Our Vision

THE CHANGE CAN’T TAKE TEN YEARS, WHEN 10 DAYS IS TOO LONG FOR SOME

What If?

• What if we started listening to kids about what is important to them? What if we started having more conversations with them, including them and trusting them to tell us what they need and being prepared to learn from them?
• What if we stopped calling kids students, learners, patients, and consumers? And call them what they call themselves: kids.
• What if we recognised that essentially there is a power imbalance between adults and kids? And this affects every interaction and is deeply felt by kids. Ever been held down to have a naso-gastric tube or cannula placed? Or been rejected or forgotten by your community? (We’re talking here about school as community—the community that kids call theirs.)  And what if you had no power or means to change those things? Yes, this has everything to do with vulnerability and power.
• What if we see this conversation we are having here, and our work, through just one lens?  A child protection lens. Then we look at what we do, and don’t do, firstly in terms of do no harm.
• What if we started saving hearts and minds, as well as saving bodies?
• What if we stopped talking about what we are doing to help and start asking ourselves what is it that we are doing that is hurting?  “Doing” includes omissions and oversights. And if we faced the fact that if our “helping” is ineffective, the impact is not neutral—it can actually hurt by masking the problem.
• What if we moved beyond simply complying with codes of conduct to applying the ethics of child protection (and do no harm) to each and every interaction we have with kids and every decision we make.
• What if we stopped spinning our wheels on what we know works, instead of getting caught up in the rhetoric of innovation, the new program, the next agenda, being drawn in by a multitude of distractions?
• What if we were prepared to question the assumptions we make? Like, sick kids are not fit for their school. That assumption is simply an unhelpful extension of, “she’s not at school this week because she’s got the flu.”
• What if we watched for the halo effect and moved into constructive dissatisfaction. And bringing in critical investigation about what happens for these kids, because that should be added to the pictures of smiling sick kids we use to raise important funding. If we must do the latter, then we must pay it back by not simply settling for happy stories in the media and instead digging in to what really happens for them.
• What if we started seeing parents as experts on their kids? I know you’re probably saying, but some parents aren’t, can’t and some just don’t care. Then we need to listen carefully to those ones, too, because we’ll be learning a lot about what those kids need. And you might be hope personified for them.
• What if we viewed absence in the process as a trigger for inviting participation, viewed collaboration as more than a two-hour conversation, a memorandum of understanding, or an Individual Learning Plan?

Sustainable change (and political agitation) on wicked problems always comes from the people for whom it matters most (history says so). Because it doesn’t press, nor grind enough if you’re not living it. The challenge in this story, of course, is that the constituents are vulnerable kids and families whose circumstances tend to limit their energy and opportunity to have political influence.

• What if we got some basic agreement around definitions, so we start to move towards common language as a gateway to better understanding?
• What if in hospitals and schools we triaged kids for trauma, then put in place psychological first aid and built trauma-informed practice into our approach.  And we moved from “pathologising” and “determining” towards embracing capacity for change: believing in neural plasticity (brains, especially kids’ brains, are built to grow and rewire).
• What if hospitals and schools measured from a baseline for indicators in wellbeing, as well as clinical observations and academic scores? What if doctors’ rounds and visits asked about school attendance (hospital/home) and made kids’ connection to school and learning a priority in the total picture of their care? What if hospitals and schools triaged for risk based on the length and frequency of kids’ absence from school and responded?
• What if we asked ourselves every minute of every day, why am I doing this? And we could answer with confidence, every time: for the kids, in all ways and every way, for the kids. That’s child-centred practice.
• What if we asked why before how, and how before what? A sound process is important to the outcome.
• What if we could accept that it takes more than evidence to change behaviour? Behavioural change in adults (education and health practitioners, and parents). This is change in practice.

Practice is lagging behind the evidence — lived and studied. We must change that.

What we are fighting to achieve already sits in a legal framework in Australia, in the rhetoric of healthcare and education for all, in concepts of equity, access, inclusion, justice and indeed the rights of the child. But it’s just not being systematically practised, monitored, and regulated. The goodwill of individuals is necessary but not enough.

• What if we understood the power in getting it right for one kid? And know that the benefits from that would likely extend to at least one other, but probably many kids: a sibling or more, friends, school buddies, observers.
• What if we changed our organisations from the inside out, rather than waiting for permission?

And, finally, what if we shifted our view from tomorrow, to today?

We believe that everything about this endeavour should be about love. 
Love what we do, and do it with love!

So many kids rely on us for that.