INSPIRE
National Research and Developments
ALLIANCE UPDATE E-NEWSLETTER - Governments Commit to Achieving Better Outcomes for Young Australians, July 2006
Alliance Update provides information on the latest developments in implementing the Australian Research Alliance for Child and Youth (ARACY) agenda together with news on related projects and initiatives that may be of interest to ARACY members and stakeholders.
Some of the articles in this newsletter edition include summaries and links on the government’s commitment to achieving better outcomes to young Australians, the National Mental Health Action Plan, results of the National Youth Survey, Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect research paper and future conferences.
28 July 2006 Newsletter can be found at: http://www.aracy.org.au/ARACYnewsletter_20062807.pdf
The Latest and other past newsletters can be found at: http://www.aracy.org.au/newsletter.htm
NSW Commission for Children and Young People, What about the kids?
How we nurture our babies and young children is universally regarded as fundamental to our humanity. But the ways in which we choose to care for our infants and toddlers are infinitely diverse. Each era, every culture and all families endeavour to create the best possible start in life for their young, but they face many and varied challenges. It is concern about the ways in which Australia is meeting the test of caring for our infants and young children today that has prompted the NSW Commission for Children and Young People, the Queensland Commission for Children and Young People and Child Guardian, and the National Investment for the Early Years organisation (NIFTeY) to look closely at the current situation.
Our earlier work A Head Start for Australia’s Children provided a blueprint for what Australia needed to do to give our children a good start in life. What about the kids? builds on this earlier work and puts forward concrete suggestions for policy improvements to support the care and education of all babies and young children. This is done both in this short paper and in the larger research paper of the same title by Frances Press.
Summary report and full research Report can be found at: http://kids.nsw.gov.au/publications/whataboutthekids.html
A Head Start for Australia: An Early Years Framework can be found at: http://www.niftey.cyh.com/Documents/headstart_full.pdf
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Indigenous young people with cognitive disabilities & Australian juvenile justice systems, 2005
The genesis of this report is a discussion paper, Criminal Justice and Indigenous People with Cognitive Disabilities, developed in 2004 for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS). That discussion paper found that Indigenous people with cognitive disabilities in the criminal justice system are more likely to experience further discrimination once involved in the system.
The initial discussion paper was broad in its scope in relation to Indigenous people with cognitive disabilities and the criminal justice system. After initial consultations it was decided this report be inclusive of broader intellectual disability issues as well as mental health issues of Indigenous young people involved in Australian juvenile justice systems.
A National Roundtable was held in Sydney on the 15 June 2005 with a range of agencies and individuals invited to participate including commonwealth and state/territory agencies, academics and community representatives. The views expressed and information supplied by the participants of the roundtable are provided throughout this report. This report will:
- provide an overview of the issues relating to Indigenous young people with a cognitive disability and/or mental health concern
- provide a brief statistical overview of Indigenous young people in the juvenile justice system, as well as the prevalence of cognitive disabilities and mental health of Indigenous young people
- highlight some current policy and program approaches
- present main findings from the research and consultations, including outcomes from the National Roundtable; and
- consider possible strategies and areas for further research.
This report can be found at: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/ or pdf format: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/cognitive_disabilities.pdf
Daryl J Higgins, Rennell M Adams, Leah M Bromfield, Nicholas Richardson and Melissa S Aldana, National Audit of Australian Child Protection Research, 1995-2004
The purpose of the audit is to bring together and disseminate information about Australian research projects in the fields of child protection and early intervention to prevent child abuse and neglect. In keeping with the aims of the audit of out-of-home care research (Cashmore and Ainsworth 2004), the specific aims of the current audit were to:
- identify child protection and early intervention research being conducted in Australia in the past decade
- assess gaps and recognise duplication
- enable Australian child protection research to be placed within an international context; and
- identify priorities for future research.
This report can be found at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/2005/reports/audit/audit.html or PDF format at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/2005/reports/audit/audit.pdf
E. Rush and C. Downie, ABC Learning Centres: A case study of Australia's largest child care corporation, June 2006
In late 2005, the Australia Institute (an independent public policy research centre funded by grants from philanthropic trusts, memberships and commissioned research) carried out an Australia-wide survey of perceptions of child care staff of the quality of care provided at the long day care centres they were employed at. The survey results as reported by E Rush and Christian Downie showed that, according to staff who work at the centres, corporate chain centres provide poorer quality care on all quality aspects surveyed compared to community-based centres. This finding suggests the need for further investigation, since corporate chains have rapidly penetrated long day care provision over the last five years, and now provide approximately 25 per cent of places.
