The need for a West Australian Youth Health Policy has been evident for years. Now, with The Kids Research Institute Australia helping to drive the project, it is finally about to come to fruition.
Young people have, until recently, largely been forgotten in the West Australian health system.
“For many years young people, and I mean that group of people who are no longer children but not yet adults, have been a group left without any real voice in the health service,” the Institute’s Associate Professor Donald Payne said.
“There has been no real focus on developing health services for this group or for developing training programs for people working in this area. As a result this is a group who have fallen behind in terms of health outcomes and improvements.”
Over the past two years the Institute has played a key role in working with the Department of Health and the WA Child and Youth Health Network to get a final version of the West Australian Youth Health Policy up and running, with the hope that it will be ready by the end of this year.
Associate Professor Payne, Head of the Youth Health and Wellbeing Team, said the policy was the product of an ongoing collaboration with many agencies and organisations and would have practical benefits for youth.
A number of clinicians and researchers from the Institute had contributed advice, data, and provided access to young people with experience of navigating the health system. A big effort had been made to try to ensure that young people were involved in developing the policy.
“Until now, this hasn’t been an area that has been recognised asbeing particularly important,” A/Professor Payne said. “Therefore there has been no real focus, no one within the Health Department who has been responsible for ensuring that young people receive the services they need, that they are able to access these services and that health outcomes for young people improve.
“If we have a specific policy, and within it there are things that become mandatory for health services to provide, then that will increase the visibility of this group and inevitably lead to better outcomes.”
With the same goals in mind, the team at the Institute has also brought together people from many different disciplines and agencies to form the Youth Health and Wellbeing Alliance, with support from the WA Commissioner for Children and Young People.
The alliance involves government departments such as Education and Corrective Services, along with the Department of Health, non-government organisations, universities, patient organisations, consumers and more.
“There’s a whole group of children and young people growing up with chronic illnesses and there’s a major gap in appropriate provision of services for these young people as they transition to adult care,” Associate Professor Payne said.
“Adult health services are yet to recognise the scale of the issue. While a few services – such as those caring for young people with cystic fibrosis, diabetes and congenital heart disease – have developed specific transition services, many adult services are not set up to accept young adults into their care.
“In fact, the majority of adult health services are yet to acknowledge the specific needs of young people. This will be a major focus of the policy.”
Other goals include providing and promoting access to appropriate community-based health services for young people, introducing monitoring and evaluation of health outcomes for this group, and investigating whether services meet young people’s needs.
A/Professor Payne also hopes to promote a broader focus on ensuring there is a recognition that adolescence and young adulthood is a time when health behaviours develop and that these can have a major effect on health in later life.
“There is a huge gain to be made from recognising and investing in the health of young people before it gets too late,” he said. “This will have major benefits for the whole healthcare system.”
What’s next?
The team plans to look at improving the opportunities for young people to find out about the services that are available and how to access them, including working with the Youth Advisory Council of WA to explore the possibilities provided by apps and web-based technology.