Centring Child Wellbeing: Frank Oberklaid
Is it possible that reframed early learning can empower otherwise disadvantaged young people? Is there an opportunity to re-define schools as community hubs and social squares? Do teachers need to be an expert in mental health in order to improve wellbeing?
In this fifth episode of Education Transformed, Louka speaks with Frank Oberklaid, a pioneer and inspiring spark for early education geared directly at child wellbeing, with demonstrable results.
Professor Frank Oberklaid is the Foundation Director of the Centre for Community Child Healthhe Royal Children's Hospital – Melbourne, Co-Group Leader of Child Health Policy, Equity and Translation at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and an Honorary Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne.
He is a highly regarded specialist paediatrician and brings a wealth of skills to his work and is an internationally recognised researcher, author, lecturer and consultant, and has written two books and over 200 scientific publications on various aspects of paediatrics.
Check out this season’s partner publication: https://www.diplomaticourier.com/issue/transformed-the-case-for-education-transformation
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00:00:04:14 - 00:00:30:02
Louka
Hello and welcome to the Learning Future podcast. I'm your host, Louka Perry, and today it's my absolute delight to be speaking with Professor Frank Oberklaid. He is the foundation director of the Center for Community Health Child Health at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria. And he's also the co group leader of Child Health Policy, Equity and translation at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and also an honorary professor of pediatrics at the University of Melbourne.
00:00:30:11 - 00:00:55:07
Louka
He's a highly regarded specialist, pediatrician and has an enormous wealth of expertise and knowledge that he brings to his work, and he's also an internationally recognized researcher, author, lecturer and consultant. Having written two books and over a couple of hundred scientific publications for good measure on all various aspects of pediatrics, but increasingly also the convergence of health and education.
00:00:56:05 - 00:00:59:01
Louka
Frank, it's a delight to have you here today to speak with you.
00:00:59:12 - 00:01:01:03
Frank
Thank you, Luke. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:01:01:22 - 00:01:08:11
Louka
So I'm really looking forward to our chat. My first question always is what's something that you've been learning recently?
00:01:08:14 - 00:01:36:06
Frank
Frank I think it's something that I sort of knew that it's just come to me so strongly in the last few years of the absolute central role of schools with children. I think my whole career I've spent working with teachers around assessment of children with school difficulties and looking at school health. And so I've learned a lot from educators and school leadership, first of all, in the States and certainly here.
00:01:36:08 - 00:02:05:10
Frank
But I think because of our work and particularly amplified by COVID, it's just really struck me very powerfully just how crucial teachers role is in the development of children, in the development of learning and self-esteem and motivation, and indeed setting the foundation for what they're going to be like in the future. And I think that is probably made by people who may not always have appreciated the role of teachers.
00:02:06:06 - 00:02:34:03
Frank
Now appreciate it the same. All the the challenges teachers and schools have gone through, they've just been smashed by COVID and closures and home learning, and then they've had to be so nimble and so flexible and so many teachers have gone so out of their way to make a difference to their kids. So I hope there's a new appreciation of the community just how important teachers are.
00:02:34:14 - 00:03:03:03
Louka
Yeah, I think also, Frank, that that piece around parents in particular during home learning, for example, which most of the world experienced, the whole of the world, this idea that we they saw how complex learning can be and that kind of pulled back the curtain on what is going on in our in our schools, you know developmental continua and you know, different types of learning and how to stay engaged, how to engage your kids at home, your two or three children that learn a class of 25.
00:03:03:15 - 00:03:24:23
Louka
And so, yeah, I think it's a beautiful reflection to it's to start up and obviously in your journey as well as as kind of a specialist pediatrician now working and you know for quite a number of decades a policy level what's the big idea that you've been exploring that you think is really interesting for us at this moment when we think about education, ecosystems and or the health learning next system.
00:03:25:03 - 00:03:26:02
Louka
However, you might frame that.
00:03:26:22 - 00:03:54:18
Frank
I think the big shift later in the last five or ten years has been, again, an appreciation of schools as a platform for building resilience, addressing mental health issues at an early stage, and teachers now certainly compared to a decade ago, would say that addressing child mental health is central to their role. I think a decade ago many teachers would have said, Yeah, it's not my responsibility.
