Holding Hope: Preventing Suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Young People in New South Wales: A Report to the NSW Child Death Review Team

The tragic loss of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people to suicide continues to have a profound impact on First Nations families and communities in New South Wales. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people aged 0–17 have consistently experienced disproportionately higher rates of suicide deaths compared to their non-Indigenous peers, exposing underlying inequities in our systems. The upward trend in the number of suicide deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, in recent years, in the context of a much larger number of hospitalisations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people due to self-harm, requires the most urgent and serious attention from the NSW government, policymakers, service providers and the broader community. The Child Death Review Team (CDRT), supported by the NSW Ombudsman, is responsible for registering, classifying, analysing and reporting to the NSW Parliament on data and trends relating to all deaths of children aged 0–17 years in NSW through the exercise of its functions under Part 5A of the Community Services (Complaints, Reviews and Monitoring) Act 1993 (NSW Ombudsman 2024). The CDRT identified, as a strategic priority, research to review suicide deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in NSW and make recommendations that would contribute to suicide prevention. Ngarruwan Ngadju First Peoples Health and Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Wollongong was contracted to undertake this research which was conducted over a three-year period between 2021 and 2024.

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978-1-74128-418-8

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