Rebecca Haynes We'll make a start. Hello and thank you to those that are here. Welcome to the Australian Early Development Census known as the AEDC live presentations are like I said, some of you may have heard, we'll we're recording it and we'll post it on our website so people can have access to it along with the presentation.

That way, just those who aren't able to be here can visit it, or you can refer back to it in in its sections or parts or as a whole, or in your team, or in you know, stakeholder organisations. I'm Rebecca Haynes and I'm joined by my colleague Lili Yamasaki at the top there and we're from the Department for Education’s Office for the Early Years.

And I'd also like to welcome Erica Garner, who may not be online today, but she is the Senior Project Officer, Wellbeing and Local Government Association and another partner, Jacqueline Anderson, from Wellbeing SA. They were both instrumental in developing today's session, so welcome to them either of them if they're here.

I might just start sharing the screen.

Hopefully people can see that.

It is everyone has a responsibility to support better outcomes for all children in the community. It is great to have a broad section and, well, the registrants were so hopefully they'll be more online soon. But we do have a broad audience who are joining us today from local government, childcare and early learning services, school-based staff and state government.

I do recognise that for many people from that have been working in the early years. Some of this will be information, will be refresher and new for others. I just like to start though by thanking the Southern Hills Local Government Association for partnering with us to bring you this session today to talk about the AEDC. It's probably not going to be as entertaining as ACDC, but we'll give it our best shot. I'd also like to acknowledge Graham Martin, the Executive Officer and Leanne Simons, who I know is online, Manager Community Wellbeing in the Southern and Hills Local Government Association for your great collaboration around hosting this event and your efforts have not gone unnoticed and I'd just like to say to that this is the second edition maybe or try of this presentation because the first one after all that work that Southern and Hills put into making it happen I think after the first introduction, wasn't it Leann?

It had to be interrupted due to an emergency evacuation, so that was some bad luck. But anyway, fingers crossed today that will power on and get to the end. So as per usual via teams, you can submit questions via the chat function on the right-hand side of your screen and we'll do our best to answer them today and if not or there's too many, we'll follow up, take them on notice and follow up.

I'd like to begin with an acknowledgement of country. We acknowledge the traditional owners throughout South Australia, and we pay respect to the custodians of the land on which we live and learn. We respect their spiritual relationship with country and acknowledge that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still important to those living today. We pay our respects to elders, past, present and emerging. And we acknowledge the cultural authority of Aboriginal people visiting from other areas of South Australia and Australia present here today.

We've divided today's session into 4 parts, setting the scene, about the AEDC, looking at the data and research, and then connecting with community. The intent of the session is to create awareness of the AEDC, how it's used and how it can support your strategic planning. Really the key messages are awareness of the importance of the early years. Like I said, that'll be a refresher for some, awareness of how state government are addressing this.

Awareness of how local government and community stakeholders can complement this and awareness of the AEDC data and how to use it to support local need and activation. We'll talk about things like what the AEDC is, why it's important, how it can be used, the Southern and Hills context and data, and then connecting with community.

And when this presentation is posted or uploaded online with the recording the suite of slides after the formal presentation won't be delivered today, but they are a set of guiding materials if you like to support future discussions in local communities. It may be in your organizational teams really to you know, plan to respond to your AEDC results

Part 1 Setting the scene, let's have a little bit of background here.

With no significant shift in SA's AEDC results over the last 13 years, this is a bit sour to begin with. But the Department for Education's Office for the Early Years was established to drive reductions in childhood development vulnerabilities. The 2021 AEDC result show that despite slight improvements, the proportion of developmentally vulnerable children has increased since 2009. Most other jurisdictions have seen a decrease in vulnerability.

In the same period, our challenge is to consider the AEDC trends and 2021 results in our policy settings to support improved balance between universal and targeted service provision, reduced barriers to access to services and increase reach of early intervention approaches.

So why the first 5 years matter? Like I said, this will be familiar to some of you, so we know that investing time, effort and resources in children's early years when their brains are developing rapidly brings the lifelong benefits to them and to the whole community.

Once children fall behind in their learning, they are likely to remain behind, gaps in children's performance levels, open up early and stay mostly constant after 8 years. Beyond that school environments can only play a small role in reducing these differences.

Investing in the early years can reduce expenditure on special education, criminal justice and welfare, and can increase national productivity by improving the skills of the workforce, reducing disadvantage and strengthening the global competitiveness of the economy. If we just sort of focus on birth to three period, it is a rapid period of brain development which can be fostered by relationships with carers and supported by optimal community environments for family and children. Brain development is vulnerable to toxic stress depending on the length and number of stressors for the child, of course, and then by school age, children build on the solid foundation of the first 5 years. It's more difficult for children to take advantage of the learning environment at school if they've not had the optimal home environment, there's restricted access to quality early childhood service, and if they have experienced poor quality community environments.

Scientists have discovered that the experiences children have early in life and the environments in which they have them, not only shape their brain architecture but also directly affects prenatal development, child wellbeing and family life. And all of these environments are shaped by the policy, supports and structural inequities that create the conditions in which families live.

The South Australian Outcomes framework for children and young people supports the development and wellbeing of South Australians from birth to 18 and is organised around 5 key life dimensions so you can see on your screen there health, safety, wellbeing, education and citizenship. All South Australians have an active role to play in improving the outcomes of children and young people, including children and young people themselves, parents, families, caregivers, local government, state government, the private sector, non-government organisations, Aboriginal communities, religious and cultural leaders, the media and all who worked with children and young people. So as the introduction slide stated, it's everybody's responsibility.

It just doesn't fall back on one stakeholder, whether that be education or local council or non-government organisations. It's everybody's responsibility to support young children and their early childhood development outcomes.