00:03:54:23 - 00:04:19:22
Frank
I'm not a mental health specialist, I've got enough work to do. I just need to be teaching in the classic academic subjects. I think now the vast majority of teachers would tell you that they can see that very strong link between mental health and wellbeing and learning. The two go together. How to separate a child in struggling at school inevitably is going to have a drop in self-esteem and anxious and the other way around.
00:04:19:23 - 00:04:44:13
Frank
A child just and can't concentrate is going to have difficulty with learning. So I think schools and teachers and now appreciate that in a way that perhaps they did ten years ago. I think the other thing is that a lot of the stigma around mental health generally has dissipated. Certainly in adults. You know, we see sports stars and movie stars having a mental health break.
00:04:44:13 - 00:05:05:05
Frank
There's a willingness now to talk about that mental health and wellbeing in a way that certainly wasn't a while ago. I think adolescence more so. And again, that's been amplified by COVID child mental health for a long time. I used to describe it as the elephant in the room, but I've got a great slide and I use my talks of an elephant in the room.
00:05:05:05 - 00:05:34:16
Frank
It's sort of like getting child mental health and policy agenda has been a real clinical interest. I say to people, I've got a very impressive CV of failed advocacy in child mental health, and I think that has changed thankfully in the last decade. I think people now do realize that children have real mental health issues. Many people know the data that suggest that more than half of adult mental health problems begin before the age of 14.
00:05:34:16 - 00:06:00:24
Frank
And there's a new renewed emphasis on the importance of building resilience in kids on prevention and early intervention. And again, schools are the ideal platform for that because everybody goes to school. It's an ideal universal platform. It's not stigmatizing. And really importantly, we have skilled professionals observing children in multiple functions in the classroom, in the playground with their peers.
00:06:01:08 - 00:06:05:23
Frank
So it's their perfect platform for addressing mental health issues in schools.
00:06:06:07 - 00:06:27:03
Louka
MM Frank, take, take me into this, into the sort of how we support educators to do that because I know you've been, you and colleagues have been working on a in a quasi experimental class to study and because a lot of educators don't receive or at least I didn't as an educator, receive that kind of training at school without doing kind of a student wellbeing or counselor degree alongside.
00:06:27:03 - 00:06:44:18
Louka
So how might we use that universal platform, as you say, to try to equip educators themselves to be better prepared for this? Do we need paraprofessionals alongside or other health experts? How do we think eco systemically about this? What have you discovered so far, I guess, in this investigation?
00:06:45:07 - 00:07:14:17
Frank
Well, a number of things. I think that the change in attitude by teachers is really profound. They'll say, yes, they recognize child mental health is key. In the next breath, many of them will say, but I don't have the training or the expertise. I don't have good time and have the resources, etc.. So when when I looked around to see where I could make a difference in child mental health, child mental health is such a broad and diverse landscape.
00:07:15:06 - 00:07:46:11
Frank
And again, child mental health is different from adult mental health. Adult mental health is mainly diagnose and treat. When we look at child mental health, we look at it through a much broader lens. First of all, a developmental lens, but also a child and family lens, which then tells us that child mental health starts in the family and then rolls out into all the places that young children make contact with, with professionals, early childhood centers, kindergartens, preschools, community nurses and so on.
00:07:47:05 - 00:08:13:08
Frank
And we started schools, as I said before, because that's the ideal platform. And we wanted to get away from another program that schools a traditionally hundreds of programs to choose from. You had a online directory of well over 200 is a real mixture of good ones and poor ones and shoddy ones and snake oil ones, etc. So I didn't want another program.
00:08:13:17 - 00:08:42:16
Frank
I wanted something that was sustainable. And so we set around, we set about building capacity in schools, and that is building the capacity of teachers and the school community to be able to address mental health issues over a long period of time. So we spent about nine months listening endless cups of coffee with takeholders, people like yourself, teachers, school leadership, educational policy, people.
00:08:42:16 - 00:09:02:14
Frank
We looked at the literature, we looked at what was happening in other areas and from the outset we sort of co-design this. This is a model that I really didn't want people to see that was imposed from the outside. I wanted schools to own this. And to a large extent that's happened because their input in their co-design was so essential.
