No Ordinary People
No Ordinary People shares the raw, real stories of charity founders driving change across Australia. From grassroots to national impact, these are the voices reshaping our future - one powerful story at a time.
No Ordinary People
No Ordinary People - KidsXpress: How A Child’s Last Wish Built A Lifeline For Thousands
A child’s final wish became a blueprint for change. Host Jade Harley sits down with KidsXpress founder and CEO Margo Ward to chart the journey from “play lady” in a hospital ward to leading a nationally recognised, trauma‑informed model that embeds expressive therapy in schools and communities across Australia. Margo shares how music, art, dance, and drama help children regulate, reconnect, and recover when words aren’t enough, and why consistent, long‑term presence beats quick fixes every time.
Across moving stories and sharp insights, we dig into the data behind Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the neuroscience that validates creative modalities, and the uncomfortable truth that half of all mental health issues start before 14. Margo explains how KidsXpress evolved from small therapy groups to whole‑school partnerships, why teachers need mental health professionals by their side, and what it takes to win community trust after a crisis. The Snowy Valleys case study shows the ripple effect in action: safer classrooms, supported families, and children who find their voice.
We also talk practical steps for parents and carers: how to spot signs of distress, what to say when behaviour shifts, and why the process of play matters more than the product. On policy and systems, Margo makes a bold case for a Minister for Children, trauma‑informed teacher education, and sustained funding for prevention and early intervention. At the heart of it all is a simple challenge: choose one child and keep showing up. That’s how culture changes - one trusted adult, one brave school, one community at a time.
This episode is a testament to what vision, compassion, and relentless commitment can achieve for young people. Tune in to learn how Margo’s dedication continues to drive systemic change in mental-health care for children, and how KidsXpress is helping to create the future all children deserve.
If this conversation moved you, follow and share the show, leave a review, and pass it to someone who cares about kids’ mental health. Want to help? Connect with KidsXpress, start a conversation at your school, and tell us what you’ll do first.
This episode was recorded at the Nova Entertainment studios.
KidsXpress Contact Details
Website - kidsxpress.org.au
Email - info@kidsxpress.org.au
Facebook - www.facebook.com/KidsXpressAustralia
Instagram - @kidsxpressmentalhealth
No Ordinary People is produced by Jade Harley, Director of Impact at UnLtd.
This podcast shares the real stories of charity founders driving change for children and communities across Australia, especially those impacted by trauma, poverty, racism, and family and domestic violence.
Every story is a reminder: hope is built one small act at a time.
Brand identity and cover design created by my beautiful friends at Cocogun.
Got a story to share or want to get involved? Reach out to jade@unltd.org.au
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Connect: Instagram @noordinarypeople_podcast and LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/jadeharley
Jade: Welcome to No Ordinary People. I'm Jade, and I'm on a mission to give positivity a voice by sharing stories of everyday people doing extraordinary things. They're a reminder of the power we all have to make the world a better place.
This episode is being recorded in the Nova Entertainment Studios in Pyrmont. We acknowledge that we are on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay our deep respects to elders, past and present, and the young people leading us into the future. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. This was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Today, I'm excited to be chatting with Margo Ward. Margo is the visionary founder and CEO of KidsXpress, a trailblazing children's mental health charity that's redefined how we support kids impacted by trauma. With a background in nursing, teaching, and play therapy, Margo built KidsXpress from the ground up. Turning a bold idea into a nationally recognised model of trauma-informed care. Since 2005, she's led the organisation with fierce compassion and strategic grit, embedding expressive therapy into schools and communities across Australia. Hi Margo, thanks for being here.
Margo: Hi Jade, it's so wonderful to be here. Let's get into it, shall we? Yeah, absolutely.
Jade: I want to kind of step back a little bit. I like to step back in time. What were your early experiences growing up, and how do you think they influenced your career now and who you've become?
Margo: My goodness. Okay, we're going way back. You know what, Jade, I think about this all the time, particularly at the moment, because we've just ticked over my 20th anniversary since I actually started KidXpress. And when I was talking about it with somebody recently, there became this really dawning moment.
That it's not like I've ever forgotten it, but I realised this has actually been my entire life. It actually took me 13 years before I actually got the courage to set up KidsXpress, but taking the massive step before that was as a child, I was raised in New Zealand in a remote farm. I'm the youngest of nine children. I have a massive family, and yet, being brought up on a remote farm, I was really brought up as a solo child, as almost an only child.
I was born into a family that had multiple complexities within it. I was a very sick child. I spent the first five years of my life in an oxygen tent. So away from my family, away from my parents. My parents were allowed to come and see me for two hours a day on a Sunday. So as a child, all those formative years being brought up whilst in a big family unit, but also...sort of as the solo child, think those very early years also with a chronic illness, also within a really complex family and its own history, that's my origin. That's where I, even then, back then, would use my own creativity to help me through all the challenges and traumas and the adverse childhood experiences that I faced as a very young child and then growing up as an adolescent and then into a young adult.
Jade: Talk a little bit about your early career. So, your first job and what that taught you, and before KidsXpress, what were those experiences like?
Margo: Well, I think again, back to those really formative years, and we're talking quite some time ago. So, back then, you know, the career path you kind of went down was nursing, teaching, or you became a secretary. I trained as a nurse. I then traveled overseas. I decided to then become a teacher and
The whole time, it wasn't enough for me. Neither career was enough for me. And when I was living in London, I found play therapy at Great Ormond Street. I was a nanny overseas. Obviously, coming from a big family, I was also brought up with lots of children. I was the youngest. I always looked after and entertained all the kids. But I found this place, I guess, when I was at Great Ormond Street, that all of a sudden, the accumulation of, at that point, my qualifications and my passion for children, all of a sudden, I found it within a hospital setting. And I realised in that moment of giving children coping mechanisms or positive experiences when they were in hospital was more than just something to relieve their boredom, itwas more than something that just allowed them to fill their time in the hospital, because I knew even then as a child that helped me heal.
