Our report for the Australian Government Department of Education identified important indicators of disadvantage in early childhood that can be used to inform more precise policy decisions to redress inequities.
Robust measures of early childhood disadvantage help us better understand the extent of disadvantage in the early years, monitor change over time and identify actions to improve children’s health, development and wellbeing. There is a need to consider how existing early childhood data collections can be optimised.
The drivers of inequity
When children have access to the services and supports they need, when they need it, they have the opportunity to be healthy and fulfil their potential. Not all children have what they need to thrive. These differences are called inequities. They are unfair and unjust and place children at an increased risk of poorer health, development and wellbeing now and into the future.
This report expands our understanding of the many drivers of inequities in children’s development. The project was guided by a multidimensional framework of child disadvantage that was developed, tested, and published by the Changing Children’s Chances project. It acknowledges that children’s experiences of disadvantage are complex and shaped by the many environments in which they live, learn and grow.
The report used data from the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP), which links large-scale Australian Government administrative data. MADIP includes information about children and their family’s social, economic, and health circumstances over the child’s first five years of life. It is also linked to the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), a nationwide teacher-reported measure of children’s development at school entry. Of the 87 child-level disadvantage and priority population indicators that were identified in the MADIP data, 37 indicators were evaluated.
The indicators captured experiences of disadvantage across four social determinant lenses:
- health conditions: medical conditions for parents/carers and children
- geographic environments: characteristics of the environments in which children and families live
- sociodemographic factors: a combination of social and demographic factors that place children and families at risk of experiencing disadvantage
- risk factors: attributes, characteristics or exposures that increase the likelihood of poor outcomes for children).
Predicting how disadvantage affects children’s health, development and wellbeing
We identified the 15 indicators that best predicted children’s developmental outcomes using the AEDC data. Further work is underway to build on this preliminary evaluation of measuring child disadvantage in early childhood data collections. The second phase of this work will seek to further understand the associations between key child disadvantage indicators and developmental outcomes, using more robust analytical methods and the five specific AEDC domains of child development.
To find out more:
The Changing Children’s Chances project unites leading national and international child equity researchers and child health clinicians. The University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute are partnering with Beyond Blue, The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, The Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, The Australian Government Department of Social Services, and Brotherhood of St Laurence.