00:40:51.900 --> 00:40:54.660 of how provision of facilities 819 00:40:54.660 --> 00:40:57.740 into remote Aboriginal communities can have a powerful effect. 820 00:40:58.020 --> 00:41:00.220 This is a five-year project that we've done in collaboration 821 00:41:00.220 --> 00:41:02.360 with Jigalong, Rabbit-proof Fence Jigalong, 822 00:41:02.380 --> 00:41:04.380 and Barangarra, 823 00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:06.880 two remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. 824 00:41:07.220 --> 00:41:09.520 And they put in Olympic pools, 825 00:41:09.780 --> 00:41:12.200 and we went in to evaluate the impact of these 826 00:41:12.200 --> 00:41:14.480 on the health and wellbeing of children in the community. 827 00:41:14.700 --> 00:41:16.260 And this just shows you some of the data. 828 00:41:16.560 --> 00:41:21.000 And this is Jigalong, and you can see that this is... 829 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:23.540 If you look at the whole wet or dry ears, 830 00:41:23.620 --> 00:41:26.620 this is ear disease where you've got ear disease at all in the red bars, 831 00:41:26.800 --> 00:41:29.560 and wet ears is where you've got pus, obviously, coming out of ears. 832 00:41:29.660 --> 00:41:32.260 And you can see that over the time we've been evaluating these children, 833 00:41:32.260 --> 00:41:35.580 there's been a terrific improvement in ear disease. 834 00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:38.040 Now, people think you shouldn't go swimming when you have ear disease. 835 00:41:38.220 --> 00:41:40.940 Well, and we've now gone on for another follow-up, 836 00:41:40.940 --> 00:41:43.680 and it's even looking better in the last follow-up. 837 00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:44.860 So that's... 838 00:41:44.860 --> 00:41:48.240 Now, ear disease is a very, very negative factor 839 00:41:48.240 --> 00:41:49.720 on children's capacity to learn, 840 00:41:49.780 --> 00:41:51.200 because they're often deaf in the classroom. 841 00:41:51.440 --> 00:41:53.260 This is terrific to see 842 00:41:53.820 --> 00:41:56.500 that these improvements have occurred with the swimming pool. 843 00:41:56.820 --> 00:41:58.800 This just shows you the SOAR scores, 844 00:41:59.020 --> 00:42:00.580 which was developed by our team. 845 00:42:00.920 --> 00:42:02.240 I would like to say that we've done a lot of work 846 00:42:02.260 --> 00:42:05.560 to make sure that many of the people who've done this research are Aboriginal. 847 00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:07.940 We have a very strong commitment in our institute 848 00:42:07.940 --> 00:42:10.420 to employing, training and using Aboriginal researchers. 849 00:42:10.760 --> 00:42:12.540 We've got three PhDs now coming through. 850 00:42:12.700 --> 00:42:15.360 The one, Dr Sandra Eades, just finished her PhD. 851 00:42:16.260 --> 00:42:17.720 Outstanding young Aboriginal woman. 852 00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:20.140 And you can see here the score SOARs, 853 00:42:20.140 --> 00:42:22.040 and the red line is no SOARs, 854 00:42:22.060 --> 00:42:23.800 then the blue is one to four scores, 855 00:42:24.020 --> 00:42:26.180 and the green is over four. 856 00:42:26.520 --> 00:42:28.320 And you can see the dramatic improvement 857 00:42:28.320 --> 00:42:30.500 in the number of kids who have no SOARs. 858 00:42:30.500 --> 00:42:32.260 Now, why is that so important? 859 00:42:32.340 --> 00:42:33.480 I mean, it's not nice to have SOARs. 860 00:42:33.540 --> 00:42:35.500 These are the group A streptococcal infections 861 00:42:35.500 --> 00:42:37.480 that cause renal failure in children 862 00:42:37.480 --> 00:42:38.840 because they get neuroleumphritis. 863 00:42:39.160 --> 00:42:41.820 This could mean translating the years down the track 864 00:42:41.820 --> 00:42:43.900 to reduce rates of renal disease. 865 00:42:44.020 --> 00:42:47.560 Prevention is much better than having people on dialysis. 866 00:42:47.640 --> 00:42:48.760 So that's pretty exciting. 867 00:42:49.620 --> 00:42:52.120 And I just want to say one thing about... 868 00:42:52.120 --> 00:42:53.380 Before I go on to the next story... 869 00:42:53.380 --> 00:42:54.200 I'm running out of time. 870 00:42:54.780 --> 00:42:58.040 ..is that what's happened also in these communities now 871 00:42:58.040 --> 00:43:00.380 is you couldn't go to the pool unless you'd been to school. 872 00:43:00.380 --> 00:43:02.120 So school attendance rates have soared up. 873 00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:03.120 Um... 874 00:43:05.660 --> 00:43:07.160 The kids have got... 875 00:43:07.160 --> 00:43:09.520 ..changed in self-esteem, so we did self-esteem. 876 00:43:09.640 --> 00:43:12.020 We looked at Tracey Westerman's evaluation 877 00:43:12.020 --> 00:43:14.600 of suicidal ideation, improved on that. 878 00:43:14.760 --> 00:43:16.500 And we've just had some recent data 879 00:43:16.500 --> 00:43:19.180 to show the crime rates started to fall in these communities. 880 00:43:19.500 --> 00:43:21.080 I mean, this is a facility. 881 00:43:21.300 --> 00:43:23.060 It's putting a facility in a community. 882 00:43:23.260 --> 00:43:24.660 It's providing those sorts of things. 883 00:43:25.520 --> 00:43:27.140 Naudududibirni is a Wongi word 884 00:43:27.140 --> 00:43:29.320 for healthy mums, healthy children all together. 885 00:43:29.500 --> 00:43:29.900 So... 886 00:43:30.380 --> 00:43:31.920 It went to the eastern goldfields 887 00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:33.800 because it had the highest rate of low birth weight, 888 00:43:33.880 --> 00:43:35.940 which was linked with STDs around the time of delivery, 889 00:43:36.200 --> 00:43:38.620 highest rates in Western Australia of under-five mortality, 890 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:42.020 highest rates of low birth weight, highest rates of STDs. 891 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:44.960 It had poor attendance for any kind of care 892 00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:47.740 and very low utilisation of mainstream services. 893 00:43:48.040 --> 00:43:49.260 What we did, first of all, 894 00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:52.820 is I sent one of our paediatric public health researchers out there 895 00:43:52.820 --> 00:43:54.100 to actually ask Aboriginal people 896 00:43:54.100 --> 00:43:55.520 why they didn't use mainstream services. 897 00:43:55.820 --> 00:43:58.880 It's the only study ever done where people have been asked 898 00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:00.560 why they don't use mainstream health services. 899 00:44:00.740 --> 00:44:01.880 So we had all this information 900 00:44:01.880 --> 00:44:04.020 about why they didn't like using mainstream health services, 901 00:44:04.120 --> 00:44:04.980 which I can't go into now, 902 00:44:05.200 --> 00:44:06.820 but that dictated what we did, 903 00:44:06.880 --> 00:44:09.600 which was a brokering arrangement 904 00:44:09.600 --> 00:44:11.380 with a group of 50 Aboriginal women 905 00:44:11.380 --> 00:44:14.040 running their own health service, as it were, 906 00:44:14.120 --> 00:44:16.620 a brokering service between the mainstream services 907 00:44:16.620 --> 00:44:18.040 and the Aboriginal women. 908 00:44:18.640 --> 00:44:20.980 And these were the kinds of things we were going to measure, 909 00:44:21.080 --> 00:44:23.900 that we were going to improve hospital admissions 910 00:44:23.900 --> 00:44:26.320 and, you know, birth weight and all of these things, 911 00:44:26.360 --> 00:44:27.000 getting at these... 912 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:28.860 trying to get at encouraging women 913 00:44:28.880 --> 00:44:31.300 to take responsibility and giving them the power, 914 00:44:31.380 --> 00:44:32.980 the knowledge and the funding to do so, 915 00:44:33.060 --> 00:44:35.520 if you're thinking about that colonisation pathway. 916 00:44:35.980 --> 00:44:38.940 And it's been absolutely a fantastic success. 917 00:44:39.200 --> 00:44:41.960 It was an NHMRC grant 10 years ago. 918 00:44:42.040 --> 00:44:43.840 We had the 10th birthday of it last year. 919 00:44:44.080 --> 00:44:45.960 There are 16 Aboriginal health workers, 920 00:44:46.140 --> 00:44:47.940 two of whom have gone on to have... do degrees, 921 00:44:48.560 --> 00:44:50.100 now running the whole project. 922 00:44:50.220 --> 00:44:52.000 They've incorporated as an Aboriginal organisation. 923 00:44:52.480 --> 00:44:54.800 The proportion of women attending for antenatal care 924 00:44:54.800 --> 00:44:58.480 has gone up from 20% at 20 weeks to 110% at 20 weeks 925 00:44:58.480 --> 00:44:58.860 because people are... 926 00:44:58.880 --> 00:45:00.780 people are coming from outside the catchment area. 927 00:45:01.160 --> 00:45:03.760 And, in fact, what I stupidly put up, 928 00:45:03.760 --> 00:45:06.440 an outcome measure of reducing hospitalisation, 929 00:45:06.640 --> 00:45:11.280 it's quadrupled hospitalisation of children aged 0 to 2, 930 00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:13.340 but the length of stay has gone down dramatically 931 00:45:13.340 --> 00:45:15.780 and fewer children are transferred to Perth with severe illness. 932 00:45:15.880 --> 00:45:17.000 It is a success story. 933 00:45:17.300 --> 00:45:18.560 And we neglected them. 934 00:45:18.620 --> 00:45:21.320 We just set up the project and then let them get on with it. 935 00:45:21.400 --> 00:45:22.320 We've given them support, 936 00:45:22.520 --> 00:45:24.140 but on the whole, they've done it themselves. 937 00:45:24.580 --> 00:45:26.520 And it's been a terrific success story. 938 00:45:26.660 --> 00:45:27.260 So that's... 939 00:45:27.260 --> 00:45:28.400 That's another thing too. 940 00:45:28.540 --> 00:45:31.340 And that's the team, or part of the team of... 941 00:45:31.340 --> 00:45:34.000 And you can see there's one white person in the whole team. 942 00:45:34.200 --> 00:45:36.300 It's just a very exciting project. 943 00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:37.820 And this can be done, 944 00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:39.720 and we need to tell lots of people about it. 945 00:45:40.040 --> 00:45:41.820 So I just want to finish with a quote, 946 00:45:41.980 --> 00:45:44.820 that we need to play social and environmental sustainability 947 00:45:44.820 --> 00:45:46.280 and population health 948 00:45:46.280 --> 00:45:48.660 ahead of economic growth as a national goal 949 00:45:49.260 --> 00:45:51.420 and develop social policies that enhance equity, 950 00:45:51.660 --> 00:45:53.380 social stability and trust. 951 00:45:53.620 --> 00:45:56.740 Our response must extend beyond the conventional frameworks 952 00:45:56.740 --> 00:45:58.420 for social and economic policy. 953 00:45:58.600 --> 00:45:59.140 Thank you. 954 00:46:11.360 --> 00:46:20.860 Thank you, Fiona. 955 00:46:22.180 --> 00:46:23.680 I think at one level, 956 00:46:23.700 --> 00:46:25.940 when you start seeing some of that evidence, 957 00:46:25.940 --> 00:46:26.980 it can be very depressing 958 00:46:26.980 --> 00:46:29.120 and to an extent somewhat overwhelming. 959 00:46:30.580 --> 00:46:32.500 But I think one of the positive things 960 00:46:32.500 --> 00:46:34.780 that we're able to get out of that whole presentation 961 00:46:34.780 --> 00:46:37.340 is that there is a way forward 962 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:41.520 and some sensible public policy and local action 963 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:45.260 can actually move us beyond some of those very damning statistics. 964 00:46:45.880 --> 00:46:48.480 Now, I'd like some questions from the floor in a moment, 965 00:46:48.540 --> 00:46:49.400 and to do that, 966 00:46:49.440 --> 00:46:50.760 we need to actually come up to where... 967 00:46:50.760 --> 00:46:52.180 There's some microphones in the middle. 968 00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:54.780 So as you're making your way there, please do that. 969 00:46:54.780 --> 00:46:57.960 We've got about 10 minutes left for this session. 970 00:46:58.140 --> 00:47:00.300 I just want to make a couple of observations. 971 00:47:01.120 --> 00:47:03.280 One of them was to do with a slide 972 00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:04.900 probably halfway through the presentation 973 00:47:04.900 --> 00:47:07.180 that was called the welfare squeeze. 974 00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:10.240 And Fiona made some reference 975 00:47:10.240 --> 00:47:13.240 to providing some fake information to the Prime Minister. 976 00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:13.860 And I thought, 977 00:47:14.640 --> 00:47:16.660 knowing that there's some fairly dangerous consequences 978 00:47:16.660 --> 00:47:19.400 of providing fake information to the Prime Minister, of course. 979 00:47:20.760 --> 00:47:22.140 But I had to say that, 980 00:47:22.180 --> 00:47:24.680 or think that if it actually leads to a war, 981 00:47:24.780 --> 00:47:25.520 a war on child poverty, 982 00:47:25.680 --> 00:47:26.980 it was probably a darn good move. 983 00:47:32.920 --> 00:47:35.940 And the other observation I wanted to briefly make 984 00:47:35.940 --> 00:47:39.240 was those very unacceptable disparities 985 00:47:39.780 --> 00:47:44.160 between outcomes and conditions for our Indigenous community 986 00:47:44.160 --> 00:47:46.300 compared to the broader community. 987 00:47:46.620 --> 00:47:50.400 And if that sort of evidence doesn't get us to act, 988 00:47:50.500 --> 00:47:52.020 mobilise our action and commitment, 989 00:47:52.200 --> 00:47:54.560 then I don't think anything will in our society. 990 00:47:54.780 --> 00:47:56.940 Now, we've got a couple of questions. 991 00:47:57.180 --> 00:47:58.060 Please. 992 00:47:59.600 --> 00:48:03.900 I am a wife of the 50s, 993 00:48:03.900 --> 00:48:07.280 a mother whose children were born 994 00:48:07.280 --> 00:48:10.780 before the sexual revolution in the 60s, 995 00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:13.040 so I sort of missed out on that. 996 00:48:13.160 --> 00:48:21.020 I also missed out on learning how to bring up children 997 00:48:21.020 --> 00:48:24.760 because I never heard of doctors. 998 00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:25.080 I didn't know how to stock. 999 00:48:25.560 --> 00:48:31.260 So my children were children of that era. 1000 00:48:31.560 --> 00:48:33.740 Now, during the 60s, 1001 00:48:33.740 --> 00:48:35.280 during the 60s revolution, 1002 00:48:35.460 --> 00:48:40.400 obviously people married with certain attitudes, 1003 00:48:40.760 --> 00:48:43.420 and I'm not worrying so much about the sexual attitudes, 1004 00:48:43.540 --> 00:48:48.100 but the general attitudes of let everything go. 1005 00:48:48.800 --> 00:48:53.280 They were parents in the 60s. 1006 00:48:53.560 --> 00:48:54.760 They were parents in the 60s. 1007 00:48:54.760 --> 00:48:58.380 They had children in the 90s. 1008 00:48:58.840 --> 00:49:04.680 And we are now looking at what has happened 1009 00:49:04.680 --> 00:49:11.680 to the general wellbeing of two generations of parents 1010 00:49:11.680 --> 00:49:16.120 that seem to have let everything go. 1011 00:49:16.480 --> 00:49:19.280 And I don't know whether this is too simplistic, 1012 00:49:19.580 --> 00:49:22.340 but I'd like you to think about it. 1013 00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:23.340 No, thank you very much. 1014 00:49:23.340 --> 00:49:25.540 I think it probably is a bit simplistic 1015 00:49:25.540 --> 00:49:28.040 in that it's that kind of... 1016 00:49:28.040 --> 00:49:30.440 I'm going to try and get some kind of wonderful spaghetti 1017 00:49:30.440 --> 00:49:34.040 and meatballs diagram of all of these different things 1018 00:49:34.040 --> 00:49:36.400 that have changed so profoundly in our society 1019 00:49:36.400 --> 00:49:37.760 over the last 30 years, 1020 00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:39.200 but that's certainly one of them. 1021 00:49:39.460 --> 00:49:42.140 And I think that at the same time what has happened is, 1022 00:49:42.240 --> 00:49:44.940 you know, increasing television, change of pace of life, 1023 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:46.800 increasing work. 1024 00:49:47.060 --> 00:49:48.700 I mean, there is this huge... 1025 00:49:48.700 --> 00:49:49.940 I mean, women have gone into the workforce, 1026 00:49:50.080 --> 00:49:50.720 but this is... 1027 00:49:50.720 --> 00:49:52.320 Australia is working harder, 1028 00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:55.440 and with more stress than any other OECD country. 1029 00:49:55.540 --> 00:49:56.820 The breakdown of the family, 1030 00:49:56.940 --> 00:50:00.280 2% of families divorced in the 1950s and 60s. 1031 00:50:00.300 --> 00:50:01.440 Now it's one in two. 1032 00:50:01.560 --> 00:50:05.040 A million children not now living with both natural parents. 1033 00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:05.520 It's about... 1034 00:50:05.520 --> 00:50:08.340 Many, many of these things have changed. 1035 00:50:08.720 --> 00:50:11.080 And what has happened at the same time, 1036 00:50:11.160 --> 00:50:13.720 in spite of all this increasing, challenging, 1037 00:50:13.880 --> 00:50:16.120 difficult society for our young people, 1038 00:50:16.240 --> 00:50:18.460 has been this diminution in services, 1039 00:50:18.780 --> 00:50:20.440 ripping the guts out of childcare. 1040 00:50:21.040 --> 00:50:22.300 All the things that all of us have done 1041 00:50:22.320 --> 00:50:23.620 and a lot of the people have been mentioning here, 1042 00:50:24.100 --> 00:50:26.540 you know, with Michael Pusey's talk about 1043 00:50:27.100 --> 00:50:29.100 what's changed in terms of the economy 1044 00:50:29.100 --> 00:50:31.020 and what middle Australia think about economic reform. 1045 00:50:31.480 --> 00:50:33.360 The privatisation of many things, 1046 00:50:33.460 --> 00:50:35.360 which have meant that an increasing proportion of people 1047 00:50:35.360 --> 00:50:39.080 can't afford to use the things which could help them 1048 00:50:39.080 --> 00:50:42.700 cope with what these difficult circumstances 1049 00:50:42.700 --> 00:50:44.640 and changes to our society have been. 1050 00:50:44.780 --> 00:50:47.000 Now, many people cope very well with the changes. 1051 00:50:47.100 --> 00:50:48.600 I'm not saying that everyone's doing badly. 1052 00:50:48.700 --> 00:50:50.760 You'll meet lots of wonderful young people, of course, 1053 00:50:50.800 --> 00:50:52.300 but an increasing proportion of people, 1054 00:50:52.300 --> 00:50:55.100 reflected in our data, are not. 1055 00:50:55.580 --> 00:50:56.580 And that's... 1056 00:50:56.580 --> 00:50:58.820 So it is very much more complicated than you say, 1057 00:50:59.040 --> 00:51:01.300 but it's all the triple and double whammies 1058 00:51:01.300 --> 00:51:02.560 that are coming in at a time 1059 00:51:02.560 --> 00:51:03.940 when services aren't picking them up. 1060 00:51:04.400 --> 00:51:08.080 And I believe, just what are my sort of very naive 1061 00:51:08.080 --> 00:51:11.960 and ill-informed, probably, set of investigations, 1062 00:51:12.120 --> 00:51:14.260 is that there's plenty of money available 1063 00:51:14.820 --> 00:51:18.140 to provide services that would really work much better 1064 00:51:18.140 --> 00:51:20.960 in neighbourhoods for children and so on. 1065 00:51:20.960 --> 00:51:23.320 It's just that we don't use it properly. 1066 00:51:23.500 --> 00:51:26.960 And the sort of federal-state divide is incredibly... 1067 00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:28.300 I mean, people... 1068 00:51:28.300 --> 00:51:29.500 You will know what I'm talking about. 1069 00:51:29.660 --> 00:51:30.840 So there's plenty of money around. 1070 00:51:30.940 --> 00:51:32.900 It's just channelling it much more effectively. 1071 00:51:33.420 --> 00:51:34.340 OK. Thank you. 1072 00:51:34.680 --> 00:51:37.380 A question from the upper echelons of our audience. 1073 00:51:37.580 --> 00:51:37.960 Thank you. 1074 00:51:38.420 --> 00:51:40.820 Yes, I enjoyed very much your talk. 1075 00:51:40.900 --> 00:51:44.980 And I was wondering, because all the different diagrams 1076 00:51:44.980 --> 00:51:45.980 are going so quickly, 1077 00:51:46.100 --> 00:51:48.200 is there somewhere where we could, like... 1078 00:51:48.200 --> 00:51:50.940 Very happy for it to be put on the website here at the moment. 1079 00:51:50.960 --> 00:51:51.980 I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Festival of Ideas. 1080 00:51:52.080 --> 00:51:54.520 I try and put the talks I'm giving, 1081 00:51:54.620 --> 00:51:56.860 although I'm giving quite a few at the moment, 1082 00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:00.260 onto our Institute website or on the Alliance website. 1083 00:52:00.720 --> 00:52:03.800 So the Alliance website, for those of you who would like it, 1084 00:52:03.840 --> 00:52:06.580 is aracy.org.au. 1085 00:52:08.320 --> 00:52:10.000 And that's probably where the best place 1086 00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:11.680 to get the recent talks, actually. 1087 00:52:11.940 --> 00:52:12.900 Very happy for you to use them. 1088 00:52:12.900 --> 00:52:15.000 Could you just say that slyly again for me? 1089 00:52:15.100 --> 00:52:19.680 Sorry. Aracy.org.au. 1090 00:52:19.680 --> 00:52:21.840 We can have individual members 1091 00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:24.400 as well as organisational members of this organisation. 1092 00:52:24.740 --> 00:52:25.980 So if you get into the website, 1093 00:52:26.100 --> 00:52:27.360 you can see a membership application. 1094 00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:28.740 Doesn't cost you anything. 1095 00:52:29.340 --> 00:52:30.340 Thank you for that plug. 1096 00:52:30.440 --> 00:52:31.240 And one final question. 1097 00:52:33.100 --> 00:52:35.520 Yeah. I'm here because for the past three years 1098 00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:37.320 I've been coordinating a children's program 1099 00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:38.620 for disadvantaged kids. 1100 00:52:38.700 --> 00:52:40.120 It's a fortnightly recreation program. 1101 00:52:41.320 --> 00:52:44.680 One of the things that we've noticed over the past three years, 1102 00:52:44.740 --> 00:52:46.440 and I've spoken to our volunteers about this, 1103 00:52:46.540 --> 00:52:48.680 is just the lack of community infrastructure. 1104 00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:51.580 Infrastructure for disadvantaged kids. 1105 00:52:51.680 --> 00:52:51.820 Absolutely. 1106 00:52:52.020 --> 00:52:53.240 And I'll give you an example. 1107 00:52:53.400 --> 00:52:55.660 Like last year we had sort of like a singing weekend 1108 00:52:55.660 --> 00:52:56.520 for these kids. 1109 00:52:56.640 --> 00:52:57.280 Yeah. Wonderful. 1110 00:52:57.280 --> 00:52:58.400 And there was about ten of them 1111 00:52:59.060 --> 00:53:02.740 that wanted to go on, pursue their singing. 1112 00:53:02.880 --> 00:53:04.880 And what we then tried to do was find 1113 00:53:05.340 --> 00:53:07.120 a community singing group or whatever 1114 00:53:07.680 --> 00:53:10.060 which didn't cost anything for these kids to join 1115 00:53:10.060 --> 00:53:11.120 and was accessible to them. 1116 00:53:11.220 --> 00:53:13.260 And we couldn't find one in the whole state. 1117 00:53:13.400 --> 00:53:17.100 Whilst maybe 20 to 30 years ago you could have, you know. 1118 00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:21.080 Anyone here can help them get a singing group going? 1119 00:53:21.320 --> 00:53:22.520 Oh, look, you know... 1120 00:53:23.080 --> 00:53:24.080 This is the audience strength. 1121 00:53:24.080 --> 00:53:26.900 And the frustrating part for us is that when we go and try and lobby 1122 00:53:26.900 --> 00:53:31.080 in terms of governments and that is that unless you talk about these kids... 1123 00:53:31.080 --> 00:53:33.240 Because we want to set up a group just simply for them to sing 1124 00:53:33.640 --> 00:53:35.880 for a community-type feeling, that sort of thing. 1125 00:53:35.940 --> 00:53:39.200 But if you're not mentioning that they're going to end up 1126 00:53:39.200 --> 00:53:41.440 performing at some Royal Gala performance or whatever, 1127 00:53:42.020 --> 00:53:43.660 there just doesn't seem to be any interest. 1128 00:53:44.040 --> 00:53:46.460 Use two of the slides which show the trajectories 1129 00:53:46.460 --> 00:53:48.500 to resilience and the trajectories to poor outcome. 1130 00:53:48.760 --> 00:53:51.540 Because the other really exciting thing about thinking 1131 00:53:51.540 --> 00:53:53.640 and causal pathways, which is what those are, 1132 00:53:53.800 --> 00:53:56.160 is it gives you multiple opportunities for intervention. 1133 00:53:56.980 --> 00:53:58.860 And if you can actually sort of say, 1134 00:53:58.940 --> 00:54:00.500 well, look, we might be, with this singing group, 1135 00:54:01.180 --> 00:54:03.760 putting this trajectory away from this negative one 1136 00:54:03.760 --> 00:54:05.480 to this positive one for this group of kids, 1137 00:54:06.640 --> 00:54:08.280 that could...we're keeping them out of the prisons, 1138 00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:10.140 we're going to...you know, you might... 1139 00:54:10.880 --> 00:54:12.620 You might have to fake the data a bit there 1140 00:54:12.620 --> 00:54:14.060 because you haven't got the evidence, but, you know... 1141 00:54:14.840 --> 00:54:16.440 Give it a go. Why not give it a go? 1142 00:54:16.460 --> 00:54:19.680 And see whether a pilot of providing singing for these kids... 1143 00:54:19.680 --> 00:54:20.700 I'm being facetious. 1144 00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:22.540 But, you know, it is really important 1145 00:54:22.540 --> 00:54:23.920 that what you're saying is true, 1146 00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:28.860 that the community seems to have been depleted. 1147 00:54:29.680 --> 00:54:32.580 Our communities have been depleted, I think, for families. 1148 00:54:33.140 --> 00:54:35.960 OK. On that note, can you please join me again 1149 00:54:35.960 --> 00:54:37.820 in thanking Professor Sarah Samuel? 1150 00:54:47.540 --> 00:54:47.860 Thank you.