What about the kids?
Improving the experience of infants and young children
in a changing world
How we nurture our babies and young children is universally regarded as fundamental to our humanity. But the ways in which we choose to care for our infants and toddlers are infinitely diverse. Each era, every culture and all families endeavour to create the best possible start in life for their young, but they face many and varied challenges.
It is concern about the ways in which Australia is meeting the test of caring for our infants and young children today that has prompted the NSW Commission for Children and Young People, the Queensland Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian, and the National Investment for the Early Years organisation (NIFTeY) to look closely at the current situation.
Our earlier work A Head Start for Australia's Children provided a blueprint for what Australia needed to do to give our children a good start in life. What about the kids?, builds on this earlier work and puts forward concrete suggestions for policy improvements to support the care and education of all babies and young children. This is done both in this short paper and in the larger research paper of the same title by Frances Press.
Download short paper (127kb)
Download full report (916kb)
A Head Start for Australia – An Early Years Framework
A Head Start for Australia: An Early Years Framework shows us how – by working together to invest in the critical early years of a child’s life – we can grow up kids who are healthy, happy and productive.
Everyone has a role to play in helping to give kids a head start – all levels of government, businesses, families and the community generally. This will bring benefits for all – as individuals and as a nation.
In February 2005, representatives from Australia attended a roundtable to set strategic directions and develop priorities to put the framework into action.
The roundtable identified two priority areas.
- Engage the leadership of Australia in the importance of effective investment in human capital development
- Begin work on implementing the policy solutions identified in the Framework The roundtable identified addressing joint planning; work-family balance; child care; and child and family poverty as priority issues.
Already, there has been considerable activity on these priorities.
NIFTeY, the QLD Commission for Children and Young People and the NSW Commission for Children and Young People have commissioned an early childhood discussion paper to help develop a more integrated approach to providing parental and non-parental care for the under 5’s.
The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) has included child poverty as a research priority and is developing a plan for this research. NIFTeY is supporting ARACY in this work.
The roundtable was also the catalyst for the Australian Council for Children and Parenting (ACCAP) workshop, The National Agenda for Early Childhood: Achieving Synergy, held for government and non-government organisations in June 2005.
In May 2005, the NSW Commission and NIFTeY made a joint submission to the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy being conducted by the Department of Education, Science and Training.
NIFTeY has incorporated the roundtable priorities into our ongoing workplan.
A Head Start for Australia: An Early Years Framework was developed by the NSW Commission for Children and Young People, the Queensland Commission for Children and Young People, and the National Investment for the Early Years (NIFTeY). Background documents were prepared by Dr Mel Miller and the staff of Siggins Miller Consultants, and Dr Catherine Spooner of the University of NSW.
Download full report (960kb)
Download a summary (443kb)
National Agenda for Children
About the National Agenda for Australian Children
It is never too late to help someone who is in trouble. there are indications that a lot of young people are in trouble in Australia - as evidenced by the high rates of Attention.
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, depression, drug addiction, youth suicide and juvenile offending. A number of important initiatives are in operation to counter these established and increasing problems.
There is now convincing evidence that the Early Years of a child's life set the scene for subsequent development. Preventative interventions in these Early Years are much more likely to be effective than costly correctional activity when problems become entrenched.
International and Australian studies demonstrate that children experiencing disadvantage are more likely to have poor life outcomes in terms of physical and mental health, school achievement, employment and general life satisfaction. They are more likely to experience injury and to be objects of, and the perpetrators of, violence and criminal activity.
A National Agenda for the Early Years must encompass the provision of services to disadvantaged families and the facilitation of community development in disadvantaged areas. In addition, the National Agenda must look further back along the causal pathways of poor health and social outcomes to the prevention of disadvantage itself.
In a time of rapid social change when families are experiencing a perception of loss of control over their lives, job insecurity and the perceived threats of globalisation, it is not only the children of obviously disadvantaged families who are potentially "in trouble". Despair and disillusionment in a significant proportion of young people are apparent across the breadth of Australian society. A National Agenda must be relevant to all Australian children and their families.
A National Agenda for all children and families in Australia must be inclusive of all recognised groupings such as children with disabilities, geographically isolated children and children of recent migrants to Australia. Despite this inclusiveness, the special circumstances of the indigenous children of Australia may warrant the development of a separate agenda for Indigenous children.
Much of the evidence on which a National Agenda will be based has been from overseas studies. It is important that the Australian Agenda includes an extensive research element and a strong evaluation component to identify those activities that improve life outcomes and to abandon those that clearly do not.
A National Agenda for the Early Years will only be effective if it is developed in cooperation with families, communities, all those who work with children, researchers, corporations, all levels of Governments and, where ever possible, children and young people themselves. It may be necessary to develop a series of documents adapted for specific groups.
It may also be necessary to develop specific detailed papers on some priority items on the Key Components of the National Agenda.
There are potential down sides to a National Agenda for the Early Years that need to be considered.
- The National Agenda, of necessity, must cover an enormous field. As such, it is likely to appear cumbersome and discursive. On the other hand, because ordinary human beings tend to look for tasks that are more immediately "do-able", it is likely that the Agenda may tend to focus more on the provision of services rather than tackling, head on, the root causes of disadvantage and loss of social cohesion.
- A feeling of despair and inability to make a difference to life events is often as much to do with perception as to genuine threat. Individuals who are already having difficulties balancing work, economic needs and parenting do not need a message that they have already failed their children during their Early Years. The Agenda needs to avoid producing feelings of guilt in already stressed parents or providing some members of the community with ammunition to blame all of our social ills on poor parenting. It must also avoid appearing to offer single, simple solutions to complex problems.
Download full report (32kb)