CYP Matters

Respect and listening

‘How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?’ Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic
This global investigation of education technology (EdTech) endorsed by 49 governments for children’s education during the pandemic, based on technical and policy analysis of 163 EdTech products, finds that governments’ endorsements of the majority of these online learning platforms put at risk or directly violated children’s privacy and other rights, for purposes unrelated to their education. More >

Fostering youth voice for delivery of COVID-19 information
In Australia, COVID-19 control measures had a profound impact on the wellbeing of young people, including school closures and social distancing, caused high school students to miss out on peer connections, extracurricular activities and educational opportunities that are critical for healthy development. More >

New funding for Scottish schools to support them to learn about children’s rights
Evidence gathered by UNICEF UK shows the positive impact on creating a culture of respect across the school community where children’s voices are heard and valued. Scottish Government funding to deliver UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools programme to 2,400 primary and secondary state schools across Scotland will work to embed children’s rights into schools’ ethos and further their understanding. More >

Health and wellbeing

Decoding the gap: Australia’s ongoing struggle to address Indigenous health outcomes
This paper triangulates the historical and scientific sub-strata behind Indigenous Australia’s health gaps in an effort to better decode the real reasons for these gaps. Discussion is based on the current Closing the Gap framework’s health targets — Life Expectancy (Outcome 1) and Pregnancy and Healthy Birth (Outcome 2) — with the paper seeking to help illuminate the way forward to more real, root cause-based, outputs and outcomes. More >

Filling in the gaps – a new vision for creating and accessing childhood care records
The importance of keeping accurate and child-focussed records is the driving force behind a new charter that offers a vision of what recordkeeping for young people in care should look like. More >

Can digital interventions help young people with suicidal ideation?
Suicide is the leading cause of death in young Australians aged 15–24 years, and rates of self-harm in this age group have steadily been rising over the past decade. Suicide and self-harm are highly complex and rare events, and this has created significant challenges in identifying appropriate and optimal targets for effective intervention. More >

Children’s memory development ‘slowed’ by traffic noise
A long-term study of around 2,700 children aged 7-10 years schools across the Spanish city of Barcelona found noise from road traffic has a major impact on the development of crucial memory and attention skills in primary school children, slowing it down significantly. More >

What is life like for children and young people in Australia today?
This report aims to describe how Australian children are faring across all aspects of wellbeing and how this is changing. The report ultimately aims to set policy priorities and guide action to ensure Australia is an equitable place to grow up and improve outcomes for all Australian children. More >

Children live online more than ever – we need better definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ screen time
The pandemic has fundamentally altered every part of our lives, not least the time we spend on digital devices. For young people in particular, the blurred line between recreational and educational screen time presents new challenges we are only beginning to appreciate. More >

Kids on the autism spectrum experience more bullying. Schools can do something about it
Accumulating evidence indicates autistic children are more likely to be bullied. The risk is also substantially higher for children with other types of neurodevelopmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette syndrome, and intellectual disability, when compared with non-neurodiverse children. More >

Goodstart partners with Flinders Uni to strengthen developmental screening in ECEC
Goodstart Early Learning services in partnership with Flinders University’s Health2Go clinic will have more support to detect developmental delays and other health concerns in children from low socio-economic backgrounds. The free service is part of a pilot program which aims to detect potential problems in children who might otherwise wait months or years to be assessed and get support. More >

A decade of data: findings from the first 10 years of Footprints in Time
This report follows the developmental pathways of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children focussing on what helps Indigenous children ‘grow up strong’ and what has changed for families since the interviews first started. More >

Child responsive budgeting: Why Australia needs to put children front and centre in policymaking
As a prosperous nation, Australia should be one of the best countries in the world to be a child. But it’s not. For Australia to become more inclusive—where no one is left behind—children need to be front of mind for policymakers when developing and implementing our post-Covid recovery framework. More >

Perinatal support strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents experiencing complex trauma
The voices, experiences and knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners explore how services can work through the perinatal period to support the social and emotional wellbeing of infants and their families. More >

It’s good that children’s mental health is finally being addressed – but there is more to do
Infant mental health describes the capacity of a child during the first three years of life to form close relationships, recognise and express emotions, and explore and learn about their environment. The fact that these definitions are quite distinct to the way we define and think about mental health in adults, and that infants are unable to express themselves verbally, may explain why infant mental health is so commonly overlooked. More >

Safe and nurtured

Trust, Safety and Participation
This practice guide is oriented specifically toward supporting children and young people affected by domestic violence, focussing on them as individuals with their own unique experiences, impacts, resources and needs, while acknowledging that they are dependent on, and affected by, the adults in their network. More >

Supporting young Aboriginal Victorians to thrive
The Victorian state government has launched an initiative to ensure young First Nations people, like those in Wyndham, are supported to stay out of the youth justice system and lead fulfilling lives, guided by Wirkara Kulpa- Victoria’s first ever Aboriginal Youth Justice Strategy. More >

Tasmania raises minimum age of detention under comprehensive youth justice reforms
The Tasmanian Government will raise the minimum age of detention from 10 to 14 as part of sweeping reforms to the state’s youth justice system. The government will instead boost prevention and intervention programs, divert youth from the formal court system and implement community-based sentencing options. More >

Study shows an additional 10,000 children have entered care due to child poverty
Children in care face adverse health outcomes through the life-course, relative to their peers. This study offers evidence that rising child poverty rates are contributing to an increase in children entering care in England. More >

Child protection Australia 2020–21
During 2020–21, more than 178,800 Australian children received child protection services. Of these children, 68% were the subject of an investigation of a notification of abuse or neglect and about 49,700 children were the subjects of substantiations. At 30 June 2021, more than 46,200 children were in out-of-home care. More >

A Key Connection: Economic Stability and Family Well-being
A growing body of evidence from the USA shows that families do better when they have access to concrete services and have economic stability. This makes providing economic and concrete supports an important component of preventing child abuse and neglect and reducing involvement with child welfare. More >

Young people with acquired brain injury: preventing entrenchment in the criminal justice system
This report explores whether children and young people with an acquired brain injury might be over-represented in the criminal justice system in Victoria. It also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the current system in responding to the needs of young people with cognitive impairment. More >

Adultification bias within child protection and safeguarding
Adultification bias is not a new phenomenon and research in North America and the United Kingdom has highlighted that for many children of colour, this type of racialised discrimination continues to impact their daily lives across welfare services, education, health, and criminal justice. Literature also suggests that adultification bias can feature in other contexts, which leaves all children at risk of this form of discrimination. More >

Final Report of the South Australian Dual Involved Project
This report draws on the experiences of 71 ‘dual involved’ children and young people who were in state care and experienced youth detention in 2021. It explores how failings in the South Australian child protection and youth justice systems contribute to their ‘criminalisation’. More >

Public sharing of intimate images without consent – teenagers are paying the price
About a quarter of all image-based abuse reports received by the eSafety Commission come from people under 18 years of age, with some as young as 13. But despite how often it happens, the young victims can face bullying and social isolation, and are often too embarrassed to seek out support. More >

Digging deeper than ‘did not attend’
‘Did not attend’ implies that a child is responsible for attending an appointment and chose not to go. Young children can only attend an appointment if their caregiver takes them. Recording missed appointments as ‘was not brought’ reminds practitioners that the adult is responsible for ensuring a child receives medical care, not the child. More >

Without a home: First-time youth homelessness in the COVID-19 period
This report reveals almost one in 20 young people aged 15 to 19 who responded to Mission Australia’s Youth Survey 2021 were homeless for the first time during the pandemic. Those who faced homelessness experienced high levels of psychological distress, negative impacts on wellbeing, family conflict, discrimination and other pressures. More >

Enjoying and achieving

Australia’s ‘dual-track’ education system is failing young students with disability, advocates say
1 in 10 Australian school students lives with disability, with 380,000 children aged 5-18 in primary or secondary school; almost 89% attend mainstream schools and the remainder attend one of 500 special schools. More >

Access to and quality of neighbourhood public open space and children’s mental health outcomes
This study examines access to and quality of public open space and young children’s mental health across eight Australian capital cities using the Australian Early Development Census—Built Environment data set. More >

After years of COVID, fires and floods, kids’ well-being now depends on better support
Research on post-crisis schooling and the impacts of COVID-19 found the disruptions to schooling had significant impacts on the well-being of teachers and students, whereas academically students were okay. More >

Five-point plan to help end early learning inequality in rural and remote Australia
West Australian educators, childcare advocates and health service providers has released a five-point plan for early learning reform in rural and remote areas aimed at ensuring equal opportunity for city and country children. More >

What will it take for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to live vibrant, joyful lives?
This webinar discussed work in policy development and advocacy to help more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children to have happy, healthy childhoods that set them up to have the best opportunity for a good life. More >

Bush Kinder programs boost preschool children’s outcomes, Deakin study shows
Pre-schoolers who spend time in nature-based learning programs, such as bush or beach kinder, emerge from early learning with a stronger understanding of science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM). More >

Starting unequal: How’s life for disadvantaged children?
This report charts the well-being of disadvantaged children, both across OECD countries and relative to their more advantaged peers and shows how growing up at the bottom end of the socio economic ladder leads impacts almost all areas of children’s lives. More >

Participation

Labor promised a new committee of 15 young people to guide policy. So who gets picked, and how?
The federal government has announced Anne Aly is Australia’s new minister for youth and the restoration of youth consultation to government decision-making with a new youth engagement model driven by a steering committee of up to 15 young people. Getting this panel of 15 young people right will be crucial to its effectiveness. More >

Children’s participation in child protection – How do practitioners understand children’s participation in practice?
Children’s participation is essential to achieve good outcomes for children involved in child protection systems. Despite this, research has consistently found children report low levels of participation, are poorly consulted and feel inadequately involved in decisions about their lives. More >

Graz launches ‘a summer of listening’ to its young people
Ahead of a dedicated five-year focus on children and young people, the Austrian city of Graz is launching its ‘largest child participation initiative in history’. More >

Prepared for adult life

New Opportunities: The Youth Homelessness Prevention Initiative
This four-phase initiative to prevent youth homelessness in the United States is guided by a vision of equity and rooted in the understanding that sustainable solutions require the empowered participation of young people, a reliance on research evidence, and consideration of multiple systems that address youth well-being. More >

SCROLL: Take control of your feed
SCROLL is eSafety’s new youth campaign tackling what young Australians can do when things go wrong online. Running across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, SCROLL features real stories and examples of how young people can protect themselves, where to get help, and ways to support friends. More >

Nearly three quarters of young people aged 15 to 24 in 92 countries with available data are ‘off-track’ to acquire the skills needed for employment.
This report analyses skills development in early childhood, and among children of primary school age and youth. The report highlights low levels of skills among children and young people across all age groups. More >