Newsletter No. 60

This edition
2018 Winston Rickards Memorial Oration History Corner 2018 Newsletter items from ‘Emerging Minds’ News from National MH Commission
2018 WINSTON RICKARDS MEMORIAL ORATION “The prevention of mental health disorders in children.” Children have a much higher prevalence of mental health disorders than is generally acknowledged, and most adult disorders begin in childhood and adolescence.
The oration asserts that prevention of mental disorders in childhood would reduce the burden in the community more effectively than treatment programs for established disorders. It will explore strategies for prevention of mental disorders and promotion of a healthier society.
The Oration will be given by Dr Allan Mawdsley OAM, a child psychiatrist who was, for almost twenty years, the principal advisor on child and adolescent mental health services for the Victorian Government Department of Health.
The Oration will be held in the Ella Latham theatre at the Royal Children’s Hospital on Monday 26th March 2018 at 7.30pm.
HISTORY CORNER, 2018
Planning is underway for the celebration of eighty years of IACAPAP at the upcoming Congress in Prague in July 2018. An address will be given by Dr Helmut Remschmidt to celebrate this achievement, given the international association began just prior to the Second World War. At MHYF Vic we are hoping to contribute to this part of the Congress program in two ways: a paper presentation and the making of a gallery. Both would be directed toward celebrating the hundred years since the opening of the Judge Baker Clinic in April 2017.
We had hoped to be involved in celebrating the Judge Baker Centennial (as they called it), but the best we could arrange is internet access to the Judge Baker Gala Day website.There is a 4- minute video that presents their history. https://jbcc.harvard.edu/node/705
But, 1917 was the start of a decade of development in the child guidance movement in the United States. On the strength of the success of the Judge Baker, the Commonwealth Fund, a philanthropic fund established by the Harkness family, funded a series of child guidance Demonstration Projects across the United States. Most of them were started in 1922: St Louis, Missouri; Norfolk, Virginia; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Twin Cities, St Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cleveland, Ohio; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1927, a new set of projects were launched.
MHYF Vic’s Prague Congress address will be about recognizing the history of our field, not just IACAPAP. Similarly, the proposed gallery would document, through a series of posters, the history of particular clinics in various parts of the world. Invitations will be extended for contributions. lt is hoped that when 2022 arrives, IACAPAP will have presentations from each of the surviving Demonstration Project clinics.
Meanwhile, Dr Remschmidt would like to know about the history of clinics in as many countries as possible. MHYF Vic has supplied information about the clinic at the Children’s Hospital opened in 1928 by Dr John Williams. This will be presented in the next History Corner.
Those who receive this newsletter in Australia and in other places who would like to provide a history of the first child mental health clinic in their country, state, or city can contact me at jolyongrimwade@gmail.com or send information to Dr Remschmidt.
We are looking forward to the collection and collation of this historical data.
Jo Grimwade
Newsletter Items
An item from “Emerging Minds: 2017 November e-News edition.
The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health
Emerging Minds is proud to have partnered with the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), the Australian National University (ANU), the Parenting Research Centre (PRC) and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) to deliver the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health.
Each organisation brings significant expertise and skills to the project in areas such as research, evaluation, knowledge translation and of course, the development of top quality online courses, resources and information.
The Centre is your gateway to a range of great free, evidence-based resources, information, and innovative online training designed to support clinical and non-clinical professionals who work with children, with adults who are parents/carers, and/or with families to support infant and child mental health.
Our team of Child Mental Health Consultants (who we are currently recruiting) will work at a state and regional level to help organisations, team leaders and local champions with the uptake and implementation of the Centre’s workforce development learning products and resources.
Underpinning all this is an evaluation strategy designed to monitor, evaluate and support continuous improvement in the delivery of the project.
We hope you enjoy what the National Workforce Centre has to offer, we are certainly excited to be here! Each month we’ll bring you the latest updates on our work and new information and materials.
News from the National Mental Health Commission
The December newsletter reported on key achievements of the Mental Health Commission in 2017.
Some of the key outcomes of our work in 2017 include:

• We collaborated with mental health experts with a lived experience of mental illness and/or suicidality to co-design a new Consumer and Carer Engagement Project.
• We commenced the consultation process for a Monitoring and Reporting Framework on mental health and suicide prevention, seeking nation-wide input from those with lived experienced, carers and health workers.
• July saw the launch of Equally Well, which aims to improve the quality of life of people living with mental illness by providing equal access to quality health care.
• Housing, Homelessness and Mental Health workshops were held across Australia to gather stakeholder feedback on key issues for people with a mental illness when they attempt to secure housing.
• We released our final report on the Review of the services available to veterans and members of the Australian Defence Force in relation to the prevention of self-harm and suicide.
• We welcomed our new responsibility given to us by the Council of Australian Governments Health Council to monitor and report on the implementation of the Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan.
• And in August, the Minister for Health, The Hon Greg Hunt MP announced Lucy Brogden as our incoming Chair, to officially commence the role in February 2018, as well as other new Commissioners.

2017 MHYF Vic Committee
* President : Jo Grimwade * Vice-President : Jenny Luntz * Past President: Allan Mawdsley * Secretary : Celia Godfrey * Treasurer : Anne Booth * Membership Secretary:Kaye Geoghegan * Projects Coordinator, Kylie Cassar * WebMaster, Ron Ingram * Newsletter Editor, Allan Mawdsley * Youth Consumer Representative, vacant * Members without portfolio:
Suzie Dean, Miriam Tisher.
OUR UPDATED WEBSITE
After much thought our website has been significantly revised to give casual visitors immediate information about what we do and what we stand for, whilst at the same time allowing members to go straight to specific sections such as Projects or Newsletters or Events, without having to navigate past reams of information.
Now that the main revision has been implemented we are working on tasks of development of Projects to give us the evidence base for our advocacy. There are quite a few items under development at the present time which are not yet reflected in the website but over the next few months we expect to see a burgeoning of activity.
Visit us on mhyfvic.org