Making a difference takes a range of stakeholders as we know, and I've just said across our communities to provide the environments, services and conditions most needed by families for their children to thrive. What research tells us is that children are more likely to develop on track when the factors up on the screen are in place, and these lists don't capture all factors but are just a bit of a guide. These factors are delivered by a mix of organisations, groups, local councils, governments, and community members.

Like I said just a minute ago, that's all of you here today. We each have a role to play.

Council's do a range of important work which contributes to the health and wellbeing of children and future proofing communities. We can see on this slide, areas in which councils can influence childhood growth and development, which include social and community connection, learning opportunities like libraries, recreation and active transport infrastructure and programs like trails, parks, playgrounds, community celebrations and events linking to social services with access to quality natural environments.

Councils also planned their health and wellbeing priorities through preparing regional public health plans.  The Public Health Act 2011 requires that these plans summarise the state of health and wellbeing for their region, this state of health is informed by data about different aspects of health and wellbeing. You can just see some examples on the slide there. This data can tell councils where there are challenges for the community and is considered alongside community feedback. Other facts and data sets like the AEDC to determine where to prioritize effort.

The social determinants of the Kaiser Family health model note that health and wellbeing is determined by the person that we are, the community in which we live and, the other socio cultural and environmental conditions that impact on our life.

And the disability access and inclusion plan, which state government agencies and local councils also develop note that the wellbeing of a community is reflected by its ability to generate and use its assets and resources effectively to support the quality of life of its members, including families and young children and the community as a whole in the face of challenges and barriers within its environment. And as councils integrate access considerations into urban asset and community planning, so too considerations for the needs of young children and families can be integrated into urban asset community and planning. It's a little bit just like business as usual if we're doing this for a certain section of our community, we can include families and young children.

So that was like a bit of setting the scene, a bit of background.

We're now going to talk a bit about what is the AEDC.

It's a population measure which provides a snapshot of children's development in their first year of full-time school. Children in all 3 sectors participate. That's government, Catholic and independent sectors. This ensures a robust data set capturing all children in all communities for effective policy planning and service delivery. It occurs every 3 years and has since 2009, we have a 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2021.

A teacher completes an instrument of around 100 questions. And they collect data on 5 developmental domains, which we'll talk about in a minute. Australia is the only country with a nationwide data collection of children's early development, and in 2009, Australia became the first country in the world to collect national data on the developmental health of all children starting school. It is validated for use with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. You can see there on the screen in 2021 20,259 children from 601 schools took part, which is the highest child participation rate to date in South Australia 97.8%, and given it's not mandatory but strongly encouraged, that's a very good result.

So why is the AEDC important? Because it can help governments, communities and schools improve our understanding of how best to support children and families, it tells us what's working, what isn't, what can be improved. It's a measure of how young children have developed by the time they start their first year of full-time school. It's a holistic measure of early childhood development at a community, jurisdiction and national level.

Identifying trends and pointing to where improvements are needed assist in targeting policy, legislation, funding and services. It can assist governments of all levels to develop flexible approaches that address evolving needs of children and families, and of course, it can do this much more effectively when it's triangulated against other data. You know, like with health data and ABS data and local anecdotal data.

On the right-hand side of your screen you can see there are some reporting and responsibilities for Australia and globally. Australia reports its progress against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the UNICEF Rights of the Child nationally. The AEDC data is used to inform national policy development, for example, Closing the Gap target, which is by 2031 to increase the proportion of Aboriginal children and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all 5 domains of the AEDC to 55%. There is a bit of work to do there at a state level.

The AEDC data informs the South Australian Outcomes framework that we referred to in an earlier slide. The State Public Health Plan and the department's Early Learning Strategy.

At a Local Government level, councils can use the data and insights provided by the AEDC in their strategic and public health planning, service development, funding submissions, advocacy priorities and community engagement initiatives.

The AEDC can support communities to understand local levels of developmental vulnerability. Consider what may be impacting children's development. Identify what's working well, what needs to be improved and planning local level responses and partnerships with stakeholders to support change.

And for early childhood services, preschools and schools, the education sector, the AEDC data informs quality improvement planning, school improvement, planning and reporting, including transitions, which of course support continuity of learning.

Now we'll have a bit of a look at the AEDC domains, I mentioned just earlier that the data collection collects data around 5 developmental domains.

And they're referred to on the screen as physical health and wellbeing, which not only takes into consideration a child's gross and fine motor skills, but their physical independence and readiness for the school days. They had enough to eat? Have they had a good sleep? Are they dressed appropriately for school related activities? Social competence, this looks at their curiosity about the world, responsibility and respect approach to learning readiness to explore new things. Emotional maturity looks at social and helping behaviours and absence of anxious and fearful behaviour, hyperactivity or inattention. Language and cognitive schools looks at literacy skills, interest in reading and numbers, memory, books and basic numeracy, communication skills and general knowledge looks at piece of language storytelling. What they know about life and the world around them. These domains are closely linked to the predictors of good adult health, education, and social outcomes.

The teacher records information based on their knowledge and observations of each child in their first year of full-time school. And we're often asked how reliable this is, the teacher reporting is reliable and there's been tested and validated studies in Canada where the early development instrument was developed have confirmed the reliability of teacher reporting by using different teachers to report on the same children. Teachers undertake 1 hour of training and are provided with detailed information to help them accurately complete the instrument for the children in their class through a series of validity studies and implementation.

Piloting in 60 communities across Australia, the early development instrument was refined for Australian use. It's also been validated for use with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, which I've mentioned, and it's been adapted that it considers cultural context in the influences on child development and Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander School personnel work as cultural consultants, with teachers and completing the data collection for Aboriginal children.

On the screen there too, you'll see the summary indicators down on the bottom left, and when we refer to OT5, we're talking about developmentally on track on 5 domains. I might refer to these in the presentation, a little while, DV1 means developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains, and DV2 is developmentally vulnerable on 2 or more domains.

