Hinkler Innovation Series Luncheon

Yesterday, the 1st May 2024, IMPACT's Managing Director Tanya O'Shea was one of four inspirational guest speakers at the Hinkler Innovation Series Luncheon, "Innovation to Live Longer," during which she announced IMPACT's exciting initiative, the IMPACT Community Academy. As a Special Assistance School, The IMPACT Community Academy, aims to provide alternative education options that address the challenges young people are facing in the Bundaberg region.

Read the full Hinkler Innovation Series Luncheon speech below

Did anyone ever ask you as a kid ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

People used to ask me, and I didn’t really know what to say. Partly because I had no real clue, but I was also naïve enough to believe that if I worked hard at school, everything would work out. My plan was incredibly linear – finish school, go to university or get a job.

But, have you ever done a job you didn’t care about?

I have. One in particular. I didn’t always hate it. Got to meet some great people, travelled, some of it was interesting, I learnt a lot about myself and other people. But I didn’t always feel truly motivated, invested or connected to it.

When we care about stuff, it creates purpose, it creates a sense of community. In my current job, I work with other people, who like me, have this critical alignment between their personal and professional values. They recognise that when these values align in this way, it gives them purpose, and a sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. Each morning, they go to work believing that they can help someone else to improve their life, and each night go home knowing that what they did today was important and necessary.

Personally, that values alignment not only makes me better at my job. It means that I wake up each day with purpose. The Okinawans Ikigai or ‘why I wake up in the morning’. According to Dan Buettner’s research, knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to 7 years of extra life expectancy.

What research also tells us is that poor alignment between work and personal values can lead to dissatisfaction, burnout, and lower performance and sense of success and accomplishment, which impacts on our self-belief. Lower confidence can bring down our long-term goals in work and life, while reducing the quality of a person’s life in many different ways, including negative feelings – think sadness, depression, anxiety, shame or guilt. It can really knock around our confidence, adversely affect the way that we show up in life, and impact on our overall mental health and wellbeing.

So, let’s pause and recap. It is good when our personal and professional values align, as it increases our self-belief which has a positive effect on our mental health and wellbeing, gives us a sense of purpose – the reason why we wake up in the morning – and it can improve our life expectancy. Got it. Don’t love my job so need to leave and find another job. Okay, probably not as easy to do but understand the reasoning. Find a job or career that aligns to my values, live my sense of purpose and I have the potential to improve my life expectancy. Easy peasy.

But we know that life isn’t linear, and it isn’t quite that easy. And it is being backed by data. research is telling us that at any one time, only about 20% of the population is feeling like they are living well and have incorporated strategies into their life that support their overall wellbeing.  These people are living their purpose, and potentially have adopted lifestyle habits that according to Buettner, will improve their life expectancy. Unfortunately, this means that around 80% of the population are languishing or experiencing poor mental wellbeing which if left unsupported, can become as detrimental as the experience of serious mental illness. This group includes young people, some of whom aren’t doing so well when it comes to wellbeing, with cracks emerging in their lifestyle habits that will adversely impact their future education and career opportunities.  

Research published by Monash University in their 2023 Australian Youth Barometer report underscores alarming trends in school refusal, incomplete education and post-school declines in further education and training, emphasizing the enduring significance of education in young people’s futures.

• Within the last two years, disengagement from mainstream education has led to a reduction in 5000 student enrolments in Queensland schools.
• 1 in 3 students face the risk of disengaging from traditional education pathways due to prevalent issues like low self-esteem, lack of belonging, and compromised mental well-being.
• 39% of young adults aged 16-24 have experienced a 12-month mental health disorder;
• Our youth in Bundaberg are not immune to this concerning trend, with 14% of young people aged between 15-24 years identified as having a long-term mental health condition.
• Trends in Australian data showing that people in their early 20’s are now more likely to be unemployed due to ill health than those in their 40’s;
• Young people are being overprotected in the real world and under protected in the virtual world resulting in young people born post 1985 being referred to as the anxious generation.
• The risk factors of suicidal ideation, self-harm and suicide attempts are associated with future suicidality, with Queensland Family & Child Commission data showing at least one of these risk factors was present for 16 of the 20 young people who took their lives in Queensland during the 2022–23 period. More than 350 young people take their lives across Australia each year, which is more than die on our roads or due to any other situation or circumstance. And for every young person who takes their life, a reported 100-200 others, have made an unsuccessful attempt.

You hear the oxymoron right? On the one hand I am talking about creating a sense of purpose within a job, a career after schooling that has the potential to increase life expectancy. On the other, I am sharing that the numbers of young people with poor mental health and wellbeing is on the rise, suicide is the main cause of death in young people, and students are exiting mainstream education resulting in incomplete education and reduced opportunities into further education, training, and employment.

There is no doubt this is a big, complex problem. It feels overwhelming and it is uncomfortable to talk about young people taking their lives. But that is the reality, and as hard as it feels, we have to talk about it. And we can’t rely on others to find a solution.

I don’t have a tattoo, but if I did it would be of the design squiggle and it would sit right here as my constant inspiration and reminder that there is always hope when it comes to solving a problem. You just need to find that one tiny thread. For those not familiar with the design squiggle, imagine a big ball of scrambled Christmas lights – tangled and knotted and finding the ends feels hopeless. That is what it feels like when we face a problem that we don’t have the answer to – we might feel stuck or frustrated, or we’ve tried a few different things, and nothing has worked so we feel like giving up. But all it takes is one tiny thread to emerge and there is hope – and suddenly the problem that you have been grappling with creates a small spark that starts to take the shape of a solution.

12 years ago at IMPACT, we started exploring why young people were disengaging from mainstream education. We parked the problem back then because we had too many other projects to focus on, but at that time we found that it was underpinned by truancy, poor behaviour and lack of parental supervision and support networks. Today, truancy remains part of the issue, however the students not attending school also include high performers, highly capable students, and students who have a strong family support system in place.

So, what’s going on?

Shortly I am going to rattle off a few conditions that you will all be familiar with, but I invite you to consider these not in isolation but think of them more like a spider’s web of interconnecting fibres, and also in terms of things like speed, volume, frequency and proximity. Social media, poverty, climate change, war, crime, discrimination, safety, homelessness, violence. You will be able to think of lots of others, but you get the idea. Some of these are critical for survival, we rely on them and when we don’t have them or if we fear them, it activates our sympathetic nervous system, which triggers that fight or flight response. Rush of adrenaline, feeling heightened and alert, feeling fearful.

These issues are creating a stress response for people.  So many pervasive social issues that are complex and challenging for adults to navigate. Have you ever stopped and imagined the effect that it is having on our kids?

What we know is that these conditions are impacting a young person’s ability to remain engaged in education. The prevalence of school avoidance (or school refusal) behaviours is significantly contributing to school disengagement. School avoidance is the demonstration of an ‘I just can’t go to school’ rather than ‘I won’t go to school’ intention by the young person.

In 2022, on behalf of IMPACT Community Services, I was selected to participate in the Queensland Alliance for Mental Health’s Wellbeing First Innovation Hub, that used design-thinking to apply the principles of human-centred design putting people who access mental health services at the centre of our thinking. It aimed to support community mental health wellbeing leaders to design innovative mental health service models that can be implemented within the services that we are already providing on the ground, while aligning to the Wellbeing First agenda.

So, 18 months after commencing the Wellbeing First project, and restarting the project at least 3 times because we kept working on the wrong problem, the IMPACT Community Academy was borne, and a prototype was approved by the IMPACT Board on the 25 March this year.

We recognised the importance of creating an educational environment where young people can connect and achieve the foundations of life and livelihood in a supportive, enriching environment. While education is important, the measurement of success does not focus solely on an academic outcome: each young person is encouraged to create their own unique pathway within the Academy’s Connect, Learn, Change and Transform model. Our philosophy is essentially that young people need to learn the skills required to become fully formed adults, secure in their knowledge of themselves as healthy and valuable people. It is our belief that young people cannot learn effectively if their needs for physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing are not being met.

Through a wellbeing lens, curriculum will be delivered that has the potential to challenge mindsets, encourage growth and transform lives in a way that allows the young person to be more adaptable and resilient as they enter adulthood.

The Academy aims to prepare young people to negotiate and adapt to the non-linear pathways that evolve when they leave school. We want young people to have a choice when it comes to a job, to live their purpose, and to recognise the importance of building their capacity and strength when it comes to their emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing.

The Academy is ambitious, with a proposed start date of term 1, 2025. Back at the start of this presentation, I mentioned that when we care about stuff, it creates purpose, it creates a sense of community. And we really care about this.

We know that it won’t change the outcomes for all young people, but we are confident that taking this step will improve the lives of young people within our community while also contributing towards building the mental wealth of our nation.

Imagine what is possible and the potential ripple effect – nurturing mental capital, mental health and wellbeing, through adequate education, and creating economic security, housing, healthcare, psychological and cultural safety, and through equal access to opportunity. Imagine the effect that taking one small step could have on economic prosperity, and the collective wellbeing and resilience of communities.

My hope is that when you leave here today, you will pause before asking a young person ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’, and instead ask them ‘what types of things do you like to do, and what could you do with that?’

Although small, the IMPACT Community Academy aims to be more than a school—it will be a safe place where students can be curious about their interests, find direction, purpose, their Ikigai (IKI guy)—a reason to wake up in the morning. Just as Buettner’s Blue Zones show that having purpose impacts on longevity, focusing on well-being and purpose in education could shape the future health of these young people. It’s not just about academic achievement; it’s about fostering a supportive community that helps students navigate their challenges and find meaning in their lives, which can lead to improved mental health, reduced stress, and a greater sense of belonging—all factors that contribute to longevity.

Our goal is to shape lives, not just minds. In essence, we believe that by nurturing purpose and well-being, we're not just educating minds; we're potentially extending lives, one student at a time.