Bermagui family in film shown at COP28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai

The film, Children at the forefront of climate change, is about a bushfire recovery program for children that not-for-profit Royal Far West (RFW) developed with UNICEF Australia.

Based in Sydney, RFW helps children in rural and remote Australia with developmental, mental and behavioural health.

Jacqueline Emery, CEO of RFW, said it began the program in 2020.

"We are child development experts so when those Black Summer bushfires were raging we knew many families on the South Coast and mid-North Coast would be impacted.

"Children were really struggling with multiple evacuations and the terror, people getting trapped and losing their homes," Ms Emery said.

RFW reached out to UNICEF because of its experience in assessing the needs of children and their parents in the wake of disasters.

UNICEF wanted to help and developed a comprehensive needs assessment report that provided the context and identified areas of greatest need.

A UNICEF donor funded the program to run in 30 communities in the South Coast and mid-North Coast for 12 months.

RFW worked with the Department of Education to identify where the service would be best used.

The program embedded multi-disciplinary teams of social workers, clinical psychologists, speech therapists and occupational therapists into preschools and primary schools.

It won the Resilient Australia 2021 Community Award, has had government funding for the last two years and Charles Sturt University has recently completed the second independent evaluation of the program.

Ms Emery said it is the first evidence-based research on effective intervention.

"We have had a statistically significant improvement in children's mental health and wellbeing and resilience," she said.

Bermagui father Scott was aware of the program and last year reached out to RFW to help his son.

"It was just good for our son to talk to someone other than us and they gave him a bunch of tools like breathing and taking a moment to reflect on how he was feeling," Scott said.

Scott is concerned that the program is grant-funded and may only have a short life.

"We know it takes eight to ten years to recover so it would be great to see these programs funded for a longer time.

"It wasn't directly afterwards that we needed support.

"It was two years afterwards when the funding was coming to an end.

"Our kids were alright until they weren't," Scott said.

Ms Emery said the film is an important advocacy project with UNICEF.

"None of the local, state or federal disaster frameworks had money for children so we have been advocating for the children to give them a voice."

Teachers and parents wanting more information can contact Royal Far West.

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Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)