Jade: So, KidsXpress, now looking back at those experiences and how they formed you. Where did the idea for KidsXpress come from, and how did that come about?
Margo: So my career from that point so, learning about play therapy when I was living in London, then coming back to this side of the world, deciding Sydney was going to be my home. I kind of magically I landed the job of head of play therapy at Sydney Kids Hospital. And at that time, again, play therapy in Australia, I wasn't actually called the play therapist; I was called a play lady. And we were way, way behind the rest of the world in terms of again, here, it was used to entertain children while they're in hospital. But because of my experience in the UK, I started to pioneer play therapy within Sydney Kids Hospital and then across Australia as something that was vitally important to children, given the experiences that they were going through in the hospital.
So my job working as Head of Play Therapy was obviously to grow that department, but I clinically worked in chronic illness groups. I worked in child protection, I worked in ICU, and I worked in oncology predominantly, and specialized in palliative care. So when people talk to me or say or refer or even refer myself as being the founder of KidsXpress, I do that because people understand if you're a founder, you started something. I was just a conduit of a vision.
So my job at Sydney Kids was to work with these children to give them coping mechanisms to either what had happened to them, what was happening to them, or what was about to happen to them. So using all the creative modalities, the music, art, dance, drama that you use within play. And I will say, I can't sing, I can't draw, I can't dance, but I am a bit of a drama queen. So there's parts of it that really resonated with me. But giving these children coping mechanisms and...
And predominantly, the vision of KidsXpress came from children I worked with in palliative care. So I would work with children, and often they had reached a point where physically they couldn't engage with modalities, but we would use their imagination. Children years apart from each other would fly off on this magic carpet, and they would imagine this place. And this place was unique to every single child. But the commonality of all those visions was a place where they could sing and dance and throw paint and do all this magical stuff. And every child individually, and even though they never knew each other because they were years apart from each other, would imagine it like a silver castle. And so over time, this place got born in my mind and in my imagination about a place that needed to exist for children, where they could sing and dance and throw paint. And what was interesting to me is every time a child would come out of this imagery, the children would say to me, Why isn't it real? Why can we only go there in our imagination? And there are many stories I could tell, but there's one particular child that he and I had become very close over a number of years on his treatment journey, and he was reaching the end of his life. And I got a page one day to go to his room, and he held my hand, and he was seven or eight years old and said, Margo, that place we've always imagined, that place that you helped me heal, it's now too late for me. You have to create this place so that other children can heal. And then he took his last breaths. So in that moment, I guess the feeling, the emotion of this child's last wish was for me to create, to make this place that we had created, and loads of children had created in my imagination, now needed to be real. And that's a huge commitment. So that to me, he accumulated that whole experience was here's a vision and you're now responsible for it. So that's great. That feels enormous. I went to that little boy's funeral. I went to many children's funerals and just realised that something that had been gifted to me by these children
I had the responsibility to deliver on that vision. But in all honesty, Jade, I was a really good therapist. I knew how to blow bubbles. I knew how to distract children. I knew how to do it. But in my mind, it was a beautiful vision. And for many, many years, I called it the silver sanctuary. Until we fast-forward to when we were running focus groups around what this organization was going to be. Somebody said that sounds like a brothel. So we changed the name to KidsXpress. But what is amazing for me and in my life and my career is the belief in serendipity. So, and not the woowoo sense. I believe you put the really deep foundations into life and life, universe, energy, whatever you want to call it will conspire to put you on the right path. And so I had over 10 years of working in this extraordinary environment, which I thought was the best job I would ever have. sure, it was, it was incredibly difficult working across those domains, but to be that person at that point in a child's life, to be at the end, that is such a privilege and such a responsibility when you're handed a vision. But then I took a very odd leap in my career and randomly I applied for a job that was working in a suicide prevention program. And that job was to go to predominantly regional remote areas around Australia and bring communities together to talk about depression and suicide. And not something I had worked with, even though I'd worked in child protection and adolescents, and I'd certainly worked with young people who had attempted or were in crisis. I started this job, and I remember the CEO of the kids' hospital at the time sitting me down going, Margo, what on earth are you doing? You've pioneered play therapy, you're, at that point, I was sitting on an executive within the hospital, you've got a career in health, I don't understand why you're doing it. And I remember saying to him at the time, well, they're gonna give me a car. And that's all I could come up with. It ended up being this massive brick lime green V8 Holden, which just was not me at all.
But what that gave me in working with those communities, meeting people who either were in crisis or had been in crisis or lost a loved one in crisis, all of a sudden, they started to validate the children's vision. Now, this is a long time ago. What we know now is not what we knew back then. But I had all these experiences of adults saying to me, this happened to me as a child. The bullying, the abuse, the domestic violence, the neglect, the illnesses, the loss, whatever it was, that was my first experience. And then they could paint pretty much their crisis pathway, these are all the losses that happened afterwards. This is how I was taught, or this is how I wasn't taught. And if only there'd been a place. So for 13 years, I had this extraordinary vision of what KidsXpress or the Silver Sanctuary was going to look like. Again, Jade, I was just, I considered myself then a very good therapist and I knew what to do. And so I'll always remember it was New Year's Eve 2005 and I stood on a hill somewhere in Sydney, probably with a few bubbles under my belt, and did this very dramatic, my drama queen came out, and I did the, I'm sorry, kids, I'm never gonna pull this off. I don't know how to start anything, let alone a business. Again, believing in serendipity, it was literally three months, four months later, I went to an old friend's 40th, his name is Paul Hines, an extraordinary human being. I took him to dinner for his 40th birthday to some little restaurant in Darlinghurst, which he still says he only bought me an eight dollar chicken salad. And he asked me a really pivotal question. He asked me, Do you think what you're doing today will change the life of a child tomorrow? And I had to say no. Even though I had already let go of the vision, it was still intrinsic to who I was. And I still have the email from him that he sent me the next day, saying, Don't give up your day job just yet, girly, but we're going to make this happen. Put your idea into a business plan. So I quickly Googled what that was. Put together what I thought was a business plan. And this was obviously Paul was a, well, maybe not obviously, he was a very old friend of mine, a very successful businessman. And I honestly thought I'll take this, this, this baby that I've put on paper and I'll take it into him and he'll go, yeah, don't give up your day job. You can't make this happen. And the complete opposite is true. And he, took me around to his offices, General Security Australia in the rocks, introduced me to everybody without looking at my plan and said, Margo has a vision that's going to save the life of children and we're going to help her make it happen. And then he took me into his boardroom where he had his Chief of Risk, his CFO, and his EA, who he trusted most in the world, and threw the business plan on the table and then said, Now sell it. If you can convince these people that we should help you, we will. And I did.
