The Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Childhood Adversity and Mental Health was a five year research program co-funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Beyond Blue.
The CRE brings together families with lived experience, practitioners, researchers and policy makers from health, social care, and legal sectors with an aim to prevent the significant mental health burden experienced by children and families experiencing adversity.
We created, implemented and then evaluated two Child and Family Hubs (one in Victoria and one in NSW), co-designed with end users, that sought to improve children’s mental health by earlier detection and response to family adversity. Family adversity includes problems inside the home (eg family violence, drug and alcohol problems), outside the home (eg financial and housing insecurity) and broader societal adversities (eg visa or criminal issues).
We partnered with consumers, universities, government agencies and non-government organisations to develop and deliver this program of work. Following the success of our two Hubs, we have now established a National Child and Family Hubs Network. The Network has over 460 Australian Hubs across different settings (health, education, ACCOs and virtual hubs). The Network has received $5M to build more evidence, advocate, share ideas and successes, and scale Hubs including virtual hubs to support rural families.
