It is hard to imagine how an eight-year-old boy can carry the weight of fear and anxiety. But a year ago, that was everyday life for Henry, after he and his mother fled their violent home in Brisbane suburbia.
At his new school in southwest Sydney, he could not focus and regularly lashed out at his classmates. The school employed a Band-Aid solution to split his education across two different campuses: mornings at a behavioural support school and afternoons in regular classes.
“I was doing my best to hold things together, but I was struggling too. Therapy felt impossible not just financially, but logistically. I didn’t know what help he needed or how to get it,” his mother says of Henry, not his real name.
What came next, she says, changed everything.
“When his teacher said, ‘We are a KidsXpress school, we can organise help for him,’ I felt incredibly relieved.”
Henry’s story took a turn. His outbursts became less intense, and he started getting invitations to friends’ houses and parties. For the first time since fleeing his violent father, Henry began to feel safe and calm.
For Philip Lowe, the former Reserve Bank governor and now chair of Future Generation Australia, Henry’s story is deeply moving because he sees it – above all else – as manifestly unfair.
“I think we all have a responsibility to help kids that have these early adverse events in their life, and the charities that Future Generation is supporting really have that as their core mission, and I’m hoping that the support that Henry gets will allow him to go on and have a healthy, prosperous life and overcome the difficulties that he might have otherwise had,” Dr Lowe tells The Australian.
“We have a moral and an economic responsibility to help here.”
Henry is one of the first beneficiaries of KidsXpress’ partnership with his local public school, a relationship enabled by Future Generation Australia. KidsXpress has built its reputation on evidence-based expressive therapy and trauma-informed education.
Its approach is to help children regulate emotions, strengthen wellbeing, and break the cycle of trauma before it becomes entrenched.
KidsXpress is one of six new social impact partners Future Generation Australia has selected for funding, chosen from more than 300 applications. Joining KidsXpress are Karinya House, Brave Foundation, Yiliyapinya, GUTS Dance and Yawarda Services. They now sit alongside existing partners like Raise Foundation, Giant Steps, Australian Children’s Music Foundation, The Mirabel Foundation and Lighthouse Foundation.
Together, they form a portfolio that balances national reach with deep local impact. All are united by a shared focus: early intervention to break cycles of disadvantage.
FGX has committed $5.7m across its 10 partner charities this year.
Since 2014 the Future Generation Group, which includes Future Generation Global chaired by former Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott, has donated more than $87m to charities while giving 1 per cent per cent of its assets annually to not-for-profits.
$49m of this has come from FGX.
Dr Lowe is deeply concerned that childhood adversity in the form of homelessness, domestic violence or a lack of family support often manifests in poorer educational outcomes, lifelong mental health challenges, and reduced participation in the workforce.
“The cumulative effect on society is enormous. But for me, it’s not primarily an economic issue,” he insists.
“You also can’t just rely on the public sector for this support. The private sector needs to take a share of the load.”
The comments come after Dr Lowe warned that the Federal Government’s lack of budget discipline is complicating the fight against inflation, pointing to cost-of-living relief spending as undermining the RBA’s policy efforts.
Speaking in a video recorded for the University of New South Wales last month – released ahead of the government’s Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra last week – Dr Lowe said: “After Covid, we haven’t really got back to a clearly articulated framework for decision-making with fiscal policy.
“It seems to be ‘where there is a need, we’ll spend’.”
He tells The Australian that the national conversation on enhancing productivity needs to shift to long-term investment: “As we tackle the challenge of lifting national productivity and securing future living standards for our children, we need to make sure that kids like Henry aren’t being left behind,” he said.
“Supporting children facing adversity to thrive will yield both economic and social returns.”
Future Generation Australia’s chief executive, Caroline Gurney, says the sheer volume of applications for funding highlights that philanthropy needs to be accessible. She sees FGX’s model – where fund managers forgo part of their fees, freeing capital to support charities – as a breakthrough.
“I like this model because it’s basically making everybody that invests give, at very little cost to themselves. We’ve saved more than $150m in fees for shareholders, and we’ve given away such a substantial amount of money,” she says.
The approach embeds philanthropy into Australia’s financial architecture.
Future Generation is building a shared measurement framework to capture the preventive impact of its partners’ work.
“Imagine if we spent 80 per cent of our child protection budgets on supporting families before they reached crisis, instead of 80 per cent on out-of-home care. The human value to that is immeasurable, and the economic savings would be profound,” said Emily Fuller, Future Generation Australia’s social impact director.
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