And now 20 years later, we have transformed the lives of thousands of children, thousands of parents, caregivers, and communities, and we are internationally recognised as best practice working with children and nationally accredited, et cetera. So I guess for me, I am the founder and Paul's co-founder with me, but we are honoured to be the conduits of that vision that children imparted to us many, many years ago.
Jade: I love how you paint that picture. And I think, you know, that's probably is that that's what drives you because you can always hark back to that little boy who sat there and looked you in the eye at such a vulnerable stage and entrusted you with this vision. Like that is, I mean, God, that's powerful.
Margo: Yeah. It's not, it's not something you walk away from lightly. in all honesty, Jade, the last 20 years have not been easy. Setting up, because not only was KidsXpress, it was a world first. Like I already knew that. I'd already done my research around the world, how we use music therapy, art therapy, drama therapy, play therapy in the way that we do. And also for children under 12. We were not talking about children's mental health 20 years ago. We weren't even really talking about it five years ago. It is one of the gifts of COVID is that people will now put children and mental health in the same sentence, but we definitely weren't talking about it. So, then even when Paul said, We're going to make this happen, the use of the creative modalities was seen as alternative and fringy. Like it wasn't seen as serious work. And we, we often talk at KidsXpress about what we do is really colourful and playful, but it is really serious work. And what is, what is wonderful is now all the neuroscience, et cetera, has all caught up in Australia. And we now realise the creative modalities is how children communicate. It's how they grow. It's how they learn self-regulation. It's how they connect. It's how they build relationships. And when you're a child who is going through adversity and challenges, you need those even more than what you need them in day-to-day life. So it's never lost on me the vision imparted by the children, but the validation from the adults. We should never forget. And again, it's something that amazes me in my 20 years of setting up KidsXpress and establishing. You know, I still to this day will get people pushing back at me and going, really? Don't we just wait and see if there's a problem? Do children really remember? And the number of times I've looked people in the eye, went, wait, you were a child? Do you not realise things that happen in your life, positive and negative, had an influence on the adult you are today. And we forget that. We forget that we have all been children or maybe we don't forget it, we just like to hide it. And for me, it's we needed to bring that, we need to bring children into the centre of every single decision we make because they're here and they are our future. And if we don't pay attention to them, our future does not look as bright as what we think it does.
Jade: I think that's a, you it's a good segue in terms of, you touched on COVID, so I'd like to look at that. think, you know, the world that we're living in, even for adults, is pretty bleak. There's not a lot of good news out there. That's what's probably part of my impetus for speaking to people like you, because I want people to see there's a hell of a lot of people that see something wrong with the world and do something about it. Don't just sit back and go, it's not my problem. And I think we look at it as an adult. I can't even imagine as a child, with everything going on in the world, with social media, with climate catastrophe and you know, going backwards in terms of human rights and diversity and inclusion, all of these things. Like, what are you seeing? How has your work changed over the past 20 years? And what are the challenges that kids are facing now that maybe they weren't when you started?
Margo: It's a really interesting question. So I think if I talk about the involvement of KidsXpress first, and then I can talk about what we're seeing today.
When we started KidsXpress, was group therapy for children under 12. There was up to six children, eight children in a group, and there was three therapists. As we've, we invest very heavily in impact and research. It's absolutely critical. And so as we went through that process and making sure that we were, because one of the things in our sector is, there's really good intent, but we have to make sure we do good and that we do no harm. And so ensuring all the impact and evidence is really clear and best practice around the world. For us as we've evolved over time, we started as group therapy, we then started, we were invited into schools, and I'll be honest, I had this vision of having KidsXpress centres all around the country. And we were challenged by one of the big other not-for-profits (Mission Australia) to not stick to that vision and to consider being in schools. And we now have a very successful program where we have teams of therapists and trauma-informed consultants in a whole school approach that we partner with schools for a minimum of three years. The data tells us when we leave, the data tells us when we stay. And it's incredibly important to, I guess, really focus on a whole community in that way because we're also about system change. So we've evolved over time from group therapy, we now do individual and diet therapy at our centers as well. We're in school partnerships, we're also in health, so we've now been invited into the Head to Health hubs to provide the same support for children. And we're also in community, we're in Snowy Valleys in different communities as well. So as we've evolved and grown, the most significant thing has also been about impact and evidence all the way along and building relationships with all the other key service providers around. So what was interesting to us is in 2015, we took all our data to childhood trauma experts around the world. We weren't particularly interested to know what we did well. We were interested to where we could do better. And from all of them, it came back that we were pioneering in terms of what we were providing to children. wonderful, fantastic, particularly in the model in terms of how we were doing it. What it did come back as said, you're clapping really, really loudly with one hand, meaning you need to do more with the caregiving community, the parents, the teachers, the community. And that's where we started doing our trauma-informed training and support and education. And so therefore the child is at the centre of every single thing that we do, but the caregiving community, which to be honest is all of us, that wraps around our children needed to know what trauma looked like, needed to know what to do about it, and needed the support. And that's what KidsXpress provides. So over the many years, that's how we've evolved. Never, ever taking away expressive therapy, never, ever removing the child from the centre of everything we do. And that's been critical to not just our establishment, but our growth as well.
