Ms Karla Charles:

I support what everybody else has said. As we are talking about early intervention, which is a must, we want to look at a requirement to focus on training. I refer to training across the board, particularly in respect of children in care. We are looking at supporting foster carers who do tremendous work but might be going through a difficult time and need extra support. Social workers should have adequate training in terms of giving mental health support. I would add to that the difficulty we currently have of a decreasing number of social workers. The young people do not even have that key consistent figure in their lives to whom they can turn in difficult times. As mentioned by others, there should be key designated people within schools who are trained and informed and to whom young people can go. They should not be guidance counsellors and should not stand out as somebody the students are going to because they have a problem with their mental health. We need to look at transition periods. For children in care, they include leaving care and going into after-care, and becoming a parent. Statistics show that the number of care leavers who become parents early in life is significant and this often creates trauma for them. The death of a parent is another transition period. All these factors contribute. Significant resourcing and training are needed, as is investment in data and research, which needs to be encouraged. We need to look creatively at big sister and big brother type programmes within the mental health context, for example, reaching out to people who have suffered from mental health problems in the past and may now be able to support a younger person. We should look creatively at doing this within communities. We would say the same for children in care. We should try to get people who have been in care to speak to them, encourage them and act as role models. As the Senator said, we need role models to speak out throughout society.