00:09:03:00 - 00:09:27:21
Frank
So what we did was we devised a new role in schools that we called the Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator involved for short. We take an experienced teacher and we train them to go into the into schools and play that role. So we've got a very strong partnership with Melbourne Graduate School of Education. They designed the training program for us.
00:09:27:21 - 00:10:01:02
Frank
It's evidence based, it's very experiential. It draws on the teachers own experience because really it's they know these kids. Yeah, they've known them for years as they did in the classroom. So we try to get away from this expert model and empower teachers to have the confidence that they're the expert, they know what to do. And then we applied for funding to a prominent philanthropic, philanthropic organization, and then that was matched by the Department of Education and Training in Victoria.
00:10:01:14 - 00:10:28:09
Frank
And it was interesting during our interview with the philanthropic foundation, I asked this again and again, Why a teacher, Why are we training a teacher for this new role in schools? Why not a psychologist? Because these kids have mental health problems. And the answer was twofold. One was, well, first, there aren't enough psychologists to go around. And secondly, we wanted a teacher so they that he or she would become part of the skills structure.
00:10:28:09 - 00:10:52:07
Frank
We wanted them to be owned by the school. And the other thing is that children don't present with a stamp on their foreheads saying mental health problem. They're often associated problems like learning difficulties and social relationships that teachers have the expertise to sort of sort out. So the first year we did feasibility a feasibility study of ten schools just to see whether it would work.
00:10:52:07 - 00:11:24:24
Frank
The feedback was really very positive, but you would need 26 schools and controls. And so we began a definitive evaluation and I'll come back to that in a moment that was very, very positive. This year we're doing 100 schools and a couple of months ago, the Minister for Education announced a $200 million grant to roll it out to every primary school in Victoria over the next four years and go evaluation data are really interesting.
00:11:24:24 - 00:11:48:09
Frank
And let me just give you some highlights that 95% of the teachers told us they had increased. Consider in dealing with mental health issues. The same percentage felt that the school's capacity to address mental health had improved significantly during COVID, when we all know the children's mental health problems went through the roof.
00:11:48:09 - 00:11:48:18
Louka
Yeah.
00:11:49:00 - 00:11:51:11
Frank
In our schools they stayed the same.
00:11:51:11 - 00:11:51:19
Louka
Oh.
00:11:52:02 - 00:12:13:04
Frank
There was no increase. So there's some very promising data. So and I guess that gave the government the confidence to roll it out. So it's very important for us to state this is not the answer. We're not saying this is the, you know, the gold standard diamond tip claim that it's going to solve everybody's problems. But we know we've got something that does make a difference.
00:12:13:04 - 00:12:37:11
Frank
So it seems to make a difference. Secondly, we're trying to get away from that expert model, as I mentioned before, and so far, the feedback from the middle of moving co-ordinators from the schools themselves and principals is that schools and teachers feel really empowered and we do ongoing communities of practice where a cluster of schools come together and they present to each other.
00:12:38:06 - 00:12:57:23
Frank
And I've been the facilitator at a number of those and honestly I think I had 5% in value. They started talking about among themselves we had a child like that. If you tried X, Oh, that's a good idea. So when we create this space and and we have the confidence that teachers know the answer, they just rise to the occasion.
00:12:57:23 - 00:13:01:02
Frank
They just I'm in awe of some of those teachers. Honestly, I am.
00:13:01:15 - 00:13:10:11
Louka
Wow, Frank, that's so good. I love that it's now going to be a state wide approach. I mean, how many primary schools are there in Victoria?
00:13:10:20 - 00:13:11:10
Frank
800.
00:13:11:18 - 00:13:13:20
Louka
Okay. Well, okay, so from.
00:13:15:00 - 00:13:15:20
Frank
1800.
00:13:16:02 - 00:13:49:21
Louka
I seen on Facebook now, in fact, that's I mean, what an amazing approach. And I guess this shows the power of doing a study like this. It provides the evidence to an innovative innovation effectively, and therefore, the confidence for policymakers to say, well, we can see how powerful this this initiative is. And I would like you, Frank, just to give us a bit more of an understanding about the difference between mental health and and wellbeing, because often I think when we say mental health, we mean mental ill health or mental, you know, flourishing.