Jade: You mentioned community. Can you give me an example of a community where you've really seen the impact of that whole community approach from the child, the caregivers, the parents? And I think what I love about you and the way you approach this is you're really also protective of the parents. Many of those parents have suffered trauma themselves and they're now suffering the repercussions and you're looking to break those intergenerational kind of trends, right?
Can you paint a picture of a community where you've seen the impact.
Margo: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I could do many actually. And so many stories come to mind, but I think one very recent one, and we are dealing with generational trauma without a doubt. So going into communities with curiosity, with care, with our creativity, because we don't judge, and we're not going into these communities as experts. We meet people children, families, communities, where they are at. And we know we have knowledge and we know we have skill, but we're not the expert in somebody else's life. And the reason I say that is very recently, we have a program in the Snowy Valleys and we've had a centre-based program and we've had a school-based program. And I was invited down because we were, because the evidence was telling us it was, we could close the school partnership program and focus on the centre-based program.
And so I was invited down to that community. Now, I'll be honest, I went down to that particular school at the beginning of our partnership, and it was not only through COVID, but they had had the fires that absolutely ravaged their community, and they felt forgotten. They felt like we'd, everybody, sort of turned up in the, you know, when the fires first happened, then people disappeared, then COVID happened, and then there was nothing. And so it was really clear if you're coming into our community, A, you have to earn our trust and B, you have to stay. So we were really committed to doing that. And in those very early days, I remember going down and people wouldn't meet eyes with you. Teachers in the school, like it was a really, we turn up, you know, we're kind of like the pied piper sometimes. We're all colour, yeah, we've got all that, we've got all the music going on and we weren't getting a lot of engagement in the early days, but we were committed and the team there were committed. When I went down a couple of weeks ago, and the love, and I mean it, the love for that team was palpable. I was invited to the school assembly. The school assembly was for KidsXpress. And so all these children that wouldn't have met me, that wouldn't have spoken, all got up in assembly and said what they'd learned from KidsXpress and how it had changed their lives. It was just this remarkable, I mean, it was a small school and it's a small community. But then the principal tapped me on the shoulder and she was sitting behind me. And I turned to her, she's got tears in her eyes and she's like, can you just look to the back of the room? The room was filling up with the community. Not just the parents, but the community. All celebrating what KidsXpress had brought to that community. So I'm witnessing all these children who are talking with such gratitude and creativity about how grateful they were that they got to work with the therapist down there and that they got to be part of KidsXpress and the teachers telling me what it meant to them. And then the parents saying, I wish I'd had KidsXpress as a child because I experienced what my child or worse than what my child. Now, one Mum coming up to me, just hugging me, just holding onto me going, you gave me my son back. I didn't have him. I thought I was going to lose him and you gave him back. Community leaders saying, no, this is just, this is rippled out to the whole community.
And I was quite stunned by the experience. Then one of the, an ex-teacher down there did this incredible fundraiser and raised this extraordinary amount of money from a community that you just wouldn't expect would be able to raise this amount of money because they believe in the work that we do. And what's really significant about that is whilst the school had this new energy about it, it's like, we've got this. The teachers are like, we've learned so much, our eyes have been opened, our hearts have been opened. We know how to support these kids now, but you're not leaving us because you've still got a centre here where those children that still need one-on-one therapy can access therapy. And it's a real example, and I could give you so many data around how changing one child's life has this ripple effect. And changing a child's life, have to reach them where they're at, the creative modalities are the most safe and effective way to do that. And then the ripple effect out to the parents and the teachers and the kids, to me, it's as magical as the magic carpet rides that I used to take the kids on.
Jade: How many schools are you in now, Margo?
Margo: So we're currently in eight. We've just got some funding to open another cluster in Wollongong, which is super exciting. And whilst some that may sound small, it's not because some of these schools have almost a thousand students in them. Some of these schools have really complex issues. Culturally, one school has 40 languages spoken in the school, but KidsXpress also, we have a centre base where we provide individual and group therapy and diet therapy, but also we're in schools, but we're also in health and we're also in community. So, you know, we've just sent a team of trauma-informed consultants to go and work in Western Australia and to support communities, in there. So it's an organisation for us, that even though we've hit 20 years, it's like in many ways we're just getting started. Because in comparison to the rest of the world, I would say, particularly the UK and the US, we're behind the eight ball in placing children at the centre of every decision we make and realising that where our mental health and wellbeing starts, and the need for care and compassion is actually in childhood, if not before, prenatally.
Jade: You mentioned something earlier, I just want to pull back to that. You said around, you know, the fact that even five years ago, we didn't mention the words children and mental health in the same sentence. So why, for a start, what's changed? And why is it so important that we do recognise that, you know, mental health challenges or differences or any of those kinds of things, if they're not spotted early, the ramifications of that? Why do we look to fix things when they're broken before addressing them?
Margo: It's one of the things when I, even back in the early days when I was explaining to Paul the importance of, when I was working in suicide prevention, as important that i, and as important as crisis intervention is, and I'm not saying at all that it's not, but you're pulling people out of the river. It's like we have to go upstream and find out why they're falling in. And so the importance of early intervention and prevention, so two separate things, is critically important. Now one of the things that never ceases to amaze me, Jade, is we don't take childhood seriously. We just don't. We have a minister for fish, but we don't have a minister for children.
Jade: Like how, why?
Margo:Well, I guess children don't vote, but they will one day.
Jade: I don't think fish do either, do they?
