Early Years Systems Evidence

Vision

Our team is interested in how children’s life chances are shaped by their experiences and environments from pregnancy through to their school years, and how this differs across the contexts in which children are raised. We have a view of the early year’s system, the actors in the system and challenges faced by the system.

The team employs pragmatic and robust research methodologies and evaluation designs, utilising population and administrative data, to address pertinent questions facing policy makers and service providers.

We seek and respond to opportunities to conduct work in partnership that are aligned to our areas of expertise, including: child development, wellbeing and learning support in school, and parenting support services and programs.

Through the team’s body of work, we are developing a reputation as a research partner to actors in the system. Our breadth of work also enables us to advocate for cohesion across the system with a focus on improving the experiences of families as they progress through universal services (i.e., antenatal services to maternal child health services to early education and care and into schooling) and as they touch targeted aspects of the system (e.g., child protection, mental health services, relationship support, disability support).

A key feature of our work is that it relies on and is strengthened by partnerships. At the core, the work we do is strengthened by collaborating with other researchers, with policy makers, service providers, and communities. Our work is not driven intrinsically by an interest in a subject area, but by the way it shapes the experiences and environments of children and families in Australia.

Team Highlights

Under the leadership of A/Prof Harman-Smith, the team has over 10 years of experience working in collaboration with government and service providers, with over 50 awarded tenders and contracted projects, totalling almost $15 million in contract funding. The team has also been successful as named chief investigators on over $2.5 million in Category 1 or 2 grant-funded research.

A highlight of the team’s success is their ongoing work with the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment in relation to the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). Since 2014, the team has provided strategic advice and support services to the Commonwealth and State and Territory governments, drawing on their expertise in child development, population monitoring, early years’ service provision, and the AEDC. 

The team has also prioritised working in collaboration with and supporting the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to ensure culturally appropriate service provision and improved outcomes for Aboriginal children. For example, the team worked of the development of with the Northern Territory Government of Education to develop an AEDC Toolkit for Communities. The toolkit supported communities to interpret data about their children from their own perspective and use the data to inform short and long term local planning that is driven by communities and prioritises community knowledge of their children, family and place.

Furthermore, the team strives to identify emerging issues facing early childhood systems, caregivers, and children. An example of this was recently awarded funding from the Channel 7 Telethon Trust to develop and pilot a parenting intervention aiming to support parents and caregivers to create healthy screen time behaviours with their very young children. This project builds on the teams existing expertise in understanding the challenges and complexities around screen time during the early years and is working alongside parents to co-design the program to ensure it is both evidence-informed and meets the needs of Australian parents in today’s modern society.  

Finally, one of the team’s biggest strengths is our detailed understanding of systems that influence a child’s trajectory throughout life both within Australia and internationally. Through this lens, we have undertaken projects that have mapped the early years’ system in South Australia, worked collaboratively with education departments to develop an evidence base for informing wellbeing initiatives in school, and worked internationally across low- and middle-income countries, such as Lao PDR, Tonga, Tuvalu and Uzbekistan, to support the design, implementation, and impact evaluation of child health, development, and education interventions.