Summit snub: parents of triplets, twins upset

Organisations representing parents with multiples – which include twins, triplets or more – have slammed the government for not being included in the early years summit on Friday.

Australian Multiple Birth Association director Silje Andersen-Cooke.

Organisations representing parents with multiples – which include twins, triplets or more – have slammed the government for not being included in the early years summit on Friday, raising alarm that their concerns about lack of support will be overlooked.

The Australian Multiple Birth Association wrote to the government last year urging it to do more to help parents of twins, triplets and quadruplets, including providing extra financial support, with a survey of parents with multiples finding 60 per cent faced mental health challenges and only 11 per cent felt adequately supported.

AMBA director Silje Andersen-Cooke, the mother of one-year-old triplets, said paid parental leave needed to be assigned per child and not per birth.

“We have three times the cost for nappies, three times the cost for formula, but it’s the same (payment),” she said.

An average of 4200 women give birth to multiple babies in Australia every year, with 54 of those giving birth to three or more children yet while organisations representing single parents, same-sex parents and parents from diverse backgrounds were invited to the summit, no organisation represent­ing multiples will be present.

“We have been optimistic for better outcomes under the Albanese government as they have clearly sought to make early education and families a priority policy area,” Ms Andersen-Cooke said. “That optimism becomes difficult to sustain when we see a lack of any meaningful representation for the multiple birth families at the government’s first big consultation forum in this space.

“A seat at the table doesn’t guarantee any outcomes, but it would send a message to the thousands of Australians families with multiples that we are ­finally being heard.”

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said AMBA would be able to attend a roundtable in Melbourne that would be planned for later in the year.

“The Early Years Summit on Friday … in Parliament House will be a coming together of more than 100 people with expertise relating to early childhood who will help generate ideas and input to our early years strategy,” she said.

“The summit will be an important milestone, but it’s not the only or final point for people to input to the strategy. The AMBA … has been invited to – and has accepted – an invitation to our Melbourne roundtable.”

There is currently no date for that roundtable.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists said the early years strategy would ensure a “coherent road map” to address the damage done to children’s mental health during the pandemic.