Unfinished Business - Australia-China Connections

The WHO CC UTS acknowledges use of key language from The WHO Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery (2021–2025).

Cathrine Fowler has had a long-term interest in parent-child relationships and child and family health. More recently, the Professor in Child and Family Health Nursing at the University of Technology in Sydney, has taken this interest to China, where she worked collaboratively with Tresillian staff to set up the first early parenting centre in Chengdu. Tresillian is a non-profit early parenting organization funded by NSW Health.

While countless Tresillian nurses have been a saviour for many sleepless or confused Australian parents of infants and young children for over 100 years, nurse-led healthcare is unusual in China.

To help explain the nursing-led model, Cathrine and the Tresillian CEO spoke at numerous Chinese paediatric conferences. Tresillian nurses have completed additional post graduate qualifications in child and family health nursing and are known for their expertise in parenting and assessing and supporting the parent-child relationship. At this stage, a basic model has been implemented at the first centre in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan in southwest China. Tresillian is continuing much of this work via tele-conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At Tresillian we really do nursing-led and child and family focused clinical practice – which we have started to put in place in China

, she says.

The decision to open the service came about for a number of reasons, in particular the change in the one-child policy and the perceived lack of parenting knowledge of many new parents. Tresillian and a Chinese company were eager to set up their world-respected model and asked for assistance from Cathrine. The Chinese government has been focusing on the elderly and were keen to turn their attention to infants, young children and parents as they recognized the importance of the early years of a child’s life and the impact on the child’s future health and wellbeing.

A new Chinese child health policy also has a strong focus on educating the workforce. To support this an educated nursing workforce is needed, Cathrine has also helped develop in partnership with Wuhan University four subjects for registered nurses studying a Masters in Nursing. A pilot was completed in 2019 with the eight students graduating.

Fowler has been involved with Tresillian for 40 years as a nurse and educator. After receiving her PhD, she was invited to be the Professor for the inaugural Tresillian chair in Child and Family Health at UTS. She has worked as a midwife, a community nurse, written parenting books and researched child and family health nursing practice and parenting.

She has also helped women in jail. When Cathrine began working at UTS as a professor in 2005, she developed the “Mothering at a Distance” program in partnership with Tresillian and Corrective Services NSW. The eight-session program for incarcerated mothers provides early parenting education and support on how to use non-punitive parenting practices and reduce emotional pain of mothers being separated from their kids. This program is now also offered to Aboriginal mothers who are incarcerated.

With such a long background in nursing, this experienced nurse and academic has seen many positive changes in infant health over the years.

There’s been the shift from an expert model where we tell mothers what to do to a much more collaborative, co-production model of nursing where we acknowledge parents have knowledge about their babies, they have knowledge about life and families. We work with the parents to use this knowledge to co-design culturally appropriate interventions

she says.

She has also seen a move away from looking at child health towards a focus on child and parental mental health. She is cautious about the change as we need to make sure we don’t neglect the physical side of child health.

You have to make sure the focus of care is on both physical and mental health of the child and their family

she says.

Fowler says she has been “really privileged” having worked with Tresillian as it is a very strong and progressive nursing-led organisation.

I’ve really enjoyed and learnt from the challenges and the opportunities that have come up within the work I have done

, she says.