00:13:49:21 - 00:14:08:06
Louka
So and I'd love you to take us into that. And even the kind of the conceptual grounding on which you've you've been supporting these educators, you know, that the idea of there being a spectrum of, you know, between struggling, coping and thriving and so love you just take us through that a little bit more because I think you've done such wonderful work.
00:14:08:06 - 00:14:38:07
Frank
Yeah, conceiving that look, language is a major issue, as you know. And I hate the term mental health because many people default from mental health to mental illness to hydrate, to diagnosis, to drugs. You know, when I went on drugs and there's a huge stigma attached to as well for and that's one of the differences again, between child mental health and adult mental health that we can speak of adult mental illness or depression or anxiety, pretty clear cut diagnosis is.
00:14:38:09 - 00:15:06:00
Frank
But when we talk about kids, we don't talk about disorders. I really want to move away from that diagnostic approach. If I read anywhere in a report or here anything this child does not meet criteria for, you know, it just drives me nuts. So we want to get a move away from that diagnostic approach. And so often the child doesn't get services or is not eligible for support unless he or she meets criteria for a diagnosis.
00:15:06:15 - 00:15:36:23
Frank
So we wanted to change that whole paradigm and try and address mental health the language at the same time. So we conceived of a continuum which reflects child development so much more, and I'll come back and talk to you about that in a moment. And we spend a whole year coming out with four anchor points. We've just finished that work and the four anchor points are good coping, struggling and overwhelmed for simple words.
00:15:36:23 - 00:16:01:24
Frank
And there's a traffic light color gradients and there's an emoji of a smiling face and that worried face, etc., etc.. So we want all children to have good mental health, obviously, to to, you know, to be well, inevitably because of the transitions we know and normal part of life, children are going to have little hiccups and we hope that they'll cope with those.
00:16:02:01 - 00:16:41:09
Frank
And the role of parents and teachers and other adults is to help build resilience and help children cope with the vicissitudes of life. But inevitably, there are going to be children that will will struggle. And I think the role of educators and the role of parents and the role of other adults in that child's life, whether they're sports coaches or whoever, is to identify those kids that are struggling and put scaffolding around and support them to get them back to coping and trying to avoid kids being overwhelmed where yeah, many of those will need referral, will need a diagnosis, you know, will need treatment.
00:16:42:09 - 00:17:09:18
Frank
So that has a number of advantages. One is that is away from diagnosis. I think it reduces stigma because I can imagine parents saying to their friends, my child is struggling rather than I'm worried about my child has an anxiety disorder or is depressed. Yeah, it creates opportunities then for prevention, early intervention, it moves the whole pendulum more towards prevention rather than treatment, and it reduces stigma.
00:17:10:02 - 00:17:28:05
Frank
You know, parents are much more likely to accept it. Teachers really like it because they didn't have to try and make a diagnosis either. All they have to do is recognize this child is struggling and get some advice about what to do and often don't know what to do. But the other exciting thing is it works for teachers as well.
00:17:28:21 - 00:17:56:07
Frank
You know, lots of teachers. We had a research meeting this afternoon and the woman who runs our training program pointed to the rating of the grade. She said, I'm over here today. She was overwhelmed. You know, she's got teaching responsibilities and papers to write, etc.. But it works for families, too, so that if you're a professional whose job it is to work with families, you can detect those families that are struggling.
00:17:56:16 - 00:18:18:10
Frank
You don't need to know why scratch that. You can refer them to somebody that can sort things out. And it's interesting, when I presented this work to the CEO of one of the large philanthropic who funded the evaluation, he got it straightaway. He said, Yeah, I get that. He said, My father died a few months ago and I was really struggling with the passage of time.
00:18:18:10 - 00:18:41:10
Frank
I'm coping. So it just reflects everyday normal function. It sort of normalizes children's wellbeing and mental health and reflects the way they function. We all have good days, bad days, so the other problem with diagnosis is once you label a child, he or she stays in that diagnostic box so often.
