Is a yawning budget surplus worth more than helping our kids when they cry out?
One of Australia’s leading mental and emotional health support networks is shockingly under-funded. Even more concerning is that children reaching out for help are being turned away. Where are our priorities, asks Madonna King
Just consider this for a moment. Every 80 seconds, a young person in Australia attempts to contact Kids Helpline. Every 80 seconds.
That’s devastating, and calls for an urgent rethink of how we deal with the problems facing our children.
But what’s worse is that every single day, almost 60 percent of those contacts go unanswered. That means that almost three in every five children seeking help were unable to get through to a counsellor last year.
And busy counsellors, who now deal with almost 400,000 children and young people in one year, are increasingly spending more than 44 minutes in an individual help contact session.
That picture, painted in Kids Helpline’s annual impact report, is utterly heart-breaking. But it also points to a serious problem that we are simply not addressing.
A mental health crisis exists amongst our children and young people, and yet the safety-net of youth mental health services in Australia – Kids Helpline – isn’t mentioned in Jim Chalmers’ budget.
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Not a headline. Not even a line that I could find, wading through hundreds and hundreds of pages of give-outs and take-aways.
And I’m flummoxed, because to give Labor its due, this Budget has been built around people, more than the economy. Jim Chalmers has personalised all the zeros economists talk about, and directed assistance where much of it is needed.
Except our children.
Is that because most are under 18, and not able to vote?
Surely not. Perhaps it’s because Kids Helpline doesn’t scream and carry banners onto Parliament House grounds and demand attention?
Surely not.
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But why is it that a Labor Government, knowing that serious mental health challenges – including suicide attempts, suicidal ideation and child abuse – are on the increase would not fill the coffers of an organisation like Kids Helpline.
For God’s sake, is a budget surplus worth more than a guarantee that a child seeking help will receive it?
During the pandemic, teachers reported that those children who put their hands up on screen, and asked questions or sought help, fared better.
That makes sense. We teach our children to seek help when they need it, to put their hand up and ask for help.
But we can’t do that, if only two in five children and young people are able to get through to a counsellor to talk about an issue so serious that it’s prompted them to pick up the phone and dial 1800 551 800.
Since 1991, Kids Helpline’s specialised counsellors have responded to more than 8.6 million requests from children aged five to 25. Sometimes the call comes in just after school, but it can lob at any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Increasingly – indeed now in two out of every three counselling sessions – those calls occur outside regular daytime hours.
These children are often at their wits’ end. They are not calling to ask for help on their homework. They are calling because they don’t know where else to turn. They are trying to talk to a counsellor to navigate bullying and isolation and perhaps family violence.
Some won’t have eaten that day, and don’t know when their next meal might be. Others don’t have a roof over their head. And just need the help of an adult.
Is that too much to ask; that a government ensure that a service like Kids Helpline – which would rival any of the nation’s best brands in reputation – is able to keep up with demand? And especially when that demand comes from our children – the nation’s best possible resource and our future.
Kids Helpline shouldn’t have to go begging for government funds. It shouldn’t even need to ask. The Government should see the value it offers, and shower it with the funding and resources and goodwill it needs to do its job.
Already, the community provides more than half of its annual funds. The Commonwealth provides 37 percent, the State grants nine percent, and corporate supporters put in the remaining two percent.
An unexpected surplus might be reason to rejoice. But for my vote, I’d rather a smaller surplus and a plumb budget for a service our children, and families across Australia, desperately need.
