Since April this year, the “Cairns Post” newspaper has been running a campaign titled Cause and Effect to raise awareness of FASD in their community in Far North Queensland. The campaign is calling for free and mandatory FASD testing for at-risk children in Queensland, and a significant reduction in waiting times for that testing. They have outlined that the category of at-risk children includes children in youth detention or youth justice custody, children in child protection and children in the out-of-home care system.
In this blog, we will look at some of their articles that have formed this campaign so far, and the pattern of support and community awareness it is generating in Queensland, and especially in the Cairns region.
In December 2024, figures released by the State Government showed that Cairns had the highest rates of juvenile crime in Queensland. However some child psychologists and judges have observed that tougher penalties for young offenders are not effective across the board.
In one of the first articles in the Cause and Effect campaign on 5th April, Brisbane-based clinical psychologist Dr Vanessa Spiller explained that FASD affects up to 5% of the Australian population, but that the number in youth detention centres could be as high as 60%.
“We have two public diagnostic services in south-east Queensland but neither of them run five days a week – and they have two-year waiting lists,” she said.
“Getting the assessments done privately is really expensive, you’re looking at anywhere between about $3,000 and $5,000, but I’ve heard of people being charged up to about $10,000.”
In another article published on 5th April, Dr Spiller further discussed the high representation of children and young adults with undiagnosed FASD in protective custody and the justice system. “They think somewhere up to about 25% of kids in out-of-home care have FASD,” Dr Spiller said.
In the same article, former Supreme Court Justice Stan Jones, said he believed governments needed to find a solution to effectively addressing FASD. “It’s not about being tough on crime, but tough on the causes of crime.”
In a subsequent article, on 19th April, Cairns Paediatrician Dr Angela Wilson said that to adequately respond to youth crime, decision makers needed to more greatly involve youth healthcare workers, such as paediatricians and allied health professionals, in the response.
“We need to be included in the solutions … so we can actually understand what’s driving behaviours and identify young people who’ve got disabilities, rather than just assuming that they need more punitive responses to what’s happening.”
“The justice system is predicated on the assumption that people are able to make decisions based on their chronological age,” she said.
“But some of these kids (with FASD) will have the thinking and reasoning skills of seven- or eight-year-olds, and they may not be able to articulate what their difficulties are.”
Dr Wilson said that improvements to FASD testing wouldn’t just help the community to become safer, but also provide important clarity and closure for children who are perplexed by their own behaviours.
In another article published on 19th April, Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls said FASD was a “significant problem”. The Minister had been in Cairns earlier that week and agreed that prevention and early intervention were important.
More politicians threw their weight behind the Cause and Effect campaign in an article published on 7th May. Member for Cairns, Michael Healy, and Opposition Youth Justice Spokeswoman, Di Farmer, expressed support for a free FASD diagnostic clinic in Cairns. The article explained that the closest FASD diagnostic clinic to Cairns is in Townsville, but it only accepts referrals for children living in the Townsville Hospital and Health Service area. Cairns Mayor, Amy Eden, also supports the campaign.
In another article also appearing in the Cairns Post on 7th May, Dr Angela Wilson described the process of obtaining a FASD diagnosis.
“FASD can look like other developmental conditions, but the differentiating fact is that they have multiple severe impairments, that they have been exposed to alcohol often at high risk levels, and that we’ve excluded other causes for their developmental difficulties,” she said. The article also referred to a 2024 Canadian study in which it was estimated that 98% of Canadians with FASD were either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed with other neurodevelopmental conditions, such as Autism and ADHD.
In an article published the previous day, 6th May, Queensland Victims’ Commissioner, Beck O’Connor, pushed for urgent testing to help tackle youth crime. “I commend and support the Cairns Post’s Cause and Effect campaign, calling for free FASD testing for at-risk children, such as those who come into contact with the child protection or criminal justice system,” she said. “Given the scale of the impact on youth crime and its flow-on effects on the community, the government must give urgent priority to the development of a comprehensive plan to manage FASD.”
NOFASD applauds the “Cairns Post” and their Cause and Effect campaign which is building awareness of FASD via their sustained focus on this complex, spectrum-based disability and the need for long-overdue, additional publicly-funded diagnostic clinics in Far North Queensland.