Our vision is that all children start school on track, a child who is on track measured by the AEDC, can physically cope with their day, is independent and confident, has excellent motor skills, gets along, works and plays with others, follows routine, is kind and thoughtful, likes to read and write simple sentences, can count and communicates and expresses themselves. All children of all capabilities, regardless of where they live have the right to start school developmentally on track.

Part 3, let's look at some of the data. The number of children included as you can see in the AEDC has increased over the years. And information collected in 2021 was on 305,015 children in Australia, representing over 95.5% of children who started school in 2021. In total, around 1.5 million children were included over the 5 cycles.

Now research tells us, that the AEDC results can be predicted by things like perinatal indicators, the birth weight, the child mums smoking in pregnancy or if under 25 years at the time of birth, mum's completion of year 12, or if unemployed, those sorts of things. Also, if a child attends playgroup or preschool, they're less likely to be measured as developmentally vulnerable. And if a child experiences out of home care, there are 3 times more likely to be measured as developmentally vulnerable. And then of course, as the start school and you know to perform poorly, they can perform poorly in year 3, NAPLAN and if a child is measured as developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains, they are 2 times more likely to score in the bottom 20% of students completing NAPLAN.

On the left you'll see here AEDC results can predict NAPLAN academic achievements, wellbeing, and life course outcomes which kind of leads into our next slide.

This slide demonstrates the value of investing time, effort and resources in early childhood education by supporting positive life outcomes such as improved health, wellbeing and academic success, and the potential negative life events went early intervention and investment are not in place, which can be school failure, criminality, depression, diabetes and premature aging.

We'll have a look at some results now from 2021. These are some national and South Australian summary indicator results. We can see on the left developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains (DV1) that's always characterized by grey colour and on the right developmentally on track on 5 domains, which is always on green. In the on track on 5 (OT5) you can see that it's continued improving in SA since 2012. Now SA, the green bars are very similar colour, but the bottom bar is the darker green represents SA.

So you can say we are below the national but not far. In 2021 our percentage of children developmentally on track in SA was 53.7 and nationally it was 54.8, but you can see nationally that it did decline a little bit from 2018 to 2021. But SA really has slowly increased since 2012.

Over the left, nearly 1 in 4 children are developmentally vulnerable when starting school in South Australia, and the developmentally vulnerable percent does remain higher than the national results.

When we talk about developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains, we need to remember that's a percentage of those children may also be developmentally vulnerable on 2 or more.

SA and Queensland are the only 2 jurisdictions in 2021 that had an increase in on track in 5 domains. So something's going well somewhere.

Now this is displaying developmentally on track on 5 domains (OT5). From to comparing 2015 to 2021 for the 5 council areas in Southern and Hills, we can see here that 3 communities Alexandrina, Kangaroo Island and Victor Harbor have increased their percentage of children developmentally on track, which is fantastic.

Since 2018, you can see here the third green bar is higher, more children on track, more children on track here, and more children on track here. Mount Barker and Yankalilla have gone the other way.

For some people working in the Southern and Hills region, that may not be a surprise or it might be a surprise.

Yankalilla has a bit of a long-term trend here. As you can see, since 2015 so.

This data can start supporting communities to ask questions about what's working and what needs improving and how might we start to turn that around a bit.

In 2021, Alexandrina and Kangaroo Island remain above the state average, you can see down the bottom here in 2021. If you can see my cursor Alexandrina was 54.3% of children on track, that means starting school Kangaroo Island was 65.9 on track compared to SA which was 53.7. It does become very interesting when you really start to look at the granular sort of data there.

The next slide is about developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains (DV1) for the same 5 areas.  And we can see that in 2018 four communities have decreased. Sorry, have increased their vulnerability. Sorry about that.

Alexandrina, their vulnerability has increased since 2018, and Kangaroo Island their vulnerability has increased also, as has Mount Barker and Yankalilla. At Victor Harbor have decreased their vulnerability. And in fact, Victor Harbor's vulnerability is below the state average. Once again, if we look at 2021 Victor Harbor’s vulnerability was 22.8% which is lower than SA's level of 23.8 and Kangaroo Island was even lower, again at 22%.

There's some great things happening, but there's also, I guess some areas for improvement. You know, communities might ask themselves what may be impacting on children's development, what's working well? Like I said, what needs improving and maybe considering local level responses and partnerships with stakeholders to support change.

It really needs a collective approach, we can all be working in our own little sphere of influence, but when we come together and there's an approach that's agreed by all the stakeholders and it's managed and monitored by a group, might be an Action Group or a stakeholder group. It can be more effective.

The AEDC domain results. We've just looked at the percentage of children on track and the percentage of children developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains. We're now looking at the 5 domain results and the developmental vulnerability. those 5 domains we talked about earlier, the physical, social, emotional language and communication domains. we can see here the colours represent the green represent social competence, the orange physical. We can see here that perhaps the social competence, although it's better than it was in 2012, it still perhaps remains the highest out of the 5 domains.

The next vulnerable we see is physical health and wellbeing. And the third one is emotional maturity. although having said that, you can see that these 3 domains are improving, they're heading down, which is what we'd like to see less vulnerability.

But we can also see that language and communication have been rising. Their vulnerability has been increasing. So perhaps these 2 could be areas for focus. But of course, these are the highest. These have the highest level of levels of vulnerability at the top, the physical, social and emotional. And earlier, when we were talking about the physical domain, which can be a predictor of, you know, poverty and particularly not the fine and gross motor, but particularly the school readiness and independence for the school day, an area could be focusing on that physical readiness for the school day.

You know if children are wearing right clothes and have enough sleep. You could ask yourselves why it is a family’s experiencing more stress, financial hardship from employment changes, increase complexity in the home. I guess part of analysing the results in your communities. You can't always focus your reference where they all need to be, it's about prioritizing where you might focus them.