00:18:41:10 - 00:18:42:05
Louka
That, yeah.
00:18:42:18 - 00:19:07:05
Frank
The children will move in and out of coping, struggling, doctor coping, etc. like before an exam, for example. Or if there's a bereavement in the family or for whatever reason, they'll struggle for a while but then move back to coping. Yeah, that's the way we want it to be. So it reflects child development. So getting back to your question about mental health and wellbeing, I hate the term mental health.
00:19:08:04 - 00:19:41:02
Frank
I always use it with and wellbeing. I think we've racked our brains to think of a better term and we we can figure it out. And professionals sometimes used as social emotional wellbeing or social and emotional development, but that's sort of jargony. Ten different professionals will define that in different ways. So I think we've landed on mental health and wellbeing, but we're qualified with caveats that what we want to do is to sort of normalize daily behavior.
00:19:41:02 - 00:19:44:21
Frank
We want to normalize child development.
00:19:44:21 - 00:19:59:20
Louka
Frank I'm just so taken by what the continuum I think is just such a powerful way of understanding, learning, let alone and life, really. I mean, that that all of us can understand that we many of us have coped and struggled throughout the pandemic, and I'm sure many of us have also felt overwhelmed.
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:00:18
Frank
Absolutely.
00:20:00:18 - 00:20:34:13
Louka
So this idea of being able to use strategies to move us between those different spaces. And so I guess my my next question to you is how I mean, obviously these communities of practice are functioning incredibly well across the 100 schools that are operating under this model and frankly, transforming the learning environments because there is now, I think, an appropriate amount of attention paid to to get the social and the emotional development alongside the cognitive development of our young people.
00:20:34:13 - 00:20:52:03
Louka
And so what kind of strategies are you have you deploy now? How have you decided upon, you know, the kind of kernels of practice that my support, you know, particularly it sounds like to me this is this is not tier three or tier two and tier and this is tier one. This is for all students at all times.
00:20:52:03 - 00:21:14:23
Louka
And therefore also for the adults that work in these environments. Because, you know, the connection between student wellbeing and staff wellbeing I think is a and interesting one for us to discuss also. So I guess my question to use, what kind of strategies are being utilized? Are you seeing how you do have how have you determined what these coordinators can support within the communities, the learning communities?
00:21:15:07 - 00:21:44:10
Frank
And we've been fairly loose on that because we're in pains for this not to be a top down model. So we do have a job description that we've left to the schools themselves and the coordinators themselves, details of what they're going to do day to day. We did do a job analysis some earlier this year and there was a bit of variability, but there was not much time spent on individual consultation, which was very pleasing.
00:21:44:19 - 00:22:17:02
Frank
We are we conceptualize their role is threefold. One was to work with a classroom teacher to help them identify kids that were starting to struggle and to support them in dealing with just day to day classroom issues. Secondly, to be a resource for the school. And that had two components. One was to help build a whole of school approach to wellbeing that they need to be a resource for the teachers themselves, which they had a child worried about, or parents they couldn't engage, they could speak to the coordinator and get some advice.
00:22:17:05 - 00:22:56:23
Frank
And thirdly, to be a liaison between the school and the community. So to build relationships with the referral agencies for those kids that do need support outside the school, for the kids that are overwhelmed, for the co-ordinator to build a directory either formally or informally of the various community resources that these children can be referred to the exact way they did that we were pretty open about, we know this program, fidelity around the training and around the role itself, but we wanted schools to be able to adapt according to their particular needs.
00:22:57:09 - 00:23:18:18
Frank
The other pleasing feature was the extent to which the coordinators are working in very well with welfare coordinators, with other school resources. In almost all instances anecdotally, that formed a really good team and again met the goal that we wanted for schools, and that is to increase their capacity to deal with these particular issues.
00:23:19:02 - 00:23:38:08
Louka
Yeah, Frank, it's really interesting the idea of what we're tight on, what we lose on. I think it's such an interesting piece because, you know, often context is queen and the minute you do kind of program that ties something to, you know, it loses kind of the essence of of being able to be coauthored and co-owned, I guess.
