The Queensland Family and Child Commission Insights Paper is an excellent report on current issues for young parents in Queensland and outlines some of the barriers to help-seeking that young parents face before and after childbirth, as well as those things that enable them to access support.
It is intended to add to the evidence available on young parenting in Queensland and proposes how the services and supports available to young parents and their children can be improved.
According to the report the purposes were to:
- Build a statistical picture that describes pregnant or parenting young people in Queensland and factors that increase the risk of young parenthood. This may include data and research on:
- number of children and young people who have become pregnant and/or parent;
- locations of the young people who have become pregnant and/or parents;
- socio-demographic descriptors of parent(s) at the time of pregnancy;
- individual and family group factors at the time of pregnancy (individual factors such as mental health, homelessness, alcohol and substance use and family group factors such as socio-economic status, family level adversity, intergenerational trauma); and
- health indicators for young mothers and their babies.
2. Review the strategies, policies and service system in place, and gather insights and case studies to identify and describe the structural and community contexts for young parents and the enablers and barriers to accessing education, housing, parenting supports, income supports and specific services for parents and their children (including funded live-in residential services).
3. Compare the model used in Queensland with best practice models in other jurisdictions for supporting young people who become parents (including the model used for parents involved with the child protection system).