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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]

• Foster parents are often subjected to trauma-related behaviours that may impact upon their own wellbeing. • Foster parents perceive trauma-related behaviours as unpredictable and omnipresent. • Foster parents living with the trauma of a foster child can feel socially isolated. • Specific training and support opportunities are necessary to support foster parents so as to address or prevent vicarious trauma. In Australia, significant numbers of children in out-of-home care live in foster care placements, with many such placements being long-term. Despite the potential healing that may occur in the context of foster care, many foster children experience high levels of poor mental health, and may enact trauma-related behaviours that can significantly impact upon the foster placement. Yet to date, the topic of foster parents witnessing and living with the trauma experienced by their foster children has received relatively little empirical attention. This paper reports on a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 85 Australian foster parents providing long-term care to non-indigenous children, focusing specifically on accounts of vicarious trauma. Four themes were developed: (1) Trauma-related behaviours are unpredictable and require constant attention, (2) Trauma histories are always present and make it hard to connect, (3) Caring for children with a trauma history can be socially isolating, and (4) Lack of agency support to understand child's trauma. The paper concludes by exploring implications of the findings for the support, training, and care of foster parents so as to ensure that the potential for vicarious trauma is recognized and addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Risk factors were identified from the narratives of prenatal child protection reports. • Most families were reported to be experiencing three or more risk factors. • Prenatal supports must address multiple co-occurring problems. The prevalence of prenatal reporting to child protection is estimated to be 3% of Australian pregnancies. Understanding risk factors associated with prenatal child protection involvement is critical in identifying the needs of families who may benefit from early intervention. This paper reports findings of a case file review examining characteristics of families reported prenatally. Unit-record administrative data were extracted for unborn children reported to child protection in a single Australian jurisdiction during 2014. Intake reports relating to a 20% random sample (n = 131 unborn children) were coded using a tailored coding guide developed for this study. Most families were reported to be experiencing three or more risk factors, including current or previous intimate partner violence (70% of families), parental alcohol and other drug use (63%), parental mental health concerns (58%) or parent criminal activity (34%). Over one-third of parents in the sample had themselves experienced abuse and neglect as children. In families with more than one child, more than 90% of older siblings of unborn children had been the subject of a previous report. Supports must address multiple co-occurring problems, often in the context of personal and familial histories of child abuse and neglect, meaning that risks are intergenerational and enduring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]