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Abstract Young people with complex support needs who live outside metropolitan areas face unique challenges. Issues such as poor educational and employment opportunities, homelessness, racism, problematic substance use, challenging behaviour, disability and mental illness can be magnified and lead to judgment and marginalisation in small communities such as those in rural and regional areas. As a result of poor resourcing of services in these areas, young people may be forced to transition from place to place, service to service as a way of coping with life challenges. This paper presents findings from interviews and focus groups with service providers who support such young people in regional and rural Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria in Australia. Service providers reported similar challenges to professionals working in urban areas, such as navigating inter-agency and inter-professional work and dealing with funding shortages. However, these issues were amplified by the need to work across broad geographical areas, to recruit and retain skilled workers and to respond to the many structural and resource inadequacies in smaller communities. While services aimed to be responsive to young people, the challenges of providing support in a non-metropolitan context could create a context in which young people either disengaged from services or poor response resulted in systemic escalation to crisis. The implications for policy and practice are explored. Highlights • Supports to young people with complex support needs in non-metropolitan areas in Australia are poorly resourced. • Non-metropolitan services work best when they are based on relationship-based practice and local community needs. • Interagency collaboration is essential when working across broad geographical areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to highlight how commonalities and differences between Australian children, parents and practitioners in terms of how they understand child resilience could inform the design and delivery of initiatives that aim to promote child resilience. A qualitative analysis of data from focus groups with children (n = 44), parents (n = 42) and practitioners (n = 107) undertaken in six Australian states and territories found key differences between the three groups in terms of: what they think resilience looks like in a child; and the factors that influence child resilience. The analysis also found a common agreement about the importance of supportive relationships to children's resilience. The findings suggest that initiatives that aim to promote child resilience may be more engaging and useful to children and parents if they: educate parents about the factors that influence child resilience; communicate the aims of resilience interventions to parents and children; focus on building supportive relationships for children; and explore community attitudes towards risk-taking. Highlights • Children and parents understand child resilience in different ways to practitioners • Compared to practitioners, parents and children are more likely to view children's resilience as an individual trait • Educating parents about the nature of resilience may increase support for initiatives that target children's environments [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Young people's participation in decision making that affects them is increasingly recognised and valued as a right. Youth participation in mental health settings is fundamental to service design and delivery, and is beneficial for the young people as well as the organisation. Headspace recognises the many benefits of youth participation with its national and local youth participation initiatives. In 2013, headspace Gosford in Australia established its current youth participation model, called the Youth Alliance (YA), consisting of 12 young people. These young people contribute ideas and opinions around service design and delivery, and participate in a range of activities. Method This paper presents the findings of a focus group conducted with the YA immediately following recruitment. All 12 young people participated in a two hour focus group which sought to identify the key reasons these young people joined the YA, and what they hope to achieve in their capacity of YA consultants. Results The two main reasons participants joined the YA are to help ‘overcome barriers to help seeking and ensure young people get the support they need’ and ‘to build confidence, social skills and make new friends’. The barriers to help seeking identified by the participants are consistent with those outlined in the literature. Conclusion Youth participation in youth mental health settings is beneficial to young people as well as organisations and the community, and it is crucial that strategies are put in place to increase youth participation. The ways in which these young people perceive their participation as beneficial to themselves as well as the organisation and the community is the focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Home-based carers face numerous barriers to facilitating healthy lifestyle behaviours. • Upskilling carers is crucial to improving long-term health outcomes for the child/ren in their care. • Training must be accessible, practical, and unique to both foster and kinship carers. Foster and kinship carers face unique and complex challenges in caring for Australia's most vulnerable children. It is therefore necessary to ensure that home-based carers are adequately upskilled and supported to promote the health of children in their care. The aim of this paper was to better understand the barriers to developing healthy lifestyle behaviours (relevant to nutrition and physical activity) among children in home-based care, from the perspective of foster and kinship carers. Focus group sessions were conducted with 21 carers: eight foster carers and 13 kinship carers. Four key themes were identified: (1) Childhood experience and children's healthy lifestyle behaviours; (2) There are personal costs of being a carer; (3) Carers require support to develop healthy lifestyle behaviours in children; and (4) Broader systemic factors impact healthy lifestyle development. Carers in the current study described their experience of key emotional, financial, and systemic barriers to facilitating healthy lifestyle behaviours among the children in their care. To address such challenges, carers recommended the development of trauma-informed support, education, and resources to prioritise and facilitate healthy lifestyle development among children in home-based care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]