Kate Emery: We need a cost-of-living measure from the WA Government that’s not cute and fluffy

The $250 handouts for school kids were welcome (I like money). The free zoo passes were nice (I like animals). The VacSwim lessons made sense (I like living kids). And free Perth Royal Show tickets will ensure that no child goes without a Bertie Beetle and no dentist goes without a holiday house in Eagle Bay (I like dentists). But if the State Government is serious about cost-of-living relief that goes beyond a sugar hit and a pic op with something cute and fluffy, how about it put its hand in its pocket for Kids Helpline? Australia’s only free, confidential and 24/7 kids’ helpline survives on a combination of funding from Federal and State governments as well as corporate and community donations. When it comes to the WA Government, however, it receives just $90,000 a year: a lot of money to you and me but not to a service that receives more than 320,000 calls a year. That doesn’t even cover the cost of a single psychologist for the helpline, which is staffed not by volunteers, but paid and qualified mental health professionals. The helpline answered nearly 10,000 calls from young people in WA alone (roughly 13,000 more went unanswered) in 2023. For anyone else who mentally checked out of maths once you could no longer do the sums on your fingers, that’s less than $10 in WA Government funding for each young person helped. Less than $10 for a service that is catching kids who would otherwise slip through the net: kids with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, kids who are being sexually or physically abused and don’t know who else to talk to, kids who need advice about relationships or bullying. Kids’ mental health shouldn’t be a cost-of-living issue. But it’s become one because many parents cannot afford to take their child to a psychologist or psychiatrist, where appointments can easily cost $300 an hour. Serious mental health issues don’t get wrapped up in less time than it took Columbo to solve an on-screen murder, making the whole thing more expensive for a parent than a child with a raspberry addiction. One of the things that makes Kids Helpline so special is that it’s not just about dealing with short-term crisis care, but offering long-term support: it aims to offer young people the option to deal with one counsellor for as long as they need help. Meanwhile, other parents who can afford to see a private psychologist can’t get in, thanks to the backlog in paediatric specialists — including psychologists and psychiatrists. Kids Helpline boss Tracy Roberts was in Perth this week to lobby for more funding from the Government. She told me the story of a mother who apologised for encouraging her child to call the helpline. “She said ‘I can afford to take her to see someone but I just can’t get in anywhere’,” Ms Roberts said. Ms Roberts wants enough funding to help Kids Helpline establish a physical presence in WA, as it already has in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Like anyone going to the Government with cap in hand, Ms Adams is diplomatic about the level of support offered to Kids Helpline over the years. But she will go as far as saying this: “I think it’s fair to say that the funding from WA is well below the value of the investment . . . and we know that we’re still not meeting demand.” And this: “Kids Helpline is free and that’s a great equaliser. If you can’t afford to pay you should still be able to get care.” I’d go further and say that $90,000 — less than the cost of a Government media flak’s annual salary — is a pretty embarrassing amount to give a service that is helping to plug the holes in the State’s mental health system. WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam has already pledged to put up an extra $6m in funding for the helpline if elected next year. Good on her. However, it’s a largely theoretical gesture because, short of the Premier using his Perth Zoo pic-op to strangle an adorable tree kangaroo live on camera, the Opposition is not going to win in WA in 2025. If the Government can find $6m for Perth Zoo tickets, $100m for school kid cash handouts and $8m to bring Coldplay to Perth, surely it can find more than $90,000 to help vulnerable kids? Not a lot of cute pic-ops in it, though.