AIFS seminar series
2009
- 6 November 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
The role of family policies in the promotion of child wellbeing: Lessons from the OECD report Doing Better for Children
Since joining the OECD in May 2007 Dominic’s work has focussed on issues of child well-being, in particular comparing and modelling child and family policies, and designing a framework through which policy amenable indicators of child well-being can be compared across the OECD. Dominic is a co-author of the OECD’s first report on Child Well-being Doing Better for Children.
Prior to taking up his post at the OECD, Dominic worked in the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York UK where he contributed background research to the UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 7 on child well-being. Dominic is the coordinator of the OECD’s wikichild initiative.
ABSTRACT
Policy makers the world over are turning their attention to child well-being. The standard indicators of child income poverty, education and health are being compared together, and expanded on, to assess the quality of children’s lives across countries. Moreover, following recent high profile reports comparing child well-being outcomes across OECD countries - but importantly not attempting to address why countries fare so differently - demand in policy circles to understand the relationships between policy inputs and child outcomes has grown.
An important contribution of OECD’s Doing Better for Children report has been to compare countries public spending on children by type as they age. The levels of spending on families in OECD countries and the way in which it is spent varies widely even though the goals of promoting the health, education and general well-being of children are OECD-wide. More specifically the ages at which children receive more or less support through family cash benefits also vary.
The seminar presentation will draw directly from the Doing Better for Children report and explore how policy structures and social spending on families in OECD countries associate with a range of child outcomes. Key questions include: How do spending patterns on family policies compare across OECD countries? How do policy-amenable child well-being measures compare across OECD countries? Does the timing of social spending matter for child well-being outcomes? Does the type of spending matter?
The seminar will finish with recommendations for tailoring social spending patterns to improve child well-being outcomes in OECD member countries.
This presentation contains unpublished analyses. Do not cite without the express consent of the authorView Richardson presentation (PDF 1.3 MB)
- 8 October 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
Developmental pathways in language emergence from two to seven: Late starts and surprising arrivals
ABSTRACT
The emergence of language during the toddler period is one of the most striking accomplishments in young children’s development. Children are known to show considerable variation in onset times, with some children beginning to talk much later than others. Previous studies have benchmarked 24 months as a time when delayed language emergence can be reliably ascertained. Among the questions of interest is whether children with late language emergence at the age of 24 months (LLE), also known as “late talking,” recover from the late start-up or whether a late start is prognostic of a longer lasting risk for language acquisition. A number of relatively small-scale studies have compared children with a positive history with control groups of children matched for gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and nonverbal intelligence. The outcomes suggest long-term risk, controlling for other factors, although the picture is complicated by indications that language outcomes are differentiated by linguistic dimensions and by other methodical limitations, such as small samples and differences across studies in measurement methods. In this presentation the emerging results from a large scale study of an epidemiologically ascertained prospective cohort of 1766 infants are presented. What are the characteristics of late talkers at the age of 2 years? How are those late talkers at age 2 faring when examined again at age 7? What are the key questions remaining to be addressed and what, of any of this, is relevant to promoting good language acquisition in children and in arranging services for those children who may need support? This talk seeks to outline emerging evidence with an eye to addressing these questions and guiding future research and practice.
View Zubrick presentation (PDF 672 KB)
- 10 September 2009, State Library of Victoria Conference Centre, Melbourne
Protecting children: Where to from here?
ABSTRACT
Child welfare, and statutory child protection services, are frequently criticised for failing to protect children from harm, particularly from child abuse and neglect. The author reflects on 20 years working on child protection and child abuse prevention systems – as a researcher, policymaker and director of statutory services. He discusses key policy and practice shifts in Australia and other western democracies, focusing on the:
- Key drivers for change, including the role of child death and other inquiries in changing practice;
- Child protection evidence-base and its effectiveness in informing change; and
- Lessons that can be learned from the development of culturally appropriate service systems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.In the light of the 'National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children', the paper concludes with an exploration of system reforms that may improve responses to child abuse and neglect.
View Tomison presentation (PDF 2.8 MB)
- 6 August 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
Mature age worker: You’ll be one sooner than you think
ABSTRACT
In a world that pressures us to look and act younger, most people don’t realise they are a mature age worker at 45. Thinking that they still have many working years ahead of them, these mature age workers will very likely confront the issue of age discrimination, one of the most entrenched and pervasive barriers to their continued workplace participation.
Now, with the Australian Government’s recent budget announcement of the staged raising of the age pension qualification age from 65 to 67, the clear policy signal is that people are expected to work longer. But … can they?
- What is age discrimination and how are people experiencing it?
- How does age discrimination manifest itself in the recruitment and employment context?
- What are the immediate and long terms impacts of age discrimination on both the individual and our wider community?If we are to confront this systemic problem we must meet the challenge with changes to both attitudes and policies. We need a vision for the workplace that uses merit, not age, as the standard. And we need a vision for our society that encourages everyone to see people for who they are and what they have to offer, rather than for their age.
- 28 July 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
The National Evaluation of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy
ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the role that the community plays in children’s development by researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Despite this interest, we understand relatively little about community influences on children and families.
There have been few policy initiatives that have specifically focussed on addressing the needs of children living in disadvantaged areas. One exception is the Federal Government’s Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS), which is a major place-based initiative designed to improve the life chances of children. The SFCS evaluation is one of the very few comprehensive multi-site evaluations of area based early intervention programs ever undertaken. It therefore has significance not only in Australia but internationally, where these types of interventions are being developed in many countries around the world.
This seminar will present findings from an evaluation of the SFCS conducted from 2004-2008 by Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), UNSW and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS).
Professor Ilan Katz and Dr Kristy Muir (SPRC) will describe the evaluation methodology and present overall findings from the first three strands of the SFCS: Communities for Children (CfC), Local Answers and Invest to Grow.
Dr Matthew Gray and Dr Ben Edwards (AIFS) will describe the methodology and present findings from the Stronger Families in Australia study, a longitudinal study of over 2000 children in 15 disadvantaged communities designed to evaluate CfC.
Report: National evaluation (2004–2008) of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy 2004–2009
FaHCSIA: Occasional Paper seriesView: Katz/Muir presentation (PDF 9.2 MB) | Edwards/Gray presentation (PDF 2.8 MB)
- 2 July 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
Home to school transitions for financially disadvantaged children: Findings from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children
ABSTRACT
This paper presents findings from a study commissioned by The Smith Family and conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which aimed to identify key influences on Australian children’s school readiness, particularly children in financially disadvantaged households. A range of child, family and broader environmental factors were found to be related to children’s school readiness. When this set of variables was included together with family financial disadvantage (FD), financial disadvantage was seldom a unique predictor. Nevertheless, children from FD families were more likely to show low school readiness, due to the much higher rates of risk factors evident among this group. There was considerable commonality in the factors related to school readiness for children from FD and non-FD households. School readiness at 4-5 years was a powerful predictor of school achievement and adjustment at 6-7 years, and family FD increased the likelihood of poor progress in the literacy area. Findings are discussed in relation to two models proposed to explain links between FD and low school readiness: the family stress model, which appeared particularly relevant for social and emotional readiness; and the family investment model which appeared salient for learning and cognitive readiness.
The report from the study, Home-to-school transitions for financially disadvantaged children (PDF 623 KB), by Diana Smart, Ann Sanson, Jennifer Baxter, Ben Edwards and Alan Hayes, is available on The Smith Family website.
View Smart presentation (PDF 3.0 MB)
- 1 May 2009, AIFS Seminar Room, Melbourne
Telling stories: Child abuse, neglect and adult sexual assault
ABSTRACT
It is a given that child abuse and neglect and adult sexual assault fields have something common, hold shared values and work towards common goals. To what extent is this reflected in the reality of work and practice in this area? How do our values and goals overlap? Where do they diverge? In this seminar, Antonia Quadara and Leah Bromfield take a closer look at the shared experiences and needs of victim/survivors of sexual assault and families who come into contact with child protection services.
Adult sexual assault services and child protection services share clients (i.e., child victims, adult victims, and adult survivors who are now parents). These groups share many of the same vulnerabilities, and the long-term impact of trauma is common across all groups. At the same time, there are very different challenges in terms of the pathways into services and the support needs across these groups. Through a joint conversation we explore these complexities. In bringing together the two sectors we generate greater insight and depth of understanding to inform service system responses.
View Bromfield/Quadara presentation (PDF 1.6 MB)