A.B.C. Learning Centres Limited (ABC Learning) is by far the largest of the corporate child care chains operating in Australia. In recent years the company has experienced very rapid growth. First established in 1988, and owning only 18 centres in 1997, it now owns more than 800 centres and provides approximately 20 per cent of all long day care places Australia-wide. In the 2004-2005 financial year ABC Learning earned profits of over $50 million. This financial success has been reflected in a share price that increased more than 300 per cent in the 5 years since the company first floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2001. In April 2006, ABC Learning’s market capitalisation stood at $2.6 billion.
This report can be found at: http://www.tai.org.au/ or in PDF format at: http://www.tai.org.au/Publications_Files/DP_Files/DP87.pdf
Andrew Day, Kevin Howells and Debra Rickwood, Trends and Issues no. 284: Current Trends in the Rehabilitation of Juvenile Offenders, October 2004
The Australian Institute of Criminology’s recent work on adult male offenders has found that the most serious and persistent adult offenders had been detained as a juvenile (see Trends & issues no 267). In terms of crime reduction, interventions that focus on reducing the likelihood of juveniles escalating to adult offenders will have significant benefits for the whole of the Australian community. Research conducted in juvenile justice settings around the world consistently shows that young people who come to the attention of criminal justice agencies have multiple problems and experience high levels of need across all areas of functioning. In meeting these needs, correctional agencies have been increasingly influenced by the model of rehabilitation known as the ‘what works’ approach. This paper outlines a case management framework for rehabilitating juvenile offenders that includes three of the most important ‘what works’ principles, namely the risk principle, the needs principle and the responsivity principle. In the longer term, the implementation of the framework will need to be evaluated to determine what works and what doesn’t with rehabilitating juveniles.
This paper can be found at: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi284.html or in PDF format at: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi284.pdf
Susan Dennison, Anna Stewart and Emily Hurren, Trends and Issues no. 306: Police cautioning in Queensland: the impact on juvenile offending pathways, February 2006
This study builds on a previous project that examined the link between child maltreatment and juvenile offending. It followed all children born in 1983 in Queensland through any contact they had with the child protection system, and/or any juvenile justice matter that required the child to appear in court or be held in custody. The current study involved the addition of the 1984 birth cohort and formal police cautioning histories to the dataset. This report describes the key findings in relation to cautioning. The aim of this part of the research was to examine the relationship between cautioning and subsequent contact with the juvenile justice system. The results show that children who have been maltreated and cautioned are more likely to re-offend than those who have not been maltreated highlighting the importance of programs that target risk factors associated with maltreatment early in a child's life. This is particularly the case for young Indigenous children.
This report can be found at: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi306t.html or in PDF format at: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi306.pdf
Pat Jobes, The Use of Multiple Social Services Among Chronically Offending Youth, August 2004
Research in criminology long ago established that a small proportion of offenders account for a high proportion of crime. The possibility that chronic offenders may also have involvement with multiple social services has been noted in social science and social services literature, though precise evidence for this is limited. This paper summarises: research findings, explanations and policy implications by addressing the magnitude of multiple service use by chronic offenders among young people; issues of access, process, experience and outcomes that distinguish chronic offenders from non-chronic offenders; how these factors contribute to variations in the relationship between chronic offending and multiple service use; the most effective practices for managing at-risk populations in order to reduce offending; and policy implications of the research findings.
This report can be found at: http://www.aic.gov.au/crc/reports/2004-08-jobes.html or in PDF format at: http://www.aic.gov.au/crc/reports/2004-08-jobes.pdf
Robert Tanton, Ann Harding, Anne Daly, Justine McNamara, Mandy Yap, Children at Risk of Social Exclusion - Methodology and Overview, July 2006
This paper reports on recent work conducted by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) on an area index measuring Australian children who are at risk of being in social exclusion. This is done at a regional level (Statistical Local Area). Social exclusion is taken to mean that the child’s family suffers a number of aspects of disadvantage. Being at risk of social exclusion does not mean the child suffers social exclusion; it means children in the SLA have a higher risk of being in social exclusion.
The method we have used to summarise a number of social exclusion variables is principal components analysis. This is a method used for a number of summary measures of disadvantage, such as the ABS SEIFA index (ABS 2003) and the NZ Indexes of deprivation (Salmond and Crampton 2002).
We have split children into two groups, those aged 0 – 4 and those aged 5 – 15. This is because we think different factors may affect each of these groups. We have then created an index for the risk of social exclusion.
This report can be found at: http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/publication.jsp?titleID=CP0605 or in pdf format at: http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/publications/papers/cps/cp06/cp2006_005/cp2006_005.pdf
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