“UNDERSTANDING GENDER DIVERSITY IN THE YOUNG:
Becoming me…pathways for gender diverse young children and adolescents: with families, teachers and health professionals supporting healthy, positive development”
Presented by: A/Prof Campbell Paul, Dr Felix McMillan and a person of Lived Experience. Chaired by: Dr Rob Gordon
We are all learning about who we are across the course of life. For many gender diverse young people, there are additional societal
stresses and hurdles, and family and sometimes professionals may be able to help. Studies show that in any school there are at least two young people in every hundred who are gender diverse.
Being transgender or gender diverse is not a mental health problem, but discriminatory social structures can alienate young people, causing significant distress; even wellintended attitudes, words and actions can undermine a child’s core sense of self and autonomy.
Services supporting young people and protecting their mental health can provide crucial opportunities for them and their families to safely talk together about experiences of self and identity. This and a supportive school environment can help improve mental health outcomes.
A range of counselling, healthcare services and mental health clinicians can support young people and their families in accessing specialist Gender Services, which may include medical treatment options. This workshop will provide a safe place for participants to ask questions and for some thoughtful discussion with the presenters and each other.
Presented by Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists Associate
Professor Campbell Paul and Dr Felix McMillan of the Royal Children’s Hospital, together with a person with lived experience, it will be chaired by Clinical Psychologist Dr Rob Gordon.
Saturday 29th March: 9.00am-1.00pm
Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne
(room location notified March 28th to
Registrants)
Cost: $90 – includes Morning Tea
REGISTER EARLY at Try Booking
“THE STATE AS THE CORPORATE PARENT: RAISING OR MANAGING?
How to turn around the ‘post care’ life trajectories of Young People raised in State Care”
Delivered by Paul McDonald, CEO of Anglicare, Victoria; Founding Chair of the successful ‘Home Stretch’ campaign; Winner of the ‘Pro Bono Judges Choice Award for Influence’, Pro Bono Impact 25 Awards.
Young People transitioning out of State Care are arguably the most disadvantaged and affected of all cohorts across our health, social care, and welfare systems. Rarely described as a single identified group, young care leavers (post care), are overrepresented in all the wrong places – in homelessness, suicidal ideation, unemployment, teenage pregnancy, mental health, intergenerational care and poverty.
Downstream costs to Government in responding to the care leaver have been recorded by Deloitte Access Economics as being in the billions, and this just represents those aged between 18 and 21 years. Yet a childhood being raised in State Care doesn’t have to have such poor ‘post care’ outcomes.
The Oration will argue that if the State viewed its obligations differently as the ‘Corporate Parent’, then life chances, life expectations and life trajectories for the young care leaver would change dramatically, as would those for the families that they in turn will raise.
7.30 pm Monday 14th April 2025
Ian Potter Auditorium,
Kenneth Myer Building, 30 Royal Pde, Parkville, Melbourne (next to Dr Dax Cafe) – onsite carpark
Please Register with $22.00 payment by 11th April 2025 via Try Booking
MHYFVic members propose to present the case for a national body representing the interests of young people and their families in the mental health advocacy field because we have consistently been sidelined by the adult “noisy wheels”.
Poster below
Mental Health for the Young & their Families in Victoria is a collaborative partnership between mental health & other health professionals, service users & the general public.
MHYFVic
PO Box 206,
Parkville, Vic 3052