Margo: Well, no, not last I saw. But I think this is where, and again, it comes back to the evidence. So KidsXpress is also based on a study called ACE's - Adverse Childhood Experiences. Now these adverse childhood experiences, and this is an old study but has been continued to be developed over many years, is that we all go through challenge and loss, right? All of us in our childhood. And some of those and some experiences build resilience, and we all need to build that. And that is definitely a muscle we need to build, so to speak, in terms of our resilience and our ability to adapt to situations. But this research showed that certain adverse childhood experiences, once you reach more than four, your risk of attempting to end your life, your risk of suicide is 12 times higher. In some cases, your risk of heart disease in certain cancers is four and a half times more high. Like there is actually evidence to say this. And we seem to be really resistant to focus on children. It's like, not like children should be seen and not heard, but just they'll forget. Or they'll grow out of it. Yeah, they'll grow out of it. It's just a stage or they're naughty. Yes. And we'll just wait until we see there's a problem and then we'll deal with it.
But what we know is 50 % of all mental health issues actually arise before the age of 14. So doesn't it make sense to intervene and support them and wrap care around them when they're going through that? So therefore it doesn't have that ongoing ripple effect in terms of, because it's not just the child, it's the whole family, it's the whole community, it's society. That's where we see those problems.
It did frustrate me for many years that people were just uncomfortable. And of course, when we use the creative modalities, we'd get, oh, that's nice. That's lovely. Yeah. I'm like, no, it's not. Yeah. It's not nice at all. What we do, you know, I'm, every single day I'm inspired by the therapists and my staff that hold this space for children because what they witness is not lovely. No. We, the dominant reason for referral to KidsXpress would be domestic violence abuse. And we are seeing children with massive amounts of anxiety. And that probably is the biggest outtake from COVID is just that generalised anxiety. Children not able to self-regulate, children not able to have healthy relationships, children not able to learn. One of the things that we don't realise, if your child's brain has not been able to regulate and is not able to focus, they can't learn. No matter how many times you give them a star on a chart, they're not going to learn. And so, ensuring that our children do get the right support at the right time is absolutely critical. And yet, we're still pushing that bar and I think we possibly always will to get people to understand you want to change some of the horrific states in adulthood, you need to go back, you need to go upstream, you need to be focusing on children now.
Jade: And what are classified as the ACES? Like what are those particular experiences?
Margo: Those experiences can be parental separation, but not forgetting that there's at least four of them. There's abuse, there's domestic violence, there's mental health in the family, drug use, there's a whole range of those, so very complex ones. And like I say, a child or a family can experience one or two of those and they can work through those, but without the right environment that wraps around them.
And also if you think back to many years ago when I was working, it's if it's ignored and belittled and told, mate, somebody else is worse off than you, then it's just going to fester and build. And we know that.
Jade: And how can parents, carers or, you know, the wider support around kids, how can they spot that a kid is not doing well? Like what are the signs?
Margo: It's a really interesting one again, Jade, because I think we like to ignore signs, but seeing the signs when a child is not coping. And it's one of the things again that when you're attuned to it, realise a child might not be using words, but man, they are showing you left and right centred that they are distressed, that they are not coping, that something's not right. And so the most significant advice I think I can give parents and carers and all of us is when you see a change in behaviour, when something's not usual for that child, then they're trying to tell you something. It could be anything. So there's regression in behaviours, there's acting out behaviours, there's something not right. And so when there is that change, that's when it's important to just notice that. So hey, I'm noticing all of a sudden you're really resisting going to bed, or I've noticed that, you seem really, unhappy when you're going to school, or I've noticed that you're not playing with your friends anymore, you're not talking about your friends. It's the noticing of change in behaviour. In terms of our KidsXpress program, what's really clear to us, particularly in our school partnership programs, teachers become teachers to teach. They don't become teachers to be mental health professionals. And so we heard very clearly, we need the mental health professionals alongside us. And so what that means is we are able to see the signs of when a child is not coping and sometimes it can be people think it's the child that's acting out and the really aggressive behaviour. That's one sign. A child sitting in the back of the classroom who's quiet, who looks like they're learning but actually is just looking out the window is also in crisis.
Jade: I mean that's complex. It is complex. And this is why it takes experts. I've had the privilege of seeing one of your schools in action of watching you your not with the children. We never do that, but actually speaking to the trauma-informed therapists. Where do they come from? How do you spot them? What does it take to be a trauma-informed therapist? I mean, they were incredible people. And as you said, what they're facing every day, that's a lot to hold. How do you find them? How do you nurture them? And how do you support their mental health?
Margo: That's a good question. You know what? They are absolutely extraordinary people. I think about people who choose to work with children and choose to work in this space. I'm in awe. I have therapy envy all the time because I don't practice therapy with children anymore, but I witnessed the therapist coming out of session, and I'm just like, my goodness, they are just, they, as you know, I used to refer to myself. I thought I was a really good therapist. They all run rings around me. They are deeply caring, deeply creative, talented, talented people.
I think for me, and going back again to the origins, ensuring that people have the right qualifications, etc., to call themselves and refer to themselves as an art therapist or music therapist, and drama therapist is really important. There are people who might think attending a weekend course makes them an art therapist, it does not. It is a therapy, so you need the expertise and the qualifications. And what's been extraordinary in the last 20 years is seeing the professions really growing in Australia and knowing kids express as part of that. Like that's extraordinary. But what makes a person who can hold a space in a school, in a medical setting or in a community to be able to hold that space for children, it takes people who are very, very self-aware and do a lot of work on themselves. It requires them to be in an empathetic, not a sympathetic state.
It requires them to use their expertise in a way. And we have teams so that they're always supported. I keep looking at No Ordinary People. Like, these people that work in the space and not just for the KidsXpress. That self-awareness to be present is extraordinary. The care of themselves and the care of each other before almost the child and the family is also critical.
As an employer, we obviously have to make sure that we put as much care wrapped around them as we possibly can and that we build their resilience in that space as well. So it's not easy. And again, I go back to people can see us using the creative modalities and go, that's nice. Well, it's a tool, but what they are holding is extraordinary. Making sure people don't come into the not-for-profit sector because they want to be multimillionaires. Just, they don't.
