While the circumstances around their deaths are still being considered by authorities, we do know that both boys had severe autism and high support needs.
It seems they were receiving NDIS support, but there were questions about whether this support was enough to meet the needs of the boys and their parents.
In response to the deaths, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was guarded as he commented, ’All I want to say is that this is just an awful tragedy, just an unspeakable tragedy for this family, but for the broader community…’
While this is completely appropriate on one hand, allowing the police and NDIA investigations to run their course, it also hints at a deeper problem.
The decision to brand events as ‘unspeakable’ suggests we should not talk about them, leaving teachers, carers, families and supporters to battle their emotions alone.
The impact on everyone involved in an event such as this is profound and long lasting. When we avoid talking about such events, we run the risk of relegating them to a darker, silent place. We take the sometimes-overwhelming challenges that can be a part of raising a child with high support needs and assign them to the ‘not to be discussed’ basket.
However, there is an argument for deciding we can and should talk about these events, albeit carefully and respectfully. We can make sure that our teachers, support workers, teacher assistants and leadership teams know what happens outside of the classroom as well as within it.
We can choose to be open and clear about trauma and mental first aid and crisis responses. We can decide to reach out early and often and make sure families have what they need to thrive and succeed, rather than simply ‘cope’.
As a specialist educator, the events in Mosman Park prompted my own reflection on an eerily similar event with one of my own students. He died in 2009 in a murder – suicide, alongside his brother and father.
This young man was a vibrant member of my small class of five students in a specialist school near Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula.
Reading back through old newspaper articles from the time of his death, I noticed he is referred to variously as ‘severely disabled’, ‘wheelchair bound’ and ‘profoundly deaf.’
The reporting paints a picture of a student who was the sum of his challenges. And whilst on the one hand these things are true, they don’t truly reflect the young man I knew and taught.
In my class, he was hilarious, caring and interested. He signed with big, sweeping gestures, adding facial expressions and body language with the skill of a stage performer.
He loved to swim, join class discussions and get out into the community. He was a great friend to other students, sharing a joke or interesting activity.
He used a wheelchair to help him access the community, and he enjoyed visiting new places like the library, park, movie cinema or bowling alley.
One of his favourite things to do was go swimming, and I remember him leading me the full length of the school grounds one day when the bus driver had accidentally forgotten his swimming bag and left it on the bus.
My student simply wouldn’t stop until he had shown me where his bag was, so he would not miss out on his favourite event of the week.
I took him on camp for the first time in his life during the year he was in my class. We explored parks and bush trails that took him out of his local community, then cooked a BBQ lunch and ate it sitting under the trees.
I guess I imagined that life would play out quite differently for him in the future. I imagined he would find a workplace or setting that could appreciate his wit and engaging personality, as well as his capacity for kindness.
I didn’t expect that one day I would read about his death at the age of just 30; a vibrant, exciting young person’s life cut so short.
The deaths in Mosman Park are a stark reminder that such events are not new, nor ‘unspeakable’, but rather a critical prompt to make sure the right supports are in the right places at the right time.