Now we are looking at the same developmental vulnerability results by these Council areas. It looks a bit colourful and overwhelming, but once again there's a legend down the bottom, we already know the orange colour represents physical health and wellbeing. The green social competence, we just looked at SA's. results and we see here that the 3 most vulnerable domains are social, physical and emotional. And now we're looking at what the pattern might be across Southern and Hills region. You can see the highest vulnerabilities, in Alexandrina is in emotional maturity, red is language and cognitive skills for Kangaroo Island. And now if you're from that community, you might ask yourself why is that? It might be a surprise, it might not. What might be impacting on that?

Kangaroo Island's been through some significant natural disasters, COVID like everybody else. But they firstly had bushfires and then COVID, where children were less likely to be at early childhood services, were they at home more? Did that affect their language or didn't? or you can start when you know the result, you can start analysing them and asking ourselves questions.

Mount Barker, Emotional maturity again. For Victor Harbor, Physical health and wellbeing seems to be the most vulnerable, followed by emotional maturity. And for Yankalilla it is social competence, followed by emotional maturity
In making some generalization, you could perhaps say they're similar the top 3 domains most vulnerable are similar to those of SA, but perhaps at different varying levels.

You might once again sort of ask yourself what domains will you work on? What are you doing now, what's working and how do you know what needs changing? How can you plan together with your partners to improve outcomes and who can you work with?

We might try and give this a go. Now this is the AEDC Data Explorer and this is how you can find your data so. You can download your community profile. You can view the data using tables, graphs, maps. If we select the State SA and then we select a community. let's select Alexandrina, number of children. OK, if we go down the bottom here.

We can see Alexandrina as a community. This is showing the domains across the top and developmentally vulnerable on 1 or 2 or more domains. You can see Australia's results here and it's showing numbers of children at the top and percent underneath. It's really important to remember the numbers attached to the percent because of course, if we're looking at a very small rural community of 4 children under school age or of school age and we have 50% of those vulnerable. That's two children.

Now, that's not to say those children need support, of course, but if you're trying to focus your efforts and resources somewhere, you may be able to help them in a collaborative way, but you're probably wanting to support, community that may have 100 children that were part of the collection and 50% of those being 50 children are vulnerable, the numbers of children are really important to remember and now you can see Alexandrina.

And then underneath that are all those little suburbs included in all those little communities included in the community of Alexandrina. I'm down the bottom. You'll see here Kuitpo and surrounds and Highland Valley. There were too few teachers or children to display that data because it wouldn't necessarily be confidential.

So that's how you can see it in table form. And then if we go back up to perhaps the maps and we select vulnerable on 1 or more domain you can select what you like, but this is just an example. You will see, hopefully they'll be some names come up. For those of you who work or live in these areas, you'll be familiar with this. The different there's a legend here. The darker the colour it has the highest levels of vulnerability, If you click on these currency create for example, you'll see there are 22 children which is 30.6% of the number of children in the collection that year. This includes Goolwa, Port Elliot and surrounds. If you click over to this lighter orange Strathalbyn and surrounds, you'll see there were 17 children and 21 point which represents 21.8% of those vulnerable of those in that collection.

You can also overlay this with other things. I don't want to burn you out today, but if you want early learning centres you can add one or all of them. if we talk preschool, kindergarten, you can see it starts to populate that. If we wanted, then to add schools, government schools, Catholic, independent.

If we have a look now, you'll start to see where the schools are, but also if you then populate it with all the services that you have options to up there, you can start to see perhaps where there may be some vulnerability and may not be services. They don't always go hand in hand, but you know that might come down to travel or distance or isolation or it can be very helpful and particularly around planning you know planning where a new service might be or planning more playgroups. So that's maps and then of course, graphs that's similar to the slide that we've just looked at.

You can see at the top it they organise it slightly differently, but you can see the legend for the different council areas and then the physical domain, the social domain and on. there's actually quite you can really get down to some more granular data. And the other thing you can do here is download the community profile. This is for the community of Alexandrina. It's these are the AEDC community profiles, really helpful this we won't go through it all but has a lot of information in here.

It talks about the individual communities included, as we saw just before. And then it talks about the demographics, the number of children measured in 2015, 2018 and 2021. The numbers are children have gone down over those 3 years, interestingly enough. There's less children, perhaps in their first full year of school. But it also talks about gender, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children born in another country, children with a language background other than English. It then looks at the different types of services and what's happened over the collections. has, you know, 2015 76.1% of children were at playgroup, in 2021 it is now 48. Why is that? Are they less play groups or has it been COVID? Or has it been other thing you know? Centre based care is about the same 38%. Preschool is 97% in 2015 and 95.8% in 2021. It could just give you a bit of an idea and same with grandparent care or family day care. Has that gone up or down?

And then similar to the graphs that we've been looking at today, it shows you the domains, the physical domain, the social competence domain and so on.

If there's a lot of detail here, but the vulnerability on 1 or more domain or on two or more from 2009.  I really encourage you to have a good play around and download some of these things. You can export them.

Lili Yamasaki I just wanted to make a comment on that. It's just because on the slides that Rebecca has been showing we have shared OT5 (developmentally on track on 5 domains) data for the communities. Unfortunately, that OT5 data is not shown on the AEDC Data Explorer or in the Community profiles. Don't be surprised that you are trying to find that in the community profile or trying to find that in the Data Explorer. This is the first time that we're showing at the national level. We're working with this summer indicator. It still hasn't been put it on the website. Anyway, you can always ask, you can contact Rebecca to get access to more information about OT5, is it is not publicly available, but we can share that with you.

Rebecca Haynes And I was going to say you might have early years champions or someone in your community you might choose to get together and in your in teams or groups to download information and talk about it or have it to support your discussions.