00:23:38:08 - 00:24:07:20
Frank
And then the other thing that helped a lot, Lucas started interrupted his childhood in Victoria. We've got a framework for improving school and school outcomes, which has been around for a long, long time and traditionally focused on reading, writing, medicine, etcetera, with a little bit of fine print around wellbeing. And that was revised earlier this year to give student wellbeing equal weight with academic achievement.
00:24:08:10 - 00:24:44:04
Frank
And then for me as a non educator, the impact of that is impossible to underestimate. It's just an extraordinary difference. And what is even more impressive is the reception it receives by schools themselves. So the Minister for Education, who is just announced his retirement from politics, from politics, which is a terrible shame that he conceived of it. And I had the privilege of being the only there was a sort of quote unquote expert group, even though I hate that term, allied to working with free educators.
00:24:44:04 - 00:25:08:22
Frank
And I learned so much on the process about, again, how to conceptualize that. But the importance of language, you know, we struggled for hours trying to get the right words. And so the SISO has made an enormous difference in getting to change the culture of schools around the importance of children's wellbeing. So it's a radical shift in thinking and a very enlightened public policy.
00:25:09:07 - 00:25:37:23
Louka
I think. Well, I completely agree with you, Frank, and I think just so listeners understand what's happened here is that the kind of articulation of what schools are for has been updated to a version 2.0 in which Frank and another very esteemed colleagues, Professor Helen Cahill, for example, and others, are also set up and change their conception of what success is in school, to be beyond academics, to have kind of academic achievement and well-being equally weighted.
00:25:38:08 - 00:26:09:02
Louka
And that is a transformative system articulation, I would say. And I think it's wonderful that it's happened. Frank I really do. And I feel, as you say, the kind of the permission that gives educators and school leaders in particular to go, oh, well, actually this is we now have the permission, even though, you know, we've all been trying to do this work for a long time in schools, clearly it that shift, that shift in a couple of length, the language changing, I think, really does unlock, you know, a broader conception of what schools are for.
00:26:09:12 - 00:26:10:23
Frank
It becomes core business, doesn't it?
00:26:11:10 - 00:26:12:07
Louka
Absolutely.
00:26:12:17 - 00:26:36:18
Frank
Is to major challenges that we're seeing and I'm sure you are seeing as well. Yeah, but what is the particular needs of rural and remote schools? For a number of a number of reasons, the workforce. The workforce is they're in cities either this huge problems of access and equity that even when there are well trained professionals in the local community is stigma.
00:26:36:18 - 00:27:03:04
Frank
Everybody knows each other in a small school, etc. So there's special needs and we've then some feasibility around telehealth support for a community and practice of rural schools and how you also face significant social problems and families in every one of the cases I presented had significant family issues as well. So it's all very well for us to train them up in children's mental health and wellbeing.
00:27:03:04 - 00:27:05:10
Frank
But many of these schools need a social worker as well.
00:27:05:17 - 00:27:06:12
Louka
Yes, I.
00:27:06:12 - 00:27:37:20
Frank
Guess that's the first thing. The second is the referral system outside the school, the community system of mental health and wellbeing supports and diagnosis is a mess. It's extraordinary fragmented. There are workforce issues everywhere you look, shortages of pediatricians, psychologists, speech pathologist, i.t, psychiatrists. So even when the people are there, it is problems of access, 6 to 12 month waiting lists, long waiting lists at all and problems of equity.
00:27:37:20 - 00:28:02:09
Frank
So there are very few publicly funded services. So parents are faced with a gap, a financial gap that many of them, particularly those families doing it tough, just can't meet. Mhm. So I think there are two major challenges that policymakers really have to deal with rural, remote and that access inequity to community agencies.
00:28:02:18 - 00:28:30:21
Louka
Mm. Fantastic. But Frank, I'd love for us to, you know, as we have this conversation today and with we can engage in some foresight, you know, if we think about education transformation, which is the focus of this series, you know, and the idea actually of us bringing in a different understanding, an integrated understanding, supporting educators around mental health and wellbeing with young people being prevention is not into interventionist.
