The conference's theme 'Family Research - Pathways to Policy' leads to reflection about some of the challenges of undertaking research for policy purposes.

One challenge is undertaking research in a climate of changing policy agendas. Research may be commenced to address particular policy concerns, but governments and policies may change while the research is under way. Another challenge is to promote the use of the research by policy makers.

As a longitudinal study, the Life Chances of Children study provides a good opportunity to consider research in a changing policy context and to explore the outcomes of the research. It also demonstrates how research into lives of families illuminates the impacts of policies.

This paper will

• introduce the Life Chances Study
• present some of the findings about low-income families and their living standards in terms of the changing policy context, and
• outline the study's outputs and usefulness.

The Life Chances Study

In the late 1980s, the Brotherhood of St Laurence was involved in a major child poverty policy review in association with a national campaign against child poverty. This was in response to the promise of the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, that by 1990, no child in Australia should live in poverty.

It seemed clear that there was a place for Australian longitudinal research on child poverty, to look at the impact of low income on children over time and at the factors that, in the 1990s, would mitigate the effects of poverty on children's life chances.

Research which is both longitudinal and has an emphasis on qualitative data, is particularly useful for policy development. Longitudinal research can provide additional insight into causation in a way that cross-sectional studies often cannot, while qualitative research can present insights into the experiences of the families to complement quantitative data.

The Life Chances of Children Study commenced in 1990 as a longitudinal study of 167 children born in that year in inner Melbourne.

One family

To introduce the Life Chances Study one family's situation is presented and some of the policy concerns.

When this family was first interviewed in 1990, the parents had been in Australia two years. They were refugees from south-east Asia, living in a high rise public housing flat in inner Melbourne. The child who was born in 1990 was their third child. The mother who spoke no English was at home with the children while the father worked in a car factory.

Over the following years the family has grown, there are now seven children in the same small flat (three bedrooms). Public housing waiting lists are the policy issue here. The mother has had good access to the Maternal and Child Health Service which has made extensive use of interpreters, but there have been reductions in the availability of these over the years. There have also been major reductions to funding for a number of local community health and other services and a loss of ethnic workers. The local family planning service has been closed.

The father became unemployed (reflecting the loss of jobs in manufacturing) and has been involved in some labour market training programs, but remains without a job. Current changes to labour market programs and industrial relations policies will affect him.

In terms of income support, with seven children, family payments are very important to the family (although as their payments increase with additional children, so their public housing rent increases to reflect their increased income). However the mother reports sometimes having difficulty in affording food for the children, and also meeting school costs, so income support adequacy is an issue.

The child attended preschool before starting school. The preschool fees had remained low in spite of State funding cuts, because of assistance to the preschool from the local council. Nonetheless mother found it hard to afford. The child has now started at the local school. What struck me particularly from a recent interview, in terms of life chances and education was that, other than school readers, there are no children's books (in any language) in this home.

Method

The study was based on all children born in two municipalities in selected months in 1990. The families reflect the diversity of the local area and include both high and low-income families and a range of ethnic groups.

The study to date has involved five stages of interviews with the families. The main source of data has been interviews with the children's mothers. At two stages this has been supplemented by interviews with the fathers and at stage five data is also being sought direct from the children and their teachers. We have followed the families as they have moved away from the inner suburbs over time.

Analysis has focused on the differences related to family income, comparing the situation of the children in families on low incomes with those on higher incomes. (Low income is defined as income below 120 per cent of the Henderson poverty line, the before housing costs line.) Another important area of analysis has been the differences between children in non-English-speaking background families and others.

Factors studied have included the children's health and development; family relationships, stresses and supports; housing and neighbourhood, parental employment, family income and the use of services, including health services, child care, education and other children's services.

The findings and changing context

A selection of the findings follow. The main reports which present the detailed results are referenced.

Stage 1 - 1990
The first interviews were undertaken when the children were about 6 months old. At this stage 35 per cent of families were classified as 'low income'. Two-thirds of the low-income families were families in which both parents were from non-English-speaking backgrounds. The low-income families were typically either sole-parent families or two-parent families with both parents unemployed, while a few families were in the low-income category because of low wages.

The living standards of the low-income families were very different in terms of housing, employment, and use of some services. Their lives were generally more stressful. Mothers in low-income families were more likely:

• to identify themselves and their children as being in poor health,
• to be subject to a greater range of stressful life events including financial difficulties and marital conflict, and
• to have less informal support and assistance from friends and relatives.

(Gilley 1993a; Gilley 1994b; Taylor & MacDonald 1992)

By the time the report of the first stage (Gilley 1993a) was published in 1993 there had been many changes both at state and federal level which would have an impact on low-income families.

• There was economic recession, with historically very high unemployment (in excess of 11 per cent).
• At the federal level there had been the threat of a Medicare co-payment (in the 1991-92 budget) and reduction to some supports for immigrant and refugee families.
• The new Victorian government (elected in 1992), giving high priority to fiscal restraint and the reduction of government debt, had already made cuts to some services.

The subsequent amalgamation of local governments and the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering for local government services further disrupted local support services the families had used. The State Government also made major changes to State industrial relations legislation and massive cuts to public education and health funding.

Stage 2 - 1991-92
By the second stage of interviews, the children were 18 months old and Victoria was deep in recession. Employment issues were chosen as the focus of the report from this stage. Findings highlighted (among other things):

• increasing long-term unemployment
• that the women getting employment were typically those in the more affluent two-parent families.

Stage 3 - 1993
The third interviews were when the children were aged three and covered a broad range of factors affecting their lives. By this stage there was the new Kennett State Government in Victoria.