I mean these are just guideline questions, but you've probably come up with all your own questions just from looking at the slides. But you know, after you do look at some data and maybe some of these slides with the ones at the end that I spoke about and as a kind of suite of guiding materials, it really will support some discussions in your group. After you've looked like I've said look at domains that sit under the percent and number of children developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more or 2 or more domains. Remember the number and percentage of children and what might be the barriers access to healthy food, access to health services, developmental checks, the balance between universal approaches and targeted approaches. What are the strengths, what's working well? You know, what are the key needs in the community? How are families finding out about what's important?

Are really childhood and education care services and schools working together to provide consistent approaches and messaging? Council libraries, what's happening there? population shift in or out of the community due to rent, housing, language background other than English multicultural programs, cultural leaders to connect with housing essay real estate agents? Could they be helpful and provide an insight into where families are moving or living? Are there local assets that are under utilised? Who could be part of a stakeholder discussion? and data must be timely measurement and reporting needs to effect to be effective in improving outcomes? Most of us probably need to evaluate everything we're doing, but it is really important because there's no point sort of continuing to plan resources if you really can't justify, you know the impacts and isn't making a positive difference, you do need to evaluate and review and rethink.

You probably have been sitting for a little while now and sick of hearing my voice, but we might we have this slide will be included in the presentation on the website anyway, but there are some amazing case studies and stories that you can that really provide inspiration and motivation about where do you start, how do we know we've got the right stakeholders, who else is out there, how do we find them, how do we get them together?

We might just have a look. This is under 5 minutes. It's 4 minutes and something. But perhaps if you're nearer a hot tap you could make a cup of tea. I'll just see if I can perhaps get this to work and we'll just have a little look at this Mid Murray Connections one, it's really quite inspirational and they had about 60 partners in the end, 60 stakeholders that came together and it took them years, but they turned their results around so.

It's really amazing to watch.

Mid Murray Family Connections AEDC Story video (screened during the session)

Amie Johnson: We cover 17 towns, the entire Mid Murray region. The AEDC data showed quiet a shocking picture I think for a lot of people. One in three children were classified as developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains.

Kylie Eggers: 10 or so years ago they did a mapping exercise of our data and realised that there are a lot of gaps and services in our town. We're just outside Murray Bridge, we're just outside the Barossa, we're just outside the Riverland, and so there was a very distinct gap.

John Robertson: This was a real catalyst and wake up call.

Amie Johnson: The initial idea was that Council would invest some staff time to start pulling things together, connecting the threads, you know, building those networks, strategic leaders. It was a really good starting point for council to have a look at what can we do? Who can we pull together? And start building a bit more holistic approach to children and families in our region. We have a network of about 60 partners. We had to choose a starting point. Where would the biggest impact be? So, emotional maturity was chosen by the network because we thought it would filter into those other domains, and because we know that well-being wraps around everything. I remember John Robertson, the Principal of Swan Reach, saying to me, “If they arrive at school when they haven't had breakfast, they haven't slept, unless we address those things, how do we teach them English and Maths?”

Kristy Castle: When I was first introduced to Mid Murray Family Connections. It was a call for mothers, parents or carers to start a Facebook group “Mid Murray Mums”, which it became known as. There were so many kids that weren't quite where they should be to be ready for school. It was crucial to sort of get in there early.

Amie Johnson: There was a big push around the importance of preschool. Parent Child Mother Goose was introduced, which is as you know a preschool learning program.

John Robertson: Swan Reach Area School is a Preschool to Year 12. Sixty three students. Reasonably isolated. It was necessary to put well-being front and centre. Part of the agreement there was that the schools would take on the primary "Kids Matter” preschool, and “Mind Matters” secondary.

Kylie Eggers: The Mannum Way for us, it's a Reception to 12 process of how we can engage. Do as you would to others. Do your best, no matter who you're working with. It takes great strength to be sensible. Those sorts of things.

Amie Johnson: So, there's quite a list. Supporting maternal health, connecting child and family health services to towns further out in the region, raising the awareness of the impacts of family violence.

Kylie Eggers: We really want to know where they're at when they first come to us, so that we can build on their strengths, build on what they need working on, and work with their families to ensure that they've got everything they need. The AEDC data is instrumental in making sure that we know where our students are at. For students who are not achieving, say, in their phonics assessment, have they had their hearing checked? We have a lot more conversations with the kindy about who's coming and what they can do, what they need support with, what the family is like and what supports they need.

John Robertson: So Mid Murray Family Connections have been a massive advocate to get these services out. You have CAMHS coming here on occasions. CAFHS now come here. So these services weren't, one seen as needed, perhaps two, known about.

Kristy Castle: The core of the time that I've been involved between the 2015 and the 2018 data, it continued to improve, and I was so impressed because I felt, I felt like what we were doing was actually making a difference.

Amie Johnson: We've worked out four focus areas. Children and caregivers share secure attachment. Children are emotionally resilient. Children are engaged learners, and children and caregivers are safe and supported. We use a community accountability plan that's put together with the whole network, which has got actions moving forward. We then review that plan and look at the new lot of data, look at the community stories.

Kylie Eggers: We know that there's been success because the data is improving over time, and so therefore the students are coming to school more school ready. Parents are coming to us to ask more about what psychological services, what parenting services, what financial support services?

Kristy Castle: If you get the right infographics and the right data to the right people, it just sets off a bit of a chain reaction.

Amie Johnson: What we found is it's been great having an invested position to help keep moving things forward. What it does do is it helps us advocate. It shows the need. This is what my community are telling me, and this is what the data is showing. Moving forward we'll assess again. I'm looking forward to the next lot of data.

[End of video]

Rebecca Haynes Hopefully people found that inspiring. This sort of leads on to our Part 4 for today, which is connecting with Community.

We've heard already a little bit from that video about why communities use the AEDC. Primarily it does provide a common language around children's development and wellbeing, and it can really support stakeholders to come together to work towards a common goal. It recognises the influence that can impact on children's development and provide communities with the opportunity to consider what's working, what needs improving to better, better support children and their families. It provides reliable data to support groups to reflect on the context of children and families and plan their services and supports.

Like I said earlier in the presentation, it is really important, it is a very robust, reliable set of data, but it is really even more effective when you triangulate it and use it with other sets of data. We see it in in some communities where they're doing that and it's really effective.

And the data can promote reflections on the experience of families in accessing the systems and support and develop place-based approaches that are appropriate. Reflecting on where you have the right service at the right time, like in the video, for the right families and being accessible. You know, we've heard of things like CaFHS (Child and Family Health Service) or something similar like that, a community organisation that may in one part of a regional rural area, be open Monday to Friday and be part time open in another community and then, you know, some AEDC results might reflect that. Is that a resource issue for that organisation or could it be different? you know, are they prepared to consider part time? and is it appointment based only? or can people families walk in? All those things impact on families accessing services.

Why communities use the data really is a common language to start discussing and even as information to encourage stakeholders to come together to start discussing their communities.

I think I've covered this complementary data. There's lots of different sort of places to find different demographics and data which doesn't exclude anecdotal data or surveys from your own communities.

Like I said, ask yourself, what data do you already have access to? What community engagement data is available for your area? What anecdotal information is available? What information? My local partners be able to provide to help in creating the Community context picture? That's why it's really important to be sure that you've included all the local partners that you can that are relevant because you might be missing some really critical information.

Using the data to inform your planning. The AEDC can be used in a variety of ways and can provide valuable information to support planning the needs of families and young children. It can help educators, leaders, councils and stakeholders to meet their requirements. As we spoke about before in terms of all the different strategic plans, disability, access and inclusion plans, Regional Health, public health plans. And it may also identify specific developmental domains where children require further support.

You saw in the video just a minute ago that the community decided and made the decision to focus their efforts on emotional maturity. Other communities may have the capacity and resources to focus on all 5 domains.

For children and their families that transition to preschool, then school are significant milestones. In a child's education and these new experiences, there a time of change that create excitement and uncertainty. If children and their families have a positive experience starting preschool and school, they can meet future transitions throughout their education. We trust and confidence in their support networks. And that's not just throughout their education. Once they leave school and go on to further study or work or employment, any transition potentially maybe easier for them, and of course, effective transition programs are based on strong relationships and communication between the child, their family, early education and care services, the school and community.

Now, not sure how many of you are, certainly those in Council this will be familiar too. But my local services app is a smartphone application designed to deliver localised council information to residents, and it's free to download. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, except that you know I'd be asking, does your Council this because it just seems invaluable. It seems like a really great way to promote what's happening to families. And do you promote community events. How can you optimize this app to share information with families, to support early childhood development. And particularly with libraries, I noticed there's a lots of amazing early childhood initiatives happening across our public libraries in South Australia. You can find out upcoming local events located out of council facility like a library, playground, dog parks, you can stay updated with Council issues, receive notifications of local services, even report an issue. There are many participating councils, so find out if you're council is using the app and perhaps you can influence them if they're not.

So local partners, we've talked a bit about partners and stakeholders. Partners provide better understanding of the Community context and involving them early is important. You heard on the video, that's really the first step that stakeholder group took is understanding who the local partners and stakeholders were and getting them together and forming their Action Group.

Local government is one of the key partners in supporting children's development outcomes, particularly when taking a preventative approach at a population level.

The local council’s Health plan helps inform community stakeholders planning and response to the communities AEDC results by looking at emerging planning and developments and how these might impact what is provided to families and children that might impact then their development and learning. While councils are progressing their business as usual in terms of bitumising roads and infrastructure and new suburbs and that sort of thing. Along with that, you can consider the needs of families and young children because it's about foot paths and cycle paths and playgrounds and dog parks.

Connect with your local council to plan together, share resources, combine efforts. This is really important especially in small rural remote areas where you know councils often don't have the capacity or the resources to manage some of these things. When you can combine efforts or resources, it can work really well, and I know in a rural area where there are 2 or 3 smaller councils, they might have 1 librarian who supports 3 libraries.

Things can get off the ground a bit quicker when there's others involved, a little bit goes a long way. So as Council's integrate access considerations, like I said earlier, they can consider the needs of young children and families integrated into urban asset and community planning. And the key to flourishing neighbourhoods is to strengthen local assets and social capacity while also tackling vulnerabilities and disadvantage.

I forgot the approach on the video. They did talk about their approach, and I've just forgotten what the name of it is now. But some of you that were actively listening might remember, but we're going to talk about the improvement approach, but it doesn't need to be this. It's just I think it's about a documented approach that the stakeholder group manage and follow.  Somebody kind of needs to be driving it, monitoring it, managing it, reporting on it. This is just one example.

Step 1 is to review your data. We've done a bit of that here today for Southern and Hills. But of course, like you know there's lots more granular data that you can analyse from the AEDC Data Explorer that we quickly jumped on today. Your community profile and viewing the data in different formats graphs, tables, maps.

You can think about other data that may be useful, demographic data, children in out of home care data, data from community stakeholders. All this data might you know, help you to understand what's contributing to the AEDC results and maybe influence and inform your responses.

Are there any surprises in the data? And to what extent does the AEDC data reflect challenges that families might be facing?

Step 2, map the strengths and the community. What strengths and assets are in place in the community? Who else could be engaged? Are there others who could help fill knowledge gaps or support you to engage hard-to-reach families?

Because once, once we have families and children in our services, we can connect with them, we can refer them on and support them. But those families that are not accessing our services often, we don't know them. We don't have access to them. It's finding those hard- to-reach families.

Step 3, bringing together community partners. What stakeholder groups meet regularly already that you might join or influence or leverage off. Consider the services available.

I'm working with one Regional local government area when I sent a stakeholder list through, you know they added these amazing services and business to the list and they included many health, you know, like physiotherapy and psychologist and dental and all these sorts of services because that's where they see these young children and families.

Never make assumptions. Maybe that where they might go or services they might use.  And what resources can you access? community development offices in children's centres or local government? Anglicare, other non-government organisations are? funding if that's what your approach needs. You know, applying for grants and pulling funding across business partners or community groups or within a local partnership.

Step 4, in this approvement approaches agree on your area of focus. Be clear about the focus area of the plan. For example, like the Mid Murray video that you watched, they focused on emotional maturity domain.  Be really clear about the area you're focusing on and why you're focusing on it and what improvement you are wanting to see from your actions.

And also, be clear about targeted and universal approaches which we touched on earlier. There needs to be a balance between them. Universal combined with targeted approaches ensures a minimum level of support for all families. Universal services allow for a non-stigmatizing way for service providers to identify and connect with families who may require extra support.

Step 5, develop a plan. Be clear about what actions each partner will do. Each partner will go off in their area of work and relevant patch and do their thing, but everybody's working towards the same action plan.  You come together but you'll agree about what each partner will do and how they will support each other to do that. You each will bring something different but hopefully you'll be heading in the same direction.

Step 6 and 7, implement agreed approaches and monitor your progress. You really need to evaluate along the way how effective your approaches are. What's been the impact on outcomes? How do you know that? What evidence do you have to support your decision making? and overtime you might need to adjust them or adjust your area of focus.

You might start to see some of your strategies really making a difference in the results and want to tweak what you're doing or change your focus, but don't stop what is working though, because sometimes it's easy to really focus resources and efforts on areas that need improving, and then sometimes leaving behind what's working well that then becomes a focused because it has perhaps gone backwards or it's not as strong as it was.  Always maintain and sustain what is working well. But really review your current focus and how effective your initiatives are there.

What will you do next? There's probably a million things, but it would be nice for you to be thinking already what your next steps will be. Each of you will have a different vision and experience that will affect what you do next. But for some your next step might be to look at your community profile. Got get on to the AEDC Data Explorer. Have a play around in there and download your community profile and maybe like I said with other stuff that your organization.

And for others you might like to consider how you could work together with others to better tackle challenges that families face. All the questions that we've sort of heard today already, but what services are there? Are they the right services? Are they located where families need them, are they operating flexible hours to meet families’ needs? are children safe when they play outside, ride to school? Are there quality playgrounds and parks? Are social networks strong for families? Is there a sense of community and opportunities to come together? And like I said, other potential benefits and exploring a joint initiative, sharing resources or knowledge.

I'm conscious of the time and we we're coming to an end, but it'd be nice just to stop for a minute and reflect quietly or people can call things out. I'm happy with that too. But just to reflect what really stands out for you from hearing some of this information today about the AEDC, what surprised you? What inspired you? and maybe what next?

There's a little community that we're really keen and enthusiastic to respond to their 2021 AEDC data, but they were new to the AEDC that they weren't sure they weren't necessarily confident or familiar with the data or the process to move forward. There were some new members in that community, so their first place to start was really to decide who might be some of the stakeholders in their community and contacting them to have a first meeting. It'll be different for everybody.

The next few slides are really just links. I won't go through each of the links because this will be uploaded of course for you to have access to on our website, but really, I just can't emphasize enough. There are so many fantastic resources for Communities, families and just everybody.

We have an AEDC section on the Department for Education website and there's the national AEDC website.  There are some community story links here as well, on the previous slide where we accessed the Mid Murray story.

There's also an online professional learning on the department's Plink site. You don't have to be a department employee to access this, it is 1.5 hours, but it's really quite helpful. And once again a few video snippets of how other communities have responded to their results. Lots of resources for parents, and of course for communities.

I haven't been paying attention to the chat, but Lili might have been.

Lili Yamasaki There's a question from Victoria Whitington. Thanks for the overview Rebecca, giving early child development brain development largely occurs prior to the AEDC, I am wondering about any plans that they Office For The Early Years may have for collecting child development data from the checklist between birth and 5 years old so that we have information about where to support and what services are needed in those important years.

Rebecca Haynes That is fantastic that way of thinking, Victoria and I think it's been raised in here and at least I don't have a specific answer for you. Now, I'm not sure.

That we've decided exactly because we're still sort of evolving, but I'll certainly follow it up and we can get back to you with that. Because, like my comment a little while ago about, we know the families and can connect to those families that do access our services.

Even from birth, but particularly, once you're in preschool and school, but it's those families who don't. I'm not certain about what data has been collected or is planned to be collected. We'll definitely get back to you.

Lili Yamasaki I want to just add a comment on that because I was having a conversation with the team that is working on the health check pilot. And they were already trying to construct or develop the way that they can collect the data. There are different stakeholders. There are going to be involved in those health checks.  The data that are looking at are in different formats.  They were trying to understand and find the best way collect it, and then we will be able to report that. That work is already happening, but we won't be able to share anything until they have set up what is the best way to collect and then they will be sharing some learnings. I guess after that. There is some work progressing there to understand what it is going to be best way to collect from different stakeholders and try to analyse that data later.

Victoria Whitington Thanks Lili. Can I say something? I just wondered because it's just important that whatever data we collect can be comparative, we can see where development is going. I was at the Royal Commission last week and I found out, for example from, you know, somebody from Goodstart that they have an organization called Health to GO, which is doing development checklists on children in Goodstart, and we know that CaFHS has got data but not in a way that is easily accessible, often it's on paper or specific to a particular site, but not as broad.  We sort of need to align our suppose don't we, so we can have a data set a way of collecting it that we can actually like the AEDC I get a systematic approach which enables us to have real impact and the early years because while I think what we're doing with the AEDC is fantastic, it's part of a journey, isn't it? There is more to do.

Thank you for your answer and thank you for your presentation. I found it very interesting to see what is actually happening because I hear about this quite a lot in my role in the Child Development Council, but I haven't seen, for example, video or heard the specificities that you've covered today.  Thank you for that.