But they are wealthier than what we realise. Yeah. Because what they witness and how they do, what they do, in some way, I was saying this to the team the other day, we might not have millions of dollars in the bank, however, in another bank, we're loaded. Yeah. Yeah.
Jade: The Bank of Purpose. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So you've led KidsXpress now for two decades, which is an incredible achievement. I hope sometimes you sit back and take stock of what you've built. And I think, did you mention to me, you've got like 50 staff now? How has your, what's your leadership journey been like? You started off not knowing how to write a business plan and you made that work. What's that journey been like from a leadership point of view?
Margo: It's been really bumpy. And have we ever said there's a learning curve lied? It's not, it's straight up. It has been, I think the journey, I think we're all leaders actually, Jade. In some ways, when we realise that we're all leaders and we all have a responsibility, that changes how we function in the world. Because if we really embrace that, then we all have a level of responsibility.
Every time I speak and even right now, I've got a child in my mind that I'm representing them. That little boy in that bed, he's never very far away from my heart. I'm always constantly thinking of him and many, many other children, obviously, that I've met in my career. The leadership journey is, well, it's been an absolute honour, but it comes with a great sense of responsibility. I've failed miserably many, many times. I've fallen many, many times. And it has been the most incredible roller coaster in leadership. It has taken far more than I realised. Think I joke with some people going, yeah, if I'd known what it was going to take, I might not have done it, but I am so pleased my naivety served me so well. And my leadership has taken me into all sorts of environments. I also sit on a couple of corporate Australia boards, which is a huge honour. And sometimes I'm like, you know, I'm representing the third sector here. It's significantly important. But it comes for me, the leadership journey has been one that I think it's certainly not over yet. I mean, 20 years feels like a long time, but it's not. I don't think it'll ever be over because we're not done yet. We don't have children at the centre of everything that we do. I think leading my team through that 20 years and even before that has just every single time I think, I'm here. It's like, don't think that because you know, you've just got to rise again.
Jade: Well, you're also incredibly ambitious. So you're going to keep raising the bar. We know that about you.
Margo: Yeah. Yeah. I just, it is really interesting because every now and then, you know, we're all human, right? We're all human. And there's times that, like I said, I've failed miserably and there's times I make really bad decisions, but I think it's the willingness to learn. I think sometimes leaders think they know it all, and they so don't. And so constantly wanting to learn, constantly wanting to know how I can do things better, knowing that I'm also leading a group of extraordinary individuals who are far better at certain roles in the business than I've ever been and the responsibility to get out of their way sometimes. Somebody once said to me at the very, very beginning of KidsXpress, and they said to me, so Margo, your days of partying and getting drunk and rolling in gutters is over. And I was like, well, I've never done that. What are you talking about? And they're like, you need to realise now, any given moment you are now the founder and CEO of KidsXpress, and within that comes a level of responsibility.
And I did, I took to the dance floor last week at the UnLtd Big Dream. And so it's not like I don't still enjoy life outside of my career, but I do take that very, very importantly, because you never know who we are is looking at you as a leader.
Jade: Well, I think you do it beautifully. So you do it with poise and just so much passion. And that's the, that's the, you know, that that's the secret sauce really. There's the unwavering drive in you and the ambition and you can identify every single one of those kids their needs. And I think you can also see like what's gonna happen to society if you don't address it. Can we talk a bit about that? Like if we don't focus more on prevention... we're not great in this country at prevention. always, know, we seem to understand you put sun cream on, you don't get skin cancer or, you know, don't eat too many Macca's or you'll be obese. But we don't do the same when it comes to things like mental health. Why is that? Why are we so hesitant to focus on prevention and why doesn't funding go into prevention?
Margo: Well, I think there's a number of things there, Jade. We do, our stats in Australia are not great. So when there is limited funds, that is the reality, right? And so when you're faced with crisis and crisis tends to be acknowledged in young people or young adults and adulthood, then naturally the money is going to go there. And in many ways, it's also, if you break a bone, you have to do something about that right now. And it's obvious and all those things. And so when we're now talking about mental health and we're also talking about children, it's like, okay, well, it requires a really long-term vision. Now, have we had a long-term vision in terms of mental health from our government? I would say no. We may have an opportunity now, which I'm excited about. And I am starting to hear, you know, we are talking about children and mental health. And so that's wonderful to see, but it requires a long-term vision. And I think that's what's been lacking is, we just, we're constantly at that bottom of the cliff. We're constantly pulling people out of the stream. We're not willing to go upstream because that is going to take, that's going to take extraordinary leadership. That is in my mind, going to take a minister for children.
We need at that level, we need children heard and held in a completely different way to what they currently are. And I do think it's the, we're in a society now where we're pulled in so many different directions. It's if we don't fundamentally understand, and I do think this was a gift of COVID, we did start seeing our children that way and people were talking about it so much more.
We just can't lose that conversation around our children are struggling and we have a responsibility. It's not somebody else's responsibility. It's not just the government's responsibility. It's not just the parents' responsibility. It's all of our responsibility. So until we as a country really wrap around our children effectively and take a long-term view, if you're five,
It's not that long until you're going to be somebody in our workforce. We need to be thinking like that. We need to be thinking about the child that's in front of us now and the employee they'll become in the not too distant future.
Jade: If you could - this is quite a big question - so tell me to shut up. But if you could redesign Australia's mental health system for children, what would it look like? Clearly. KidsXpress in every school.
Margo: Yeah, exactly. And every school and every community that we would have it in our schools, all our teachers would be trauma-informed. Currently, our teachers get, in a four-year degree, get between two and four hours education in trauma. And then we put teachers, young, passionate, excited teachers into really complex school environments and expect them to be able to teach. We need our teachers at the very minimum to be trauma-informed.
