National Commissioner Calls on Government to Create Federal Minister for Children

Children' advocate highlights how Australia pandemic response failed the country's children

Kids are going to need a lot of parental support and guidance to successfully process the last two years events. (fizkes/Shutterstock)

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s national children’s commissioner, Anne Hollonds, has called on the federal government to create a minister for children to help fight against problems in the sector of child welfare services.

Speaking to ABC Radio National’s Breakfast programme on Feb. 13, Hollonds said that she believed the reason Australia was struggling to handle issues like youth justice is that there is currently no coordinated effort across the government portfolios.

“We have a very, very complex and fragmented policy and services landscape that is not fit for purpose,” she said.

“It just in bits and pieces all over the place. So I really think one of the reasons why we’re having difficulty getting traction on some of the most difficult problems like child protection, youth justice crises and so forth is that we’re not getting coordinated effort across the core portfolios of health, education, social services, Indigenous Australians, etc.”

Hollonds is calling for the creation of a task force from across these portfolios and a dedicated minister for children to coordinate reform and create a national strategy for child wellbeing which she said is necessary after the severe pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic response.

“COVID really just amplified the failures in our systems that had existed before, and we heard that families with really serious concerns like suicidal kids [aged] 12 and under were unable to get health help in the public health system and were being sent away and told to find a private psychiatrist which really appalled me,” she said.

Hollonds noted that during a government-run consultation program for the federal government’s Safe and Supported framework, she discovered that children in Australia often faced complex sets of health, wellbeing, and educational problems, which she believes could have been avoided if Australia had developed a national strategy for child wellbeing.

“I think we would have done a lot better to avoid what we’re now seeing is health, wellbeing and learning problems for kids, especially those living with disadvantages, if we'd had a national strategy for child wellbeing, and that child wellbeing was more of a national priority in this country,” she said.

Children Forgotten in the Pandemic

The call from the commissioner comes after she chastised the Australian government’s COVID-19 response for forgetting about the needs of children.

“At that top level making all the decisions about COVID nationally, there was no chief paediatrician there,” Hollonds told The Age. “There was no one there whose job it was to think solely about the needs of children.

Holland noted that children who lived in poverty or had disabilities were significantly affected during the initial response phase, which left many suffering.

She also told The Age that she was “horrified and appalled” when pubs and restaurants were reopened before students were allowed to return to the classroom following the COVID-19 Delta wave of 2021.

During Australia’s pandemic response, children were forced to remain home from school and complete online learning programs. Lockdown measures also meant that children could not participate in normal socialisation activities like sports or visiting extended family.

According to a 2021-2022 survey undertaken by the Australian Human rights Commission of 4,559 Australian children during the pandemic, 41 percent or one in five children reported feeling more down, scared or worried than they used to.

Additionally, many were worried about their lack of social engagement, school, and contact with extended family and their friends. They also reported struggling with remote learning due to boredom, lack of learning supports, lack of structure, poor focus, and inaccessibility to digital technologies to support their learning.

Children’s Mental Health Issues Spiking

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) in December 2022 called for a child-centred COVID recovery task force to urgently deal with the increasing presentations of complex pandemic-related problems many children who endured the lockdowns are facing.

Victorian paediatricians say children in their state, which endured the world’s most extended period in lockdown, are still suffering the mental health impacts of the pandemic response.

“The pandemic has had devastating impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, and without proper attention and action, we will continue to see long-lasting impacts," Dr Niroshini Kennedy, paediatrician and president of the RACP Paediatrics and Child Health Division, said.

“We’re calling on the re-elected Victorian government to prioritise the mental health of our younger generations to give them the foundation to thrive into the future.”

The call from the RACP comes after a survey of 1,000 Australian psychologists, completed in November 2022, found a “shocking increase in mental illness” in Australian children as young as 18 months and as old as 18 years compared with two years ago.

In the youngest age group (18 months to 5 years), there was a sharp increase in separation anxiety disorder (36 percent increase over two years), ADHD (27 percent increase), generalised anxiety disorder (26 percent increase), Autism Spectrum Disorder (25 percent increase) and sleep concerns (23 percent increase).

Further, children aged 6-12 also showed a sharp rise in several mental illnesses and symptoms with social anxiety disorder (45 percent increase), ADHD (42 percent increase), peer relationship difficulties (39 percent increase), problematic screen use (36 percent increase) and educational and learning concerns (35 percent increase) the five largest increases.

Meanwhile, Australian kids aged 13-18 displayed the highest increases across most symptoms and illnesses, with depression rates increasing by 65 percent, social anxiety disorder by 60 percent, general anxiety disorder by 60 percent, suicidality or self-harm increasing by 50 percent and peer relationship difficulties by 48 percent.

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