Rebecca Haynes Thank you, because sometimes we are not sure. There are a lot of slides and they're very colourful and there's a lot of information on them, but some people are data people and other people aren't. But it seems to be the most powerful or easiest way to present some of the information. And it is just a snapshot today. Like I said it's just creating a bit of awareness, but I would encourage stakeholders particularly that working teams or early childhood services or councils to really to get on the AEDC Data Explorer and have a bit of a look at their own data.

Lili Yamasaki This comes also related to the question that we have here from Kylie. Have there been any collective efforts in the Southern Hills LGA area to respond to the AEDC outcomes in the past? or that are currently happening similar to Mid Murray?

Leann Symonds I can answer that one, Rebecca, if you like. It's me Leanne. The City of Victor Harbor has funded early intervention programs through the Department of Social Services and through DHS. And as part of that, we developed a collective impact program called Thriving on the Fleurieu around and used a lot of the AECD data at that time.

It was going really well into COVID and then it kind of halted. But Kylie, we're going to get that back up and running again pretty shortly. So that looks at 5 domains around what we need to look at with children and hopefully Kylie, we can involve Alexandrina and that as well. They have been involved in the past.

Kylie Markow Thank you. That is awesome. I actually wondered if you might pipe up with something. Thank you so much for sharing that. Look forward to hearing more.

Leann Symonds You are welcome. And while I've got the microphone, if I could just make a comment, Rebecca, that one of the things I think is really important working for local government is that we all strive to put this stuff on our community plans because elected Members and our senior management are often mostly interested in the linkages, we have to our Community plans and how that looks. So it's a really good first start to say how we look after our people sits really well in that space because like most levels of government where we've got policies and procedures that we follow and what we have found is that having not just roads, rates and rubbish in our Community plans and infrastructure, things but ensuring that our Community wellbeing actions are align and are very strong as well is a really good start.

Rebecca Haynes That's fantastic. Thank you, Leanne. And hence your position wellbeing. It's great to have your position there and it's just lovely to hear that this regional local government area really see it is important. And I mean it's really about I those words on that slide come to mind, but future proofing communities because really these young children are going to be our youth and our teenagers, potentially teenage parents, and or eventually parents. And if we want good life outcomes for them to stay in our communities and work and be employed, we need to start right back that whole return on investment sort of argument.  It's lovely to hear that it is all part of your planning, and I was just thinking too. I'll probably put you on the spot now, but having seen the Mid Murray video, I mean this Thriving on the Fleurieu, I know you've had a break because of COVID, but if you or it sounds like Kylie knew about it and there's is enthusiastic, but maybe there's a couple of people that would be happy to work with us to have a bit of a case study of that.  We're always looking for each collection we're looking for new sort of case studies about how communities really have responded to their results, and we can share them not just with South Australia but nationally.  We can talk later or whatever, but I don't know if you think that could be a good idea or somebody's interested in that.

Leann Symonds Sure. Happy to share our experiences so far and also like really keen because I think she's listening on in the other room anyway, but we've just employed an active wellbeing officer as well and I did notice that physical was our poorest one. So Macey will have her job cut out for her to improve those status.

Rebecca Haynes But also if you or she gets together with people or she has a look at the data or down the track in a month in 3 months you need some more support or you'd like a more localized sort of session or anything you know reach out to us ring us, e-mail us or you know if it's about accessing data or whatever it is, just reach out.

Leann Symonds We will do.

Rebecca Haynes Just to finish, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all for your tremendous work, whether it's on the ground or in policy work that you do to support families and young children in your communities. And I just, I hope today it sounded like it has, but I hope today's session has raised a bit more awareness of the AEDC and how it can be used along with other data to support your planning and focus your efforts and lovely to hear that some focus is happening out there.

And I'm pinching a quote from Lili because I really loved it when I first heard it, but I'd encourage you to reflect on how children are doing well, that is why they are doing well rather than how well children are doing.

Anyway, on that note, we'll say goodbye. I don't think there's any questions that we need to follow up on apart from that one from Victoria about birth to 5 sort of data. But like I said, this presentation and the recording, if we can manage to electronically manipulate and upload on our website. We'll do that over the coming days, weeks. But also, I will be emailing out to those who joined today a feedback form, and everyone goes. But really, we really encourage you to just take a few minutes, if you wouldn't mind filling it out because this is the first kind of session of this type of a series that we're running this year and it would be really valuable for us to have some feedback.

Thank you so much and if you have any more questions on the previous slide, actually, you'll see the e-mail there Education.AEDCteam@sa.gov.au, we tend to use that mailbox a bit because there are only the two of us at the moment for the next couple of months. And if one of us isn't around or something, at least we it's safest to e-mail that inbox and one of us will get back to you.

Thank you so much. You might, on reflection, have some questions later on, so please e-mail the inbox and thank you for making the time. It's a long time, an hour and a half, I know, but thank you for joining us today because you're one person that will spread the word to another. Thanks so much for your time and enjoy the rest of the day.

Lili Yamasaki Sorry before we leave, I just want to highlight that new resources about AEDC data has been uploaded on the department's website.  There are 4 snapshots that highlights the results from the 2021 data collection. They are very highlight level. There are some questions and some findings that you may find interesting and there is one community snapshot including information about regional groups, remoteness, and there's another snapshot that includes data for Aboriginal kids or kids with language background other than English, by gender.  It's very specific and very detailed information.  We try to make it the easiest way for you to have access to the data.  Please have a look there on the website. They might be on the links that Rebecca has been sharing. You will be able to get a hold of them

Rebecca Haynes And some infographics like the mid Murray mentioned, it's just about having the right information for the right people at the right time. It might help in in your group discussions at work or with colleagues to share some of these you know.

Well, thank you so much and enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you. Bye.

End of transcript.