Thriving Kids
Early experiences and environments shape children’s lifelong health, development and wellbeing. Currently, many children lack what they need to thrive. This inequity is unfair and preventable.
In August 2025, Minister Butler announced Thriving Kids to support children with developmental delay or concern and/or autism and their families. To inform the development of Thriving Kids, the Australian Government established the Thriving Kids Advisory Committee and is conducting an Inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative.
Read the Centre's submission to the Inquiry
Thriving Kids is an opportunity to build equitable, inclusive systems that support the development and wellbeing of all children in Australia.
With 12.5% of Australian children starting school developmentally vulnerable in two or more key developmental domains, Thriving Kids must be a system-level response that delivers on the principles of equity and inclusiveness.
In our submission to the Inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative, we suggest Thriving Kids be centred around three core elements to make better use of the existing service systems:
Watch Sharon Goldfeld explain each of the core elements below in an excerpt from our October 2025 webinar.
Thriving Children, Thriving Communities
Our purpose at the Centre for Community Child Health (the Centre) is to see every child thrive. Since 2020, the Centre's Thriving Children Thriving Communities webinar series has united community members, researchers, policymakers and practitioners to explore topics of importance to children's health, development and wellbeing. Explore our library of webinar recordings and related resources.
Submissions
Media
February 2026
Interview with Prof Frank Oberklaid for ABC Insiders on Background.
August 2025
Harriet Hiscock for The Sydney Morning Herald.
Read key sections of the piece on our LinkedIn page.
August 2025
Uplift of mainstream health and education
September 2025
Authors: Anna Price, Elodie O'Connor, and Sharon Goldfeld.
Figure 1. Pragmatic conceptual model for equitable child and family health services.
October 2022
How can schools be multi-opportunity platforms to ensure equitable life outcomes for all? How can schools best help children thrive? This paper aims to inspire you to think and talk about this with us.
October 2020
Children living in remote and regional areas experience poorer health outcomes than their urban peers. Access to affordable, local and timely quality health care is one of the key drivers of differential outcomes for rural and regional children.
This policy brief outlines how embedding specialist paediatric expertise in primary care via telehealth could improve efficiency, access and quality of care for regional and rural communities.
November 2025
This series of online workshops (2 x 1.5 hours) will empower you to forge genuine partnerships with families and redevelop services in a way that truly meets the needs and expectations of the community.
Healthier Wealthier Families is a collaboration that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of families with young children by reducing financial hardship.
We work with community-based health services to support families experiencing financial hardship, by connecting them with financial wellbeing services in their community.
This collection of resources support those working in and with place-based initiatives with data use, community-led change and solutions to address early years system challenges.
Developed by paediatricians, educators, psychologists, researchers, and teachers, the Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) initiative upskills experienced teachers to become Mental Health and Wellbeing Leaders and aims to increase the capacity of Victorian primary schools to support the mental health of their students.
Empowered families
raisingchildren.net.au provides ad-free parenting videos, articles and apps backed by Australian experts.
September 2021
Early childhood provides a critical opportunity for early intervention and prevention, but barriers to accessing services prevent children and families – often those with the greatest need – from gaining their benefit.
The Voice of the Child toolkit is an evidence-based resource designed for researchers, service providers, clinicians and others keen to involve children and young people in their work – whether they are just starting out or looking to expand their skills. Drawing on research, consultations and best practice, this toolkit offers practical guidance for planning, designing and implementing a process of involvement – whatever your context.
27 August 2024
Panellists: Dr Paul Prichard, Fiona Lee (CLAN Midland), M'Lynda Stubbs (Department of Education, Children Young People (TAS)), and Kitrina Edwards.
Featuring: Geoff and Tomo (parent facilitators) and Philz (reflective practice partner).
Moderator: Vikki Leone
June 2019
Learn about indicators for assessing the quality, quantity and participation in parenting programs for child behavioural problems in this study from Restacking the Odds.
Local solutions with national guardrails
The National Child and Family Hubs Network is dedicated to strengthening Child and Family Hubs across Australia to ensure children and families can access the supports and services they need and have a safe place to meet other families and build essential social networks.
October 2025
This brief outlines six key recommendations to leverage and strengthen the role of Hubs as local delivery platforms for Thriving Kids.
June 2025
Panellists: Prof Sharon Goldfeld AM, Dr Suzy Honisett, Caitlin Graham, Elfie Taylor, Anna-Marie Kanaan, Anne Hollonds, and Shradha Singh.
This collection of resources support those working in and with place-based initiatives with data use, community-led change and solutions to address early years system challenges.
February 2023
Addressing inequity and optimising the health and development of children is reliant on being able to effectively assess and measure the disadvantage experienced by children and families.
Ensuring robust measurement of disadvantage during the early years is crucial to understanding the extent of the problem, monitoring change over time, and identifying modifiable leverage points for optimal child development trajectories.
The report identifies options for enhancing the measurement of child-level disadvantage in early childhood data collections and the feasibility of these options.
