More play therapists join Neighbourhood Schools Project

In his 40 years on the job, the Shepparton paediatrician has seen too many local children placed in the “too hard” basket — passed from service to service after being diagnosed with developmental or behavioural problems due to complex environmental early childhood trauma.

Fed up, in 2011 Dr Eastaugh started searching for a solution — and ended up launching one of his own: the Shepparton Neighbourhood Schools Project.

The program connects the "Neighbourhood Schools" — Wilmot Rd, St George’s Rd and Gowrie St — with paediatricians who develop case management plans for students touched by trauma.

In 2017, Mooroopna and Mooroopna Park primary schools also jumped on board.

Tragically, data collected by the program in the past eight years has revealed a staggering 30.2 per cent of 500 local children assessed showed obvious signs of environmental trauma.

That’s almost one in three children.

So now, the program is working to expand another crucial service: therapy for students.

Thanks to a $12 000 donation from the Sir Andrew and Lady Fairley Foundation, the schools have been able to train two therapeutic play specialists over the past 12 months.

The financial contribution has allowed the expansion of the project's team, which already includes three play therapists — one of whose training was also funded by the Fairley Foundation four years ago.

“Therapeutic play is an important and vastly under-resourced psychotherapeutic intervention that has been shown to assist the neurological repair of children who have experienced environmental trauma,” Dr Eastaugh said.

“Environmental trauma impacts on children’s ability to regulate reason and logic, disrupts their memory functioning, attention capacity, relationships and attachment, limits their adaptability to change, diminishes social skill development and isolates children from their peers.

“Research has found environmental trauma can undermine a child’s ability to form self-identity at various developmental transition points, which can have a devastating long-term impact.”

Dr Eastaugh was clinical director of paediatrics at Goulburn Valley Health when he first spotted trouble.

At that time, there were 300 children waiting for developmental or behavioural assessments.

Of those, 60 per cent came from the Neighbourhood Schools, which serviced some of the most disadvantaged communities in the region.

“The thing that drove me into this was the intergenerational disadvantage I observed,” Dr Eastaugh said.

“Children I'd seen who had experienced environmental trauma were turning up with their own children, who were experiencing their own trauma.”

Teachers felt “under-resourced, untrained and unsupported” to handle this crisis, claiming schools hadn't been provided with a co-ordinated management process.

Meanwhile, Dr Eastaugh found many paediatricians were shying away from assessing these children due to the complexity of their problems and the time commitment and follow-up required.

So the Neighbourhood Schools Project was developed.

Through the program, teachers and administrators identify students with developmental and behavioural difficulties, referring them to a community paediatrician for an assessment.

The paediatrician then develops a case management plan, which includes timelines for interventions and support strategies for students at a classroom level.

Parents and relevant professionals — including classroom teachers, allied health, social workers and child protection — are kept involved in this process through ongoing consultations.

Throughout the years, the program has identified a startling range of learning and behavioural problems in Shepparton children assessed.

Data collected on almost 300 children from 2013 to 2016 revealed 13.7 per cent had learning difficulties, while 10.5 per cent had behavioural difficulties or autism.

Of the children assessed, 6.5 per cent had been diagnosed with ADHD and 6.6 per cent struggled with mental health.

Speech disorder (5.5 per cent), foetal alcohol syndrome disorder (5.7 per cent) and oppositional defiant disorder (2.7 per cent) were also identified as issues.

Concerned that parent support services just weren’t cutting it, Dr Eastaugh decided therapeutic intervention was needed to address the neurological impact of environmental trauma.

“When a child experiences trauma, the wiring to their brain is damaged,” Dr Eastaugh said.

“It's that damage to the wiring that creates behavioural issues. But thankfully, it's repairable through therapy.

“And for a child, that therapy is play.”

The Neighbourhood Schools Project team uses child-centred play therapy, a counselling approach suitable for children aged two and up.

In CCPT, play allows children to re-enact frightening real-life events through the use of toys, providing a way for children to “control in fantasy what is unmanageable in reality”.

The process gives children an increased understanding of self, their world and past experiences, nourishing the development of new neural connections within the child’s brain.

All leading to greater healing.

But there are no quick fixes, and the Neighbourhood Schools Project team plans to be in this for the long haul.

“Without the help of the Fairley Foundation and the support of school principals, we wouldn't be able to continue this work,” Dr Eastaugh said.

“We have to continue battling to be reactive, not proactive. We've got to keep kids out of jail, we've got to get them educated, we have to get them employed.

“And that starts in early childhood.”