Findings at this stage confirmed the disadvantages of the low-income families found at earlier stages in terms of housing and employment and family stress. The low-income families were less likely to use a number of services which could provide early educational opportunities for their three-year-olds, namely child care centres, play groups and local libraries.

(Gilley & Taylor 1995; Taylor & MacDonald 1994)

Stage 4 - 1995
The fourth interviews sought to explore access to preschool education and discover which of the children had attended kindergarten. This was prompted, in part, by State Government funding cuts to preschools.

At this stage (5 years into the study) we were able to complete interviews for 90 per cent of the original 167 children. Findings included:

• the high mobility of the families with less than half (44 per cent) still living in the two inner suburbs in which their children had been born five years before
• the increasing proportion of families in the low-income category
• while most children attended preschool (the study distinguished sessional preschool from preschool programs in child care centres) almost half of the low-income families found it difficult to afford the fees and a small number of children in low-income families missed out on any preschool activity the year before they started school.

Stage 5 - 1996
The fifth round of interviews are currently nearing completion (November 1996). At this stage most of the children, now six-year-olds, are at the end of their first year of school.

1996 has seen a change in federal government and a wide agenda of change. Some of the key policy issues for the future for the low-income families in the study include:

• health funding - in particular the continuing importance of the retention of Medicare
• education costs
  availability of employment for people with 'labour market disadvantage'
• adequate wages and conditions for those in work
• adequate income support and training opportunities for those not in employment
• the maintenance of public housing.

Outputs

The audiences we hope to reach with the findings of the Life Chances study include the general public, service providers, policy makers and politicians.

Important aspects, for policy, of this research include both its longitudinal nature and its qualitative aspect. The broad numbers can be complemented with information about what people say about their lives and what they want done.

The Life Chances study has published four research reports and there have been chapters and articles in a range of publications. The range of policy and service delivery issues addressed in reports from the study include services for mothers with young babies, child-care, employment, income support, access and equity issues for non-English-speaking families and public transport.

We have used the findings in submissions on critical areas of social policy, including to the Federal Committee on Employment Opportunities, the Senate Inquiry on Early Childhood Education and in reviews of state-based early childhood services.

In publishing research reports we typically arrange a launch to which the media are invited, and generally get some media coverage of our findings in the press, on radio, or (occasionally) on television. We also send copies of the reports to the relevant state and federal ministers.

The knowledge that research reports only ever reach a small audience prompted us to work with film makers (Georgia Wallace-Crabbe and Gregory Miller) to put together the Life Chances film with SBS. The 55 minute documentary enabled seven selected families from the study to communicate very directly to a wide audience about the issues they face in bringing up children in the 1990s. The film reached an estimated audience of 300,000.

Wider uses of the study

At the start of the paper I suggested that one of the challenges for policy oriented research is the changing policy context.

The Life Chances Study has tried to meet this challenge by focusing some aspects of the study on these changes, while retaining the main purpose of the study. Two particular examples quoted were:

• the report which examined the parents' employment in response to the recession of the early 1990s (this was subsequently used in a range of submissions relating to employment and training issues), and
• the decision to study access to and costs of preschool, following major changes in preschool funding (preliminary findings have had some media coverage).

How can we know if we are making any difference?

In these days of performance indicators and outcome measures, the question is of interest not only to researchers but also to the various bodies funding research.

What we cannot show in terms of outcomes for the Life Chances Study is a decrease in child poverty in Australia in the mid 1990s. Further, changes in governments and their policies have reduced some of the services which our research indicates are important for mitigating the impact of low income on children. However, within this changing context, the Life Chances Study has provided the Brotherhood with valuable research data which has been able to inform a wide range of policy issues. The study, in producing research which is both longitudinal and qualitative, can make a relevant contribution towards keeping the issues for children in low-income families and their living standards on various policy agendas and in the public eye.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank my colleagues Alison McClelland and Fiona Macdonald for their timely and thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also wish to acknowledge the sources of funding for the various stages of the Life Chances Study: in addition to the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation and, for the current stage, RADGAC.

Gilley, T 1993a, Access for growth, services for mothers and babies, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.

Gilley, T 1993b, What chance a job? Employment of parents with young children, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.

Gilley, T 1994a, Beyond the city: access to services for mothers and babies, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.

Gilley, T 1994b, 'The Life Chance Study' in Carter J (ed), Postnatal depression, towards a research agenda for human services and health, Research Advisory Committee, Issues for Research 2, Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health, Research and Development Grants Advisory Committee with the University of Melbourne School of Social Work, Canberra.

Gilley, T & Taylor, J 1995, Unequal lives? Low income and the life chances of three year olds, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.

Taylor, J & MacDonald, H 1992, Children of immigrants: issues of poverty and disadvantage, Bureau of Immigration Research, AGPS, Canberra.

Taylor, J & MacDonald, H 1994, Disadvantage and children of immigrants: a longitudinal study, Bureau of Immigration and Population Research, AGPS, Canberra.

Taylor, J 1994, 'Life chances: issues of childrearing and poverty among Asian immigrants' in Rice, P (ed), Asian mothers, Australian birth: pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing, Ausmed Publications, Melbourne.

Taylor, J (in press), Kids and kindergarten: access to preschool in Victoria, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne.

Film

'Life Chances' : a 55 minute documentary on the lives of seven of the families in the Life Chances of Children Study, produced by Film Projects in partnership with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, screened by SBS as part of their 'Cutting Edge' series on the 28th of March 1995.