Wellbeing is when people feel happy, healthy, capable and engaged and able to have a good life. At its most basic, it is the quality of people's lives.

Here in Tasmania we have defined good wellbeing for our children as when they feel loved and safe, are learning, healthy, have access to material basics like housing and clothing, are participating and are connected to their culture and community. These are the six domains of the State Government's Tasmanian Child and Youth Wellbeing Framework.

Over the past year and more, I've had the pleasure of talking to many children and young people about how they're going, as well as those who support them.

The message I'm hearing is loud and clear, and is indeed supported by the publicly available data on wellbeing: we must do better at promoting and improving the wellbeing of all children and young people.

Not only because by doing so are we promoting their enjoyment of their human rights, but also because we owe it to them to support them to grow to be happy, healthy, productive adults. By promoting and supporting their wellbeing we also ensure Tasmania can prosper into the future.

Young people have highlighted to me their concerns about education and their future opportunities. They have underscored their need for access to basic services and supports. They have called attention to issues with their safety, their mental health and the bullying they experience. They have also stressed their desire to participate fully in their communities and society, including being engaged in discussions and decisions about their futures.

These issues relate directly to their wellbeing and are, not surprisingly, directly related to the six domains I mention above. Young people have also highlighted the sometimes overwhelming impact climate change is already having and will have in the future on their wellbeing and opportunities.

The empirical data available tells another, not dissimilar story. Despite our best efforts over time, many wellbeing outcomes in Tasmania have remained stagnant or worsened. For example:

These figures are sobering. It's clearly time for a new way forward, where we think differently about wellbeing, invest differently and measure our progress to make sure we are on the right track.

I have just released a report, Investing in the Wellbeing of Tasmania's Children and Young People, which, at its core, proposes improving the wellbeing of children and young people by bringing it to the centre of government policy and decision-making. It includes recommendations aimed at overcoming some of the factors that have hampered our efforts to improve the wellbeing of children and young people to date.

For example, despite currently having an agreed definition of children and young people's wellbeing, we do not have an overall vision or whole-of-government strategy for promoting and improving the wellbeing of all Tasmanian children and young people. My report recommends that Tasmania develops a long-term, cross-partisan strategy to improve the wellbeing of Tasmanian children and young people, led by the Cabinet of the day. Importantly, this strategy should coordinate effort across agencies, and provide effective monitoring and analysis of wellbeing outcomes. I'm also recommending that data collected for monitoring children's wellbeing should be publicly available, simple, concise, and relevant to populations locally and state-wide.

The evidence is already in that earlier and earlier investments, including in the first critical 1000 days of a child's life from conception through to age two, can have a large and lasting impact on a person's wellbeing into adulthood. I'm therefore also recommending that priority actions required now include providing more supports in the first 1000 days of children's lives, including during pregnancy, and reducing fragmentation of effort in service delivery.

Investing early-especially before problems become entrenched and harder and more expensive to resolve-has been shown to reduce the numbers of children needing crisis and late intervention responses, such as child protection, youth justice, mental health treatment and unemployment services. This in turn results in savings to budgets, as well as improvements in the health and wellbeing of not just our children but of our community as a whole.

We need to do it now - for their future and for the future of Tasmania.

Leanne McLean, Commissioner of Children and Young People