Changing Children's Chances

Overview

What is the Changing Children’s Chances project?

The Changing Children’s Chances project is focused on making sure every child has a fair chance to thrive. We want to help children who may face challenges early in life. Reducing these challenges will help children, their families and their communities in the short- and long-term.

Read our project summary

Our research has already shown that if we reduce these challenges, we can improve children’s health, development and wellbeing. We’re now looking at ways to combine different types of approaches to help children, particularly those who may face greater challenges.

We work closely with a group of policy experts to make sure our research is useful and makes an impact. This group is made up of Australian state and federal governments and non-government organisations.

By sharing our findings with decision-makers, we can help them understand how to use limited public funding in the most effective way. This can lead to better policies that make a bigger impact. Our goal is to work together to make sure that all children have the best opportunity to thrive.

Read our research overview

Why is this issue important?

A child’s early experiences and surroundings shape their health, development and wellbeing for life (Fig. 1). If a child gets the right support from the beginning, they have the best chance to thrive. Unfortunately, some children do not get the best support for their needs.

This might be because of their family’s social or economic situation. These inequities can affect children’s health, development and wellbeing now and in the future. It can also make it harder for them to reach their potential. Childhood inequities can be prevented.

More than one third of children in Australia experience some form of inequity. This number is likely to rise as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made things even harder for children who were already experiencing challenges.

Figure 1. Framework for understanding child disadvantage from a social determinants perspective.

What does Changing Children's Chances hope to achieve?

Inequities create more social and economic problems for everyone. Addressing inequities in the early years can reduce a wide range of problems in the future (Fig. 2). Our project is trying to find the best way to help Australian children facing unfair challenges.

Figure 2. Projected benefits of addressing disadvantage early

Interventions are likely to include a combination of universal and targeted services. Universal interventions are available to everyone and designed to help all children. Targeted interventions are specific services, designed to help children who are facing more challenges than others.

By testing different combinations of interventions, our project can figure out which ones work best in the real world. This information can be used to inform more effective and precise policies that make a bigger impact.

Our impacts and achievements

Phase One (2016 to 2020)

We described the complex circumstances in which children are born, live, learn and grow – known as social determinants.
We detailed how these social determinants shape children’s health, wellbeing and development.

Phase Two (2021-2024)

We aim to better understand policy opportunities for reducing inequities in children’s mental health, physical health and academic achievement.
We’re now modelling ‘stacking’ interventions that can reduce inequities, particularly for those experiencing the greatest vulnerability or disadvantage.
We propose that actions taken together at the family, community and policy level, can be used to best improve children’s health, wellbeing and development.

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Engagement

We have described the CCC model for achieving and assessing research engagement and impact (Fig. 3). Throughout the project, the CCC team have endeavoured to engage with knowledge users outside of academia and for our research to have an impact on children’s health, development and wellbeing, beyond the contribution to academic research.

Our approach

We need to address these social determinants that drive child inequities.

We projected the benefits of addressing disadvantage in children’s early years to optimise their health, development and wellbeing. The findings show that we can almost halve problems if we address disadvantage early.

Now, in Phase Two of the project (2021-2024), we want to build on this information. We’re looking for ways to reduce the negative impacts of vulnerability and disadvantage in early childhood.

We're using new and creative ways to analyse data and test different approaches towards reducing inequities. We’re looking at how stacking different combinations of interventions work together to reduce inequities (Fig. 4), particularly for those experiencing the greatest vulnerability or disadvantage.

Figure 4. Stacking interventions for reducing inequities

Stacking multiple complementary interventions is more impactful than single interventions alone.

Our research can help make sure that policies are targeted and effective to help as many children as possible. There are many existing policies and services available to help children and families thrive across education, health and social care sectors, however no single approach is enough to reduce inequities.

We’re trying to find the most effective way to make sure all children have a fair opportunity to thrive. By taking action within families and communities, as well as through policy changes, we can achieve the best health, development and wellbeing outcomes for children.

Our team

Investigator team

Professor Sharon Goldfeld (Lead Investigator), The University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Margarita Moreno- Betancur, The University of Melbourne
Dr Meredith O’Connor, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Professor Katrina Williams, Monash University
Associate Professor Susan Woolfenden, The University of New South Wales
Professor Hannah Badland, RMIT University
Professor Naomi Priest, The Australian National University
Dr Francisco Azpitarte-Raposeiras, Loughborough University, UK
Dr Sarah Tayton, Beyond Blue
Dr Timothy Gilley, The Brotherhood of St Laurence

The Changing Children’s Chances team also works collaboratively with our Knowledge Translation Reference Group, made up of policy experts from Australian state and federal governments and non-government organisations.