TranslateCSW Service learnings from AGFEST 2024
On the 2-4 May, the Department’s Child Safety and Wellbeing (CSW) Service hosted a stall in the Tasmanian Government Tent at AGFEST, Carrick. This report shares the team’s learnings from the event, including feedback we received from children, young people, and their families on the Department’s efforts to strengthen services to young Tasmanians.
Background
AGFEST is a large agricultural event held annually, organised by Rural Youth Tasmania. It is the largest community event in Tasmania, with 53 000 people attending this year. The CSW Service attended AGFEST as part of its efforts to hear from children and young people about their experiences of our Health services across Tasmania, a focus area under the Child Safety and Wellbeing Framework.
Our stall was designed to be attractive for children and their families. It included an interactive hospital ward display, where children could dress up as doctors and play with a pretend medical trolley. The stall also featured sticker and colouring in resources with child safeguarding messages, as well as CSW Service resources, including our My Say, Our Voices book. Hosting the stall also provided the CSW Service team with the opportunity to hear children and young people’s ideas about how the Department can strengthen its services. We had great engagement with our stall – sharing over 500 feedback forms, 100 copies of the My say, Our voices books, as well as providing 800 colouring in handouts and 3000 stickers to children and young people.
Summary of the ideas from children and their families
Below is a summary of the feedback and ideas we received at AGFEST from children, young people, and their families.
Overall, community feedback was positive, with community members appreciating the Department’s efforts to strengthen its services to children and young people, and often commenting about their gratefulness for the services they and their families had received.
Caregivers and children particularly appreciated it when our staff engaged directly with children and young people about their healthcare (alongside adults with them) and made them feel welcome, safe, and helped them understand what was happening to them. For example:
- ‘The nurses were nice [to me]’, Child.
- ‘When [my child] had an injection, the lolly reward made a big difference’, Caregiver.
Practical suggestions were also received about how service areas could strengthen their care of young Tasmanians, such as:
- ‘I need help from staff or volunteers when I am caring for more than one child. It is very difficult to take on information from doctors and nurses when you are looking after [other] children at the same time’, Caregiver.
- ‘Health workers need to be trained on how to involve children in their own healthcare and inviting them to participate in discussions around their health’, Caregiver.
Many suggestions related to helping children, young people, and their families when they experience long wait times. In general, families appreciated that long times can be unavoidable – however, they referenced how challenging they can be for small children or children with diverse needs (and the adults with them). They provided practical ideas to help, such as:
- ‘More activities and support are needed in waiting rooms’, Caregiver.
- ‘As a breastfeeding mother, there was no designated space …where I could breastfeed, such as a private space or a reclining chair. There were also no baby changing rooms available either for my child’, Caregiver.
We also received many ideas about how to strengthen service spaces to make them more inviting and welcoming for children, such as:
- ‘Have patterned bed sheets’, Child.
- ‘Have animals come and visit us when we are in hospital’, Child.
Our teams’ learnings
It was a privilege to talk to community members. We valued community members’ willingness to share their thoughtful and insightful feedback.
A key learning for our team was how much people appreciated the opportunity to engage with Department representatives and provide their ideas in a safe, non-judgemental space.
- ‘Its fantastic [that] Health is meeting community members where they are’, Caregiver.
- ‘It is great to see you at AGFEST, as it has been a great to connect’, Caregiver.
- ‘I appreciate the work you are doing to listen to kids, hear their ideas and help to action them’, Caregiver.
- ‘What a great idea to ask us’, Child [Commenting on feedback tools and the My Say, Our Voices book].
Another learning for our team was that many community members were not familiar with the Child Safety and Wellbeing Framework and the Department’s effort to improve health service delivery in a child safe way. Many Department staff who attended AGFEST with their family were also not across all the work that we do, one caregiver and staff member commenting ‘I have not heard of you’. This highlighted the need for continued effort from our team to champion the efforts of the Department and individual work areas demonstrating a commitment to improving the way we work with children and young people.
Alongside the above, we found the experience at AGFEST rewarding and purposeful in terms of how our resources were received by children, young people, and their families – in particular the need for continued effort to provide community members the opportunity to share their ideas and inform efforts to improve services.
We would like to express our gratitude to Department of Premier and Cabinet’s Communications team, who funded stalls in the Tasmanian Government tent, including supporting the design and development of resources, and supporting staffing-related costs. We also acknowledge and thank our Health Communications team colleagues, who travelled to AGFEST to help capture and feature our stall (and the other Health area stalls) on the Department’s social media sites.
For more information
For more information about our team’s engagement initiatives, see https://www.health.tas.gov.au/health-topics/child-and-youth-health/child-safety-and-wellbeing/engagement-children-and-young-people
If you would like to connect with our team, reach out via [email protected].
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