Overview
What was the Kids in Communities study?
Communities play a major role in the healthy development of children. The national Kids in Communities Study aimed to better understand community factors that are consistently related to better early childhood developmental outcomes.
Most importantly, the study aimed to determine which community factors can be measured well, are modifiable and have the greatest influence on developmental outcomes across communities.
Our approach
We investigated the influence of five foundational community factors on developmental outcomes including:
- Physical environment
- Social environment
- Socio-economic factors
- Access to services
- Governance
We explored how these community factors influence specific developmental outcomes measured by the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). Conducted every three years since 2009, the AEDC measures developmental outcomes across Australia at a suburb or small-town level in five domains including:
- Physical development
- Social development
- Emotional development
- Language and cognitive development
- Communication and general knowledge
Why are community factors important for early childhood development?
The foundational community factors for early childhood development are based on evidence from the Kids in Communities Study. This means the critical points of intervention for creating better environments for children’s health and wellbeing described are informed by research.
This can empower communities to better understand and recognise their resources and opportunities to improve, helping to direct community effort into areas that make the most sense.
It allows communities to move beyond anecdotal information to a discussion grounded in evidence about how the community is tracking to inform place-based initiatives.
Study origins
The Kids in Communities Study was developed from AEDC findings. The 2009 AEDC showed us that there were children who lived in areas of relative socio-economic disadvantage but had better developmental outcomes than would have been expected.
The opposite was also true. There were children in relatively advantaged communities who did not have developmental outcomes that were as good as expected. This told us that good early childhood development was more complex than just how socio-economically advantaged your community is.
This finding led our researchers to partner with other researchers, federal and state governments, and non-government organisations to learn more about how communities influence child development. This was the start of the Kids in Communities Study.
Our impacts and achievements
Scaling from Victorian pilot to national study
After conducting a pilot study in two Victorian communities in 2010, we expanded the study to 25 communities in five states and territories including Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT.
These 25 communities were classified as:
- Communities where children are developing unexpectedly well or poorly when compared with the socio-economic status of their suburb.
- Communities where children are developing in line with what predicted outcomes would be based on their socio-economic status.
Exploring the influence of community factors on child development
In each community, from 2015 to 2017, we conducted:
- surveys with community members
- focus groups with parents and service providers
- interviews with local stakeholders and experts
- mapping of neighbourhoods.
This enabled us to investigate which community factors might make a difference to early childhood development.
Our learnings
Learnings from the study included:
- A draft set of 21 foundational community factors that lay the foundations of a healthy community for early childhood development.
- A draft manual for communities and local governments to use in measuring their foundational community factors and improving child development outcomes.
- Recommendations for further work including testing the utility of the foundational community factors in communities and strengthening the quantitative indicators through further analyses.
Final report
This report summarises a series of promising (draft) foundational community factors.
Indicator guide
Findings from the Kids in Communities Study supported the development of the Restacking the Odds Indicator Guide.
Related work
Strengthening quantitative indicators
We helped to link a dataset of spatial neighbourhood built-environment objective measures to participant addresses in the 2015 AEDC for children living in the 21 largest urban and regional Australian cities.
Strengthening built environment indicators
We’re collaborating with RMIT University, and children aged 4 to 8 years and their parents living in inner city and growth areas of Melbourne. Together, we're developing built (physical) environment indicators for early childhood development. This collaboration is led by RMIT University and funded by a 2022 VicHealth Impact Grant.
Our team
Professor Sharon Goldfeld AM, Lead Investigator, Centre for Community Child Health
Dr Karen Villanueva, Project Coordinator, Centre for Community Child Health
Partners and funders
The Kids in Communities Study was led by The University of Melbourne in partnership with the University of New South Wales, University of Canberra, The University of Western Australia, University of Southern Queensland and RMIT University.
The study was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, along with support from our partner funders: The Australian Government Department of Education Skills and Employment (formerly Education and Training), the Australian Capital Territory Community Services Directorate, Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, the South Australia Department for Education and Child Development, the Victorian Department of Education and Training, the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities, the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services, The Benevolent Society, Uniting Care and the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment.
From Kids in Communities Study findings, the development of draft foundational community factors for the AECD was led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute with funding from the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
Further work to develop built environment (BE) measures linked to the AEDC (i.e. AEDC-BE dataset) was funded by The Bernard van Leer Foundation and the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
The Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment funded further pilot work of the dataset.
Generous in-kind support has been provided by:
The Australian Government Department of Education Skills and Employment (formerly Education and Training), Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Capital Territory Community Services Directorate, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the New South Wales Department of Education and Communities, Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, the South Australia Department for Education and Child Development, The Smith Family, the Victorian Department of Education and Training, Wesley Mission Brisbane, The Benevolent Society, Uniting Care, Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment, Mount Saint Vincent University, University of British Columbia and the University of Ohio.
Resources
- Read the Kids in Communities final report to find out more about the set of promising foundational community factors for early childhood development.
- The Kids in Communities draft community manual outlines the ‘how-to’ of collecting a subset of the foundational community factors.
- The Built Environment Final report examined whether built environment features contribute to associations between neighbourhood disadvantage and early childhood development.
Publications
- Goldfeld, S., G. Woolcock, I. Katz, R. Tanton, S. Brinkman, E. O’Connor, T. Mathews and B. Giles-Corti (2015). "Neighbourhood Effects Influencing Early Childhood Development: Conceptual Model and Trial Measurement Methodologies from the Kids in Communities Study." Social Indicators Research 120(1): 197-212.
- Tanton, R., M. Dare, S. Brinkman, B.-G. Corti, I. Katz, G. Woolcock and S. Goldfeld (2015). "Identifying off-diagonal communities using the Australian Early Development Census results." Social Indicators Research: 1-16.
- Goldfeld, S., K. Villanueva, R. Tanton, I. Katz, S. Brinkman, G. Woolcock and B. Giles-Corti (2017). "Kids in Communities Study (KiCS) study protocol: a cross-sectional mixed-methods approach to measuring community-level factors influencing early child development in Australia." BMJ Open7(3).
- Goldfeld, S. and K. Villanueva (2017). "The Kids in Communities Study: what is it about where you live that makes a difference to children's development?" Early Childhood Matters: Moving towards scale: advancing early childhood development (126): 100.
- Goldfeld, S., Villanueva, K., Tanton, R., Katz, I., Brinkman, S., Giles-Corti, B., Woolcock, G. (2019). Creating community indicators for early childhood development: challenges and innovations from the Kids in Communities Study. Cities & Health. pp.1-10.
Contact us
Learn more and partner with us
For community-level foundational community factors to be implemented and monitored over time, it's vital to understand how communities can best measure the foundational community factors locally.
Testing the measurement of this manual is crucial to identify methods that do and do not work in the local context.
Working with communities to design the best approach to local implementation of these foundational community factors is of high importance if the manual is to be sustainable long-term.
If you’re interested in learning more and/or testing the manual in your community, please contact the Kids in Communities team at [email protected].