00:28:30:21 - 00:29:00:16
Louka
Where do you think the future is going? If we were to, you know, if we were to you were to provide a vision for trend, the transformation of an education system, you know, in ten years time or so, what do you think it could look like based on what your own journey as a pediatrician, your expertise and I will use that deliberately in early childhood in particular, and your advocacy in that space, and also this convergence of bringing schools together with kind of the mental health wellbeing ecosystem.
00:29:00:16 - 00:29:01:03
Frank
Well.
00:29:02:07 - 00:29:05:05
Louka
There's no question, you know, just redesign the whole thing, you know.
00:29:05:12 - 00:29:32:10
Frank
But it is I know in an ideal world you have more kind vocation, obviously. You know, I'd love to see early childhood centers link to schools to because a transition into school for some kids, for vulnerable kids is often challenging. So I'd like to see a totally seamless transition from a policy point of view, from a service point of view, from a geographic point of view between early years and schools.
00:29:33:09 - 00:29:54:15
Frank
I guess that's the first thing. And we don't have the luxury of building new facilities everywhere. But if we can, if they can be physically co-located, let's try and virtually co-locate them in some way, right? So that schools develop close relationships with preschool teachers and early educators in the catchment areas where we know the kids are going to be going.
00:29:54:23 - 00:30:19:10
Frank
I guess that's the first thing for primary teachers to learn more about early years and early years to know what's going to happen in prep and grade one, etc. so that becomes effortless and seamless. The other thing is to re-imagine the school as not just a place to teach kids, but as a community, have it as a core social centers because most schools are open, but 9 to 4, five days a week during terms.
00:30:19:12 - 00:30:46:08
Frank
Yeah, yeah. And there's meeting facilities, sports facilities, classrooms, all some of them have it even better facilities. Imagine if we could somehow open that up so would become a real focus of the whole community. With cloud after hours classes after hours, use of the various facilities, teaching English as a second language, you know, a million things that you could use that space for.
00:30:46:08 - 00:31:20:13
Frank
Yeah, if you could overcome the fragmentation of who's in charge and what if something goes wrong, etc., etc.. Thirdly, I'd like to see more and more co-location of the sort of professionals that can support teachers and schools, speech pathologist, psychologists, pediatricians, GP's, etc. to make better seamless as well. And again, we can rebuild schools where we do have greenfield sites, where there are developing communities, where there is the potential then to build a new school.
00:31:20:22 - 00:31:49:11
Frank
Let's think outside the box. Don't build a traditional school. Build a school as a community hub and co-locate all those children and family services in one place. But until we get to that ideal, how can we develop a virtual one stop shop? How can we develop these virtual services? And again, there's a lot of work to be done in community services around the fragmentation and improve coordination.
00:31:49:23 - 00:32:12:09
Frank
So I think that work needs to be done. But I think schools can play a role in that. I think schools can have glue together some of those fragmented community agencies. So I guess my vision is of redefining a school as a community hub or a core social center of that community, a gathering place, a village square, if you like.
00:32:12:09 - 00:32:13:03
Louka
Yeah, I like that.
00:32:13:09 - 00:32:40:06
Frank
And then having a child run this seamless journey from attendance at an early childhood center into school, those kids that needed support outside the school can be referred in a totally accessible and equitable way without waiting lists, without costs to services that will support them. And we'll support teachers and all that to be sort of integrated in a really good policy framework.
00:32:42:02 - 00:32:42:16
Frank
That's not to.
00:32:43:03 - 00:33:04:10
Louka
Sign me up, Frank. I mean, I think I think what we're seeing, it's a wonderful vision for the future. And I'm sure, you know, as an aspiring futurist, you know, the future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed. I'm sure there are lot houses or little sparks of these practices happening in pockets around this country and around the world.
00:33:04:19 - 00:33:22:17
Frank
But there was one happening. I spent quite a few years in Boston, as you know, and it happened there in the late seventies when the Brookline early education system enrolled children at school in the last trimester of mother's pregnancy.
00:33:23:06 - 00:33:23:15
Louka
Wow.
00:33:23:24 - 00:33:51:10
Frank
So when the mother was pregnant, got to third trimester, went to the school and filled in all the forms and from that moment on, the unborn, unborn child started his or her education. And from then on there was a support system Information Early Learning Center for those for those young children struggling developmentally. They were professionals. They had to do assessments, provide an intervention.
00:33:51:10 - 00:33:56:05
Frank
It was there for decades ago. So that made it reinventing that in some way.
00:33:56:21 - 00:34:31:04
Louka
Remembering maybe Frank, as much as we see. Well, wonderfully put. Yeah. This one thing that I realized, Frank, as a as a community principal, you know, in a in a remote setting was, you know, we thought we were a K-12 site and then actually we realized we were pre-birth to pathway. And that was a really different conception, particularly working with our, you know, child Well, we had a CAFS nurse in a child and family health center, and so they would come out and support expectant mothers, you know, new fathers, new mothers through a whole range of work.
00:34:31:11 - 00:34:38:01
Louka
And yeah, really thinking about the ecosystem or the ecological model here, all the different aspects that contribute to the growth.
00:34:38:01 - 00:34:41:20
Frank
And to be a great model was that sustained? Is it does it still continue?
00:34:42:03 - 00:35:05:19
Louka
It's a really great question. I think it's still in play. And the CAF support was instrumental for me as an educator and education leader, having a health specialist. And of course this was a remote setting. So we also had the clinic literally 30 meters across from the school. So, you know, we had this relationship with our nurses as well through the indigenous run and on a per health organization.
00:35:05:19 - 00:35:30:21
Louka
So yeah, a really powerful model. But the shift for was my own mindset on what schools are for, and I guess that's what you've taken us through with Faiza with this wonderful work that you're also doing across soon to be 1800 schools. Frank So that's wonderful, you know, the downside of success. But in all seriousness, it's just a wonderful piece of work and it's great to see you pushing this in there in Victoria.
00:35:31:05 - 00:35:50:11
Louka
My final question to you, Frank, is based on everything you've shared with us and your vantage point, you know, this health education nexus in policy, pediatrics, what's your take home message for our listeners today?
00:35:50:11 - 00:36:20:03
Frank
I would like to see an appreciation by policymakers of just how important those years at school are. I think coded people like to say we sacrifice the health and wellbeing of children in the interests of broader society. We start kids going to school, for example, home learning. Some kids did well, some kids did poorly. But we took the lessons away from what's best for kids towards best for society.
00:36:20:10 - 00:36:52:04
Frank
I think it's time to repay the kids and I would like to see a sustained focus not just on early years, but on those early school years as well, because that really does set the foundation for future development. And even if you don't care about kids, it's a compelling economic argument. There's such strong evidence around, like course, that if you get those early years right, the first five, eight years of school, you set kids off on a trajectory that gives them the very best chance of ultimate success.
00:36:52:16 - 00:37:12:06
Frank
And a success for society means reduced rates of adult health problems, mental health problems, gainful employment, increased productivity, more taxes, close the prisons. It just goes on and on and on. And my view is you can be exposed to that research and continue business as usual.
00:37:12:09 - 00:37:12:18
Louka
Yeah.
00:37:13:02 - 00:37:38:00
Frank
And my pessimism is that we expose policymakers to this for two decades, and it's largely business as usual. So I hope really is that that'll start to change. And it's the perfect bipartisan issue that politics will do this because it's the right thing to do for kids. The right side of politics that's always concerned about budgets and spending money will do it because it makes economic sense.
00:37:38:14 - 00:37:59:22
Frank
So I think there are two complementary agendas. You know, one is we should do this because it makes economic sense. It's the right thing to do. Secondly, is the ethical one, knowing what kids need and what the risk factors are and knowing how we can address those risk factors and make sure kids fulfill their potential. It's unethical not to do that.
00:38:01:03 - 00:38:21:24
Louka
Oh, Frank, it's just so wonderful to speak with you again. And I have to say, I just continue to learn so much from our conversation. So thank you for joining us for this Learning Future podcast today. But more importantly, even though you spoke about that, that failed a failed CV of advocacy, you know, the times it works, you're really making an impact.
00:38:21:24 - 00:38:25:04
Louka
And so thank you for your continued and sustained effort for young people.
00:38:25:13 - 00:38:34:16
Frank
Thank you. There has been a pleasure.