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Current Projects

CoLab is leading major initiatives centred on our three enduring priorities. We have developed four flagship projects – the Child Development Atlas, Early Years Initiative, Core Story for Early Childhood Development and Learning and the Bright Tomorrows Parenting App.

Early Years Initiative

The Early Years Initiative is a commitment to work differently with communities to improve the development, health and learning of children from conception to four years and create lasting change.

It is an unprecedented 10-year partnership that is bringing together community leaders, government, researchers, business and philanthropic organisations to achieve better outcomes for Western Australian children and families.

The Initiative sees the State Government join with Minderoo Foundation and Telethon Kids Institute (through CoLab) to work with four Western Australian partner communities. CoLab is responsible for ensuring rigorous high-quality research, evaluation, monitoring and reporting is delivered to the Early Years initiative.

The Initiative will empower and support communities to assess the needs of children and families and identify what works best to help their children to thrive, based on evidence and research.

The first community selected for the Early Years initiative is the Central Great Southern, with announcements of more communities to follow.

Core Story for Early Childhood Development and Learning

CoLab, in collaboration with leading Australian government and non-government early childhood organisations, is developing a long-term communication initiative to transform the way early childhood development and learning is understood in Australia. The Early Childhood Development and Learning Collaboration is being facilitated by CoLab and the Centre for Community Child Health.

Australian Declaration for Young Children

The Declaration was developed to support our collaborators’ expressed need for an agreed position on the state of current early years’ evidence, including policy and practice recommendations. More than 70 leading early childhood researchers, policymakers and practitioners contributed to the Declaration which will become a foundation for CoLab’s future research collaborations.

The Child Development Atlas

CoLab, in partnership with The Ian Potter Foundation, has funded the development of the Child Development Atlas (CDA), an interactive tool that plans to map data from multiple government agencies to build comprehensive child development, health and social profiles of WA communities. These neighbourhood social profiles will be overlayed with service delivery profiles to support policy makers, service providers and communities in providing effective service delivery to meet community needs. The project team will work with Government agencies to build a central location for currently siloed data. CoