FAMILY

The problem

Services lack an evidence-based, safe way to use family context in youth depression care.

The practical gap is not simply that we need a larger dataset. It is that services and policy lack an evidence-based, youth-safe way to use family context in early identification and service planning. FAMILY asks which family-context markers are evidence-supported, administratively measurable, clinically useful, acceptable to young people and carers, and safe enough to inform support.

Preliminary intergenerational HILDA work uses 43,817 parent-child pairs across 23 waves. It shows significant mental-health gradients for both mothers and fathers, with maternal gradients roughly twice paternal ones. These are observational associations, not causal effects. Family vulnerability strongly stratifies which young people sit in the lower tail of the depression-related outcome distribution. The translational opportunity is early support, not causal attribution or parental blame.

Critically, changes in family circumstances explain only a small share of the overall rise in youth depression — but they powerfully identify which young people are being left behind within it. That is exactly the evidence profile that supports earlier identification and better service planning, not parental blame.

The approach

Three linked work packages take FAMILY from evidence to implementation.

FAMILY combines evidence and data feasibility, safe-use co-design, and implementation readiness. The funded product is a co-designed Family-Aware Youth Depression Support Framework. In concrete terms: a small set of evidence-graded family-context domains, safe-use principles with real intake and assessment wording, explicit do-not-infer rules, escalation and safety protocols, and age-stratified use cases — paired with a national linked-data specification so the next-stage validation study can start the day this one ends.

HILDA provides the proof-of-concept marker lab, PLIDA provides the national administrative feasibility spine, and co-design provides the safety and implementation engine. NSW/CHeReL/education data provide a future scale-up pathway, not the core two-year dependency.

Co-design runs throughout the project. Early engagement with young people and carers will define what "family" means, which questions matter and which family-context domains are acceptable to investigate; those priorities will guide the quantitative work. Findings will then return to the co-design groups for interpretation and challenge before young people, carers, clinicians and services refine the framework, safeguards and implementation workflows.

FAMILY will not treat people aged 0–25 as one homogeneous group: childhood, adolescence and young adulthood require different consent, autonomy and service pathways. Nor will "family" default to biological parents or one household structure. Young people will help identify relevant caregiving, kinship and chosen-family relationships, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kinship structures, blended families, non-resident parents, foster or kinship care, and chosen family.

In analytic terms, the empirical component asks whether parent- and household-level markers — such as parental depression, service contact, socioeconomic stress, household structure and related vulnerabilities or protective factors — predict youth depression-related outcomes, including psychological distress, clinical/survey indicators, treatment contact, service intensity and care gaps. The goal is observational marker development and service translation, not causal attribution.

PLIDA's Core Relationships module is the key administrative opportunity, providing parent-child and partner relationships where available, triangulated with the National Health Survey, National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, MBS, PBS, income, demographic, location, Census and social-service modules. The project will not overclaim diagnostic precision: survey-based clinical indicators, self-reported measures, and administrative treatment/service-contact proxies will be clearly distinguished.

Partner value

What partners help shape, and what they receive in return.

FAMILY is a co-designed translational project, not a one-way academic exercise. Partners help decide which family-context markers are used and what must never be inferred. They gain acknowledgement, practical outputs and a foothold in youth depression policy.

• Shared framework design Direct input into the Family-Aware Youth Depression Support Framework — marker domains, safe-use principles, "do not use" rules, and service workflows for your setting.
• Clinical & implementation relevance Testing is anchored in adolescent and young-adult primary care. Youth mental-health intake is the second tested use case. School wellbeing and community mental health are framework use cases and future scale-up settings.
• Paid, trauma-informed participation Lived-experience partners hold governance seats with real decision rights, with remuneration budgeted from day one. Separate youth and carer spaces, peer support and debriefing built in.
• Data governance input Where relevant, involvement in PLIDA module selection, disclosure controls, and the NSW/CHeReL/education scale-up specification.
• Acknowledgement & co-authorship Formal acknowledgement in publications and reports. Co-authorship opportunities where partner staff contribute substantively to analysis or interpretation.
• Early positioning First-mover access to a practical, ethically cautious framework directly relevant to national conversations on early intervention for youth depression.

Who we are seeking

A compact, complementary team — not a large consortium.

The Chief Investigator team is now substantially established. FAMILY is currently seeking one or more implementation or service partners — such as an adolescent primary-care or GP service, youth-health or youth mental-health service, PHN, community organisation, or youth/carer advocacy organisation — to help test the framework in practice and contribute implementation advice or modest in-kind support.

Later scale-up: education-sector and NSW linked-data advisers welcome.

Research team

Chief Investigators and Associate Investigators spanning quantitative methods, clinical psychology, co-design, adolescent health, education and justice health.

FAMILY brings together expertise in intergenerational quantitative methods, clinical and developmental psychology, co-design and consumer involvement, program evaluation and translation, adolescent primary care, educational psychology, and linked-data/justice-health outcomes. The Chief Investigator team is now substantially established and is seeking implementation and organisational partners to strengthen the translational pathway.

Chief Investigators

Associate Investigators

The remaining external gap is implementation and organisational partnership to help test the framework in practice.