We need our schools to be trauma informed and trauma aware and have trauma informed practices. And that is changing, but we need it deeply embedded in schools. It's not just about teachers doing online education. It is about having those professionals alongside our teachers in our schools, in our classrooms, in our playgrounds. So that's what I would change. I would change, would obviously have a minister for children. I would bring the child's voice.
If anything, I think in my career, it's I listened to the children's voice. And as I said, I was a conduit to their voice, but we need to hear them more. We need to stop ignoring children in the way of, just having a bad day. they're just, they're just a bad kid. No kid is a bad kid. No kid, no kid wakes up in the morning thinks, I'm going to be a little bright today. All they are trying to do is feel safe to be seen and to be heard. That's it. To be safe. Isn't that just a basic right? Rather than punishing and disciplining children, understanding what sits under that, understand what's really in their backpack coming to school, that emotional load, that's where we can change it. It is going to take every level. Corporate Australia also, I believe, has a responsibility to understand what is really happening to our future today, and that's our children. Well, that's their future workforce.
Jade: Yes, exactly. So if a parent or a carer spots something, what do they do? Where do they go?
Margo: Yeah, this is a really important one. And I think that's one from my entire career. Parents intrinsically know when their kids aren't OK. And often they ask themselves, what is the next thing to do? Or maybe they'll be all right if I don't worry about it. Again, that change in behaviour, ask them questions. I think that I'm really curious why you are doing just allows a conversation with the child. So, but once a parent knows there is something not okay, the first thing I would do is talk to the other people wrapped around your children. The research also says that somebody outside of your child's life, not a parent, not a, or even your teacher, but somebody significant to your child that your child has a relationship with, encourage them. But talk to all the people that wrap around your children, their coach, their teacher, their nanny, your grandparents etc. What have you noticed? Have you noticed anything different? Because then collectively, you may see, it was just something that they were struggling with on that particular day, or you could get a bigger picture. Then it's about getting the right help. Now that can be challenging given we don't have enough professionals, child psychologists, et cetera. But taking that next step of talking to your GP, talking to somebody, talking to the school around, I'm concerned about what's this behaviour for my child. And then it's about consistently being present to your child, naming their behaviour, because their behavior is just a way of sending a message. I noticed that you were really sad the other day, or I noticed that you really aggressive. I wonder what feeling is underneath that and labelling it. Yeah and that's taking the shame, the blame away and giving them and if they can't express that.
Jade: I'm really keen to know, what are some of the expressive therapies that can be used in place of words?
Margo: Art. Like just have a creative corner. Let them draw or let them and don't try and be a therapist. Don't try and work out what they're trying to say in it. Just let them express themselves. Messy play, there's nothing better. And it's pretty good for adults as well. Dance, put loud music on and just all dance around the, like there's so many things. Sport is also really good. Engage with your child, but do it with your child. Like engage in it with your child. Not from an I'm gonna see something, but using all the creative modalities to give that outlet. Because you're absolutely right. Children don't necessarily have the words but they have the feeling, so let them get it out, let them express it in a way through all those creative modalities. I think that that piece around being able to sing and do those things without being judged, it's not a performance, and that's something that's really important about all the creative therapies. It's not about the end result, it's actually about the process. So engage in a creative process with your child and just let it be.
Let it be loud, let it be colourful, let it be gentle and quiet if they need it to be. know, teach your child meditation, teach your child those things as well are incredibly important.
Jade: Yeah, I love that. I've just got an image of me singing my head off in the car like we all do, even as an adult of X years, I still get therapy out of play. I think we all do. Why would we not see the benefit of that in kids?
Margo: You know what's the sad thing I think becoming an adult is you stop playing. Yeah. And we need to add, we need to be playing. It's a fundamental need in our bodies to be able to do that. So, you know, you see people, they'll be doodling away all of a sudden that, you know, they will be singing in the car. We all do it. Let's be honest. We will take to a dance floor every now and then when we think nobody's watching. Like we will do that because we need that. And children, I think one of the things is when children stop, you know, painting, well they start drawing with a pencil rather than colour. Like when those things start to change, know we're taking, when they're not singing and they're not dancing, we're taking something away from them and we intrinsically need it.
Jade: I'd love to, you know, you've painted this beautiful picture of the inspiration behind KidsXpress. It's been 20 years of doing this work. Are there kids that you've seen just absolutely blossom that have had a really tough start in life and had those ACEs? You know, are there any examples of kids that you've seen get older? And you can look at that and sort of...
Margo: I think there's, there's so many. So, so many. And I think, you know, there's a couple that come to mind. There's one, it was actually during COVID and two of the therapists were in a school partnership program and they were worried about this one particular young girl and nobody else seemed to be worried about her, but they noticed some worrying behaviours. And so they wrapped themselves around this young girl and it turned out this young girl was in crisis and had a plan. And so they went above and beyond to support her through the modalities and through their work, but also making sure she got the right support to wrap around her and also getting their parents on board because they didn't realise how, what, situation she was in either. And the reason that she springs to mind is very recently as a young adult, she randomly emailed us through the info line saying, this is the difference you made in my life. I wouldn't be here. When you know that it's just, and there's so many children that you just know that you've had such, KidsXpress has just had such a massive impact just on their, the child and the family.
The other story that comes to mind for me is, and this goes back to when I was working in the kids hospital, been called down to ICU to sit with a little girl as her parents were being removed. So she was admitted into hospital for a chronic illness, but during the process it was realised that she was in a very dangerous, unsafe situation. And as the play lady then, I was just told to entertain her as her parents were being removed. And what I witnessed then was a little girl who in her play reenacted what had happened to her. And the whole time she was reenacting it, she was saying, this is love, this is love, this is love. And back then as a very young, naive therapist, I just thought to myself, this is not love. And I now have the responsibility to change that. And so throughout that child's hospitalisation, which was quite a long period of time, I turned up every day to provide her the outlet of play. And over a period of time, and I followed her into outpatients and then eventually I no longer saw her until a day not so long ago. But during that process of play, she reenacted a lot. I held and witnessed some horrific things that I remember talking to the medical team, the psychologists and et cetera at the time and them going up, but it's just play Margo. I'm like, even back then, was like, this is critically important.
