Light Electorate

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:45): Today, I would like to make the house aware of some events and activities in my electorate that are designed to improve the wellbeing of the local community, ranging from schools to community organisations. Last week, I attended the inaugural student wellbeing expo at the local Xavier College. Xavier College is a years 8 to 12 Catholic college in the electorate, and they held their first wellbeing expo.

The expo had a number of exhibitors, ranging from suicide prevention to people who can help with counselling to also people who provide a whole range of volunteering services. Research has shown that people who volunteer or are connected to the community often enjoy better mental health. The expo was designed by the college to highlight to their students the importance of looking after themselves physically, spiritually, socially, emotionally and mentally.

The 15 exhibitors on the day included headspace, CanTeen and ReachOut, to name a few. ReachOut is an organisation which has excellent website resources for families, for teachers and also for people who perhaps have some mental health issues. I understand that the Nova 919 Casanova street crew also visited on the day. It ran for some hours from 10.30 until about 3 o'clock. I visited at 11.45 and had a tour of the exhibition with the principal.

The role of the exhibitors was to provide a range of information to students about how they can support them in a whole range of different parts of their life. I was very pleased to be invited and to attend. It is one way in which our schools are supporting our young people to often get through difficult times in their life.

I am also aware that another local college—Gawler and District College—is doing some things in that area to help and support their young people. I note there is a meeting on tomorrow where they are getting a whole range of people together to work out how they can provide a hub for a range of services to support their students when they are experiencing difficulties in their life. The college is very keen to provide a holistic service, so they are working with some researchers and people from Flinders University, as well as people from CAMHS, obviously the primary health network managers, people from other schools, local GPs and of course the education department and a number of other people in the community who work towards keeping our community safe through resilience.

The other group I would like to talk about that is doing some really great work is the Northern Men's Wellbeing Network. I have attended a couple of their network meetings. The network is essentially made up of a group of men and women who work for a range of both government and non-government organisations to provide support for young men and boys in the community. They play a very important role.

Obviously, the agencies they work for provide services to people who are experiencing difficulties, but also a lot of the work is actually encouraging behaviour change in young men to ensure that their behaviour is appropriate in the context of family, schooling, etc. One of the roles they play is to support families by supporting men, and ensuring that children attend school. They provide programs to ensure that children obtain a good education.

I am aware that the men's Northern Wellbeing network will be undertaking a number of activities throughout the year to engage men with their families, particularly young children. They support a number of events through their employers—for example, Anglicare, Centacare, The Smith Family, etc.—to ensure that children go to school and learn because education is such an important factor. If you were to chart a person's journey through life, the quality of the education they obtain would be a key component.

The men's Northern Wellbeing network does a couple of things: firstly, they share information about what they are doing and, secondly, they identify projects they can collaborate on and target areas that require a lot of input. I bring the house's attention to these organisations that are making our community healthier and more resilient.