HealthWISE called for long-term investment and locally led solutions to support children with developmental delays and mild to moderate autism, during a public hearing for the Thriving Kids initiative at Parliament House on Friday, November 7.
Our executive manager of strategy Sally Urquhart and manager of research and partnerships Louise Ingall spoke to the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability about the challenges and opportunities facing rural communities, drawing on our organisation’s decade of experience delivering allied health, mental health and Aboriginal health services across northern NSW and southern QLD.
“I’d encourage the committee to ensure that rural voices are the ones that you’re hearing, not necessarily people providing services from elsewhere to rural areas. And that’s where we sit, we’re a local provider,” Sally said.
“I urge you to look for strengths in the sector that we have at the moment, and expand those rather than develop a new solution for us to come to grips with.”
Thriving Kids, which is expected to launch next July, will focus on supporting children aged 8 and under who have mild to moderate developmental delays or autism, as an alternative to the NDIS. Our written submission talked about our speech pathology work in schools, our Sounds good to me program for early childhood educators and the Priority Allied Health Services (PAHS) program.
The security of funding was a significant issue for many who participated in the inquiry, and Sally emphasised the difficulty in building a workforce with 12 month service delivery contracts.
She said that five year contracts would help address workforce shortages in rural and regional areas. Louise pointed out that this issue was highlighted in a recent interim report from the Productivity Commission on the care economy. She suggested incentives for relocating to rural areas, such as discounts on university debt.
Sustainable funding is an issue HealthWISE has long advocated for, with Louise also urging the government to follow the Productivity Commission’s advice on longer contract periods when she gave evidence at a NSW parliamentary inquiry into equity, accessibility and appropriate delivery of outpatient and community mental health care last year.
“The five-year contract provides continuity of care for all our communities,” she said in the 2024 hearing.
“If people have a job for five years, people can get a mortgage and buy a house. They’re there for five years and they’re part of our community.”
Building the rural workforce was also an issue Sally highlighted in a 2023 federal inquiry into migration, ‘Pathway to Nation Building’, where she spoke on the need to remove barriers for skilled migrants to settle in regional areas.
“The recruitment and retention of a skilled and knowledgeable workforce is vital to the delivery of primary health services in rural Australia and is a constant challenge for our organisation and others like us,” she told the Joint Standing Committee on Migration.
Louise and Sally met with our allied health staff ahead of the Thriving Kids hearing, in order to better advocate for those who work on the ground with rural children and families.
Louise agreed with MP Sam Birrell, who was concerned about national referral hubs that could interrupt local service delivery. She said that digital solutions were not always the answer, and triage or care navigator models could ensure connection with the community.
“If all the consideration was taking place locally, we have the potential to reach out to other services that are needed,” she said.
“Certainly whatever the solution to Thriving Kids is, we would like to see regional application of that.”
Sally urged the committee to consider the strengths of existing services, and how programs such as Sounds good to me, which HealthWISE developed to assist early educators to teach pre-literacy skills to their entire cohort, could be scaled nationally.
“It effectively levelled the playing field for children. They could start kindergarten having the baseline skills to learn. They weren’t starting from behind,” she said. In 2024, we made all of our digital Sounds good to me courses for early educators, family day care providers and parents available for free on our website.
Sally spoke on our success in bringing a visiting paediatrician to Narrabri, a service supported by the Rural Doctors Network which has near perfect attendance. The commitee were particularly interested in our partnership with Narrabri Public School’s Wellbeing In-Reach (WHIN) nurse, as part of that program.
“They are a trusted voice for families, I think, because they’re nurses and they’re in school. So there’s relationships and there’s expertise. And we’ve seen them work well in our area,” Sally said.
“They could potentially connect with families or younger siblings that aren’t at school yet, then that brings that first touch earlier.”
Sally and Louise also advised the committee to consider expanding PAHS to allow organisations like HealthWISE to expand our services and reach more people. PAHS enhances access to allied health services in small and rural locations with free sessions for eligible clients.
Louise spoke on the success our Primary Health Care Nursing program, which reached rural towns of less than 2000 people for nine years; building trust in communities, providing early health education in schools and identifying children who needed further support.
“As we work as a multidisciplinary team within our organisation, they could be led to different services within our organisation and the town in general,” she said, encouraging the committee to consider the value of nurses and care navigators.
The pair advised the government to think about digital interoperability, safe information sharing and supporting children based on needs rather than formal diagnoses.
“We know Australian children are not rare minerals, but they’re really important to the future of this nation,” Louise told the committee.
“We need to make every effort to think about what we can do for their own happiness and for our prosperity as a nation. And while this inquiry has guidelines, things that we’ve mentioned could be changed in other facets of health to really improve the system overall.”
We know Australian children are not rare minerals, but they're really important to the future of this nation.
The hearing came just two days after HealthWISE was named as one of three finalists across Australia for Rural Health Innovator of the Year at the National Rural and Remote Health Awards, held at the National Press Club in Canberra. Northern Territory’s Outback Active took home the top honour for their telehealth exercise program.
The nomination recognised our work in health promotion, including the Students As Lifestyle Activists (SALSA), OzHarvest Nutrition Education Skills Training (NEST) programs and the Menopause is Not A Dirty Word event series. SALSA reaches high school students with peer led learning on healthy living, NEST teaches participants how to cook nutritious meals on a budget, and the menopause events bring together local health professionals to bust myths and provide menopause education.
“The reason we’ve had success with these programs is that they are partner led and community driven,” Sally said.
“We are responding to the need we see in our communities.”
Sally will take on the CEO role following the retirement of Fiona Strang in 2026, who has ably led HealthWISE through our first 10 years of operation. She says early intervention and health promotion will remain top priorities for HealthWISE.
“Australia has a long history of successful preventative health campaigns such as Slip, Slop, Slap; but current government funding is below target. Our board recognises the importance of working in this space, and we will find every opportunity we can to promote healthy living and prevent disease,” she said.