But somewhere in the play, she introduced a girl and a doll in a red dress. And all of a she started talking about love as the doll in the red dress. And back then, and not too infrequently now, I wear a red dress. And on that last day I saw her, she's like, you're... And then she started saying, this is love. And then she's like, you're the doll in the red dress. But as serendipity, bringing that back to our original conversation, I was during COVID, I was sitting in a cafe when we could, and I could see that the waitress was kind of hovering around me a little bit. And then she came up to me and she said, you won't remember me, but it was her. Wow. And she was like, I still have that doll in the red dress. And now I play with my daughter with a doll on the red dress. And she sat down and told me about her life. And she'd certainly had many, many challenges. But she's like, I, that was my moment of knowing a different form of love. And I think for me, and this is something that we all need to know, we just need to turn up. And we can be the one person, I have the privilege potentially of turning up for lots of children and families and so do the therapists and everybody that KidsXpress employs, but we all have that opportunity to turn up consistently for one child. And if we all did that, that would change society.
If we were all conscious about that, we weren't too busy, we weren't wanting to get somewhere else, we weren't wanting to, I don't know, do whatever the next busy thing is. If we all just went, I need to turn up and turn up until they tell me they don't need me anymore, then if we did that one thing, that one thing.
Jade: I love that. So yeah, we'll put that out to everyone. So there's, you know, you've got a niece or a nephew, you've got your best friend's kid or, the kid in the playground that nobody, like that you encourage your kid to go and talk to the kid no one's talking to. Like, how do you, how do you, how can we all pay that forward? I think that's beautiful. So what's next for KidsXpress?
Margo: Good Lord. Well, we have a very passionate board. We've just, as we all know now, we've just hit 20 years. We've just redone all our strategy. We're really clear on our next Horizon One, Horizon Two, Horizon Three is the big five to six year strategy. We do a lot of research, which I also mentioned throughout the interview, and we have partnered with the Matilda Centre. And so we are gathering lots of data and evidence as we look to really start impacting on the Horizon 3 with government, hopefully. What we need to keep doing and turning up exactly the same way as we do every single day, we need to grow. And our strategy is all about growth, but we need to do it well and we need to do it considered. A really important point is even one of the things that people think is that, if you just support a child for 10 weeks, they'll be fine. We need to stay just like we've done in ASNOWE, we need to stay, we need to be consistent, we need to consistently show up. We need children to know that there are people who they can trust and that's what we do. So a lot of the societal change and shift that people want to see, they think it's going to happen in a year. It doesn't.
The research says it's three to five years to see cultural change, even in a school setting and a setting that's right for our kids. And so we need to take again that long-term vision for it. And KidsXpress is whilst we're delivering at that grassroots level and we're strategically growing, we're also looking to really create system change through our partnerships, but also through government, as well.
Jade: I'm so excited for the future. I mean, I think every school should have KidsXpress. So, if we can see if we can make that happen, maybe some more government funding, some philanthropic funding, anyone out there listening? Just going to ask you just a few sort of questions to close this up. We could talk all day, but I know you've got things to do. You're a busy CEO. So what's one thing that you wish every parent knew?
Margo: I wish the one thing that I wish all parents knew is that they know their child better than anybody else. And I think knowing that and being advocates for their children, but I think we forget sometimes. It's one of the things that I think we all need to learn. Our parents did the very best they could at the time. And so there's a point where we can't out, so we need to forgive whatever and we need to accept that that is the case.
But I think parents knowing when they have little children that they are their greatest child's advocates, that they do know their children better than anybody else. that they, the children didn't come with a manual, so they are gonna need help. So reaching out for help is not a failure of parenthood, it's actually a strength of parenthood.
Jade: I love that. And one message of hope to a kid who's having a tough time or has gone through some trauma, like what would you say to that young person?
Margo: It's not your fault.
Jade: Love that. I love reading. I know you love reading. What's something people can read that is inspirational that might impact their lives or give them a different perspective? What's one book that changed your thinking?
Margo: I am an avid reader. I do love a good book. I think one of the books to me that I actually read during COVID was The Happiest Man on Earth by a Holocaust survivor called Eddie Jaku, who I actually randomly got to meet before he passed away. It was just his view on the world life through that trauma lens that was extraordinary. And it also reminds me of my favourite movie, which is Life is Beautiful. So I think for me, those two go very, very hand in hand. I read that book in one sitting.
Jade: Yeah. Isn't it extraordinary how sometimes the people who have gone through unimaginable, unimaginable events can deliver such beauty to the world?
Margo: And see for me, in both circumstances, that book and the movie, they use their imagination, which is exactly the origin of The Happiest Man on Earth.
Jade: I think we'll wrap it up with that, don't you think? So finally, for anyone listening, how can they support you? I'll put it in the show notes, but where can they find you? Give me your website, your Facebook, your Instagram,
Margo: Yeah, we've got all of those things. I've got all those things. Just Google KidsXpress. It's KidsXpress without the E in the middle. Everybody likes to add an E in the middle, but it doesn't have the E in the middle. But you know what? Look at it. Find us on our website. Find us on Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want to find us, but call us. What you could do for us right now is just connect with us and find out more about us. Yeah, we can talk about funding, we can talk about all sorts of things, but actually we want a community that's curious enough to know the difference that they can make and they can start by giving us a call.
Jade: All righty, I reckon we'll wrap it up there. This has been fun. I could talk to you for hours, but thank you so much for taking an hour out of your day. I hope you've enjoyed it. I've certainly absolutely loved it. I am just an absolute fan girl for you. You know I am.
I hope everybody else on this feels the same way. So we'll leave it there. Thank you.