Prepared as a consultation paper to contribute the development of the Queensland Trauma Strategy.

Prepared by: Sophie Morson, Michael Hogan, Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership

What is this research about?

This paper outlines key insights from well-established and emerging evidence and expertise about trauma in childhood (5-12 years). This includes its incidence and impact, and implications for policy, investment, programs and practice.

The context for this research

Growing recognition of the factors that help or hinder safe, happy, healthy childhoods has been propelled by:

  • tools such as The Nest, Australia’s wellbeing framework for children and young people, which centres the child in an ecological framework, integrating the domains and elements of what it takes to thrive
  • studies of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) and their effects, since the original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study
  • the severe over-representation of First Nations children and adults in tertiary systems such as child protection and youth justice systems, and higher rates of disengagement and exclusion from schooling
  • advancing sciences of child development, learning, family functioning, community development and systems, including the biology of adversity and the physiological and psychological effects of trauma
  • public inquiries and reforms, such as those into mental health, domestic and sexual violence, institutional abuse, child deaths, suicide, abuse of people with disability, bullying, educational disengagement, child protection, family law, youth justice and residential care
  • growing attention to the lived experience of child, youth and adult survivors of abuse, trauma and adversity, as a result of violence, COVID-19, natural disasters, or institutional and other harms, and
  • emerging evidence about ‘what works and why’ in trauma prevention, responses, recovery and growth, as well as about the need to better recognise trauma at personal, collective and systems levels.

These studies, inquiries and reforms reflect mounting evidence that what and who surrounds us, as well as what happens to us, shapes us. This is especially so during childhood. Our development, wellbeing and resilience results from the complex interplay of biological, psychological, social, institutional, ecological and systems factors, as well as the impacts of trauma and adversity.