Transcript
Do you see something strange about this photo? Is there a bird with ten legs? No. It’s a jacana. Known for protecting its tiny chicks by wrapping them under its wings and carrying them safely away from danger. It’s also the namesake of the Jacana Clinic which sees infants and toddlers who have been exposed to alcohol in the womb to assess their development and behaviour.
Before Jacana was set up in 2022 there were no other clinics dedicated to assessing the development of children in this age group, exposed to alcohol. By sharing our findings, we hope to help shed light on how other early life difficulties may shape development on top of the brain changes caused by alcohol. And more importantly, what we can do to help?
We saw 44 children from 41 pregnancies and 38 birth mothers. We found that many women did not know they were pregnant until well into the first trimester, or even beyond, missing valuable opportunities to limit alcohol exposure. In one in three pregnancies, information about alcohol exposure was also not shared until after mum and baby had already left hospital. Jacana has been able to fill this gap, providing a way for these children to be assessed early with a FASD-informed lens and working with maternity teams to identify at-risk pregnancies.
Even in these preschool years, we are finding significant impairments in how these children learn, move, and communicate, and families are telling us about daily challenges around sleep, emotions and hyperactivity. By recognising these difficulties early, and connecting families with therapies at an earlier time point where there is still so much potential for the brain to grow and change, we are tapping into a really critical window to help children get the support they need.
While FASD is an issue for all communities, our early data shows we are seeing very vulnerable families, often with multi-generational histories of trauma, and helping them not to get lost in the system. Fifty percent of the children are in kinship or foster care when they come to clinic, and many have already changed placement several times. However, if you flip that statistic, that means we are also seeing half of the kids with their birth parents, which is a crucial opportunity to strengthen these families and break the cycles. By helping families better understand their child’s needs and linking them with supports, we help them provide a stable and nurturing upbringing which can reduce the impacts of trauma on the developing brain. We also support birth mothers to plan future healthy pregnancies without alcohol. As more families come to the clinic, we will only learn more about how alcohol exposure manifests in young children and how to better identify those at greatest risk so that we can change the long-term outlook.
Instead of falling through the cracks, we are creating a new pathway to help these families make the leap to a brighter future with greater hope. And lastly, I’d like to acknowledge that this presentation represents the dedicated work of the whole FASD Service at Monash Health. Thank you.