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Many children and their families, especially those from priority populations, experience barriers to accessing high-quality early childhood health, education, social and legal services. Further, these families are often under-represented in service planning and research; hence innovations are not designed to meet their needs. Our aim is to codesign with families and the wider community, a Strength-based, Tiered, Accessible Resources and Supports for Kids (STARS for Kids) programme to optimise child development, parental mental well-being, and family psychosocial needs in the first 2000 days from pregnancy to start of school
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are diverse, strong and faced with adverse social circumstances and unacceptable health and wellbeing outcomes wrought by colonisation. The need for strengths-based initiatives that tailor services according to local knowledges is well accepted, yet few studies have evaluated self-determined strategies to redress the social determinants of health.
Dyadic interventions targeting maternal mental health and the mother-infant relationship in the perinatal period are critical due to the potential consequences of perinatal mental illness and relational disturbance for the mother, the infant, and their family. This paper describes the Pregnancy to Parenthood (P2P) model of care, a dyadic mother-infant community-based program designed to support vulnerable families in Western Australia in the context of an identified need to build workforce capacity.
Physical activity improves physical and psychosocial outcomes in healthy children and in children with a range of chronic health conditions. Unfortunately, children with chronic health conditions have lower levels of physical activity compared to their healthy peers due to multiple restrictions in physical activities and therefore tend to have lower levels of physical activity compared with their peers. This paper describes the protocol for Move to Improve, a pragmatic trial of an individualised physical activity intervention for children with chronic health conditions.
This study investigated the effects of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) training on the mental health of gender and sexually diverse young adults (aged 18–25 years) in Australia. A single-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted in 2020–2022 comparing an online-delivered 8-week group MSC training program with a waitlist control.
The colonisation of Australia around 250 years ago left a significant enduring impact on the mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Vitamin D may play a role in modulating mental health as its receptors are present in the brain regions associated with mood and behaviour regulation.
Maternal mental health problems are common during the perinatal period and have been associated with several negative outcomes in children. However, few studies have examined the associations between maternal mental health problems and offspring outcomes among Indigenous people, and the findings across these studies have been inconsistent. This scoping review examined the birth and childhood (≤12 years) health and development outcomes of the children of Indigenous women with mental health problems.
Social disconnectedness and isolation are risk factors for poor mental health. Community-based friendship group interventions have been designed to increase an individual's social capital and consequently their mental wellbeing. Structured and unstructured friendship groups reflect two distinct approaches to friendship group interventions.
Many trans young people seek mental health support and gender-affirming medical interventions including puberty suppression, gender-affirming hormones and/or surgeries. Trans young people and their parents face multiple barriers in accessing gender-affirming care and mental health support, however little is known about the parent perspective on accessing services for their trans child.
The Healing Kids, Healing Families team strives to understand how trauma and adverse circumstances can impact a child and their family, and how we can help them to recover from these experiences.