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A ground-breaking survey by The Kids researchers has become the new reference point to guide policy change and educate health providers to better support trans and gender-diverse youth in Australia.

Once upon a time it was infectious diseases like polio, measles or tuberculosis that most worried parents. With these threats now largely under control, parents face a new challenge – sky-rocketing rates of non-infectious diseases such as asthma, allergies and autism.

When Trans Pathways ambassador Drew, 17, came out as trans three years ago, the biggest hurdle for him was the availability of services and the time it took to access support.

The Kids welcomes the launch of WA’s first policy on youth health which will give young people a voice in the planning of health services that affect them.

Researchers conducted a series of group interviews with young people to find out how much they knew about energy drinks and the consequences of drinking them.

A major review by WA researchers has found medication used to suppress puberty can improve the mental health of young people who are trans or gender diverse.

The health disadvantages faced by Australian Aboriginal peoples are evidenced in early life, although few studies have focused on the reasons for population-level inequalities in more severe adverse outcomes. This study aimed to examine the scale of disparity in severe neonatal morbidity (SNM) and mortality between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal births and quantify the relative contributions of important maternal and infant factors.

Mainstream Australian mental health services are failing Aboriginal young people. Despite investing resources, improvements in well-being have not materialised. Culturally and age appropriate ways of working are needed to improve service access and responsiveness. This Aboriginal-led study brings Aboriginal Elders, young people and youth mental health service staff together to build relationships to co-design service models and evaluation tools.

Australia’s history of negative child protection outcomes for children in state care highlights the sustained, systemic nature of serious harm. Situated in emerging conversations on structural challenges and state violence for parents involved in child protection systems, we trace the resources and barriers to responsive and ‘just’ child protection practice, highlighting how institutions can serve to compound disadvantage and injustice. We argue that addressing challenges such as access to advocacy at the level of the individual is to miss the underlying politics of oppression that serves to keep families marginalised.

Unmet language and literacy needs are common among young people who are involved with youth justice systems. However, there is limited research regarding the functional text-level language skills of this population with regard to narrative macrostructure (story grammar) and microstructure (semantics and syntax) elements. In this study, we examined macrostructure and microstructure elements in the oral and written narrative texts of 24 adolescent students of a youth detention centre. The students, who were aged 14- to 17- years, were all speakers of Standard Australian English, and 11 (46%) students met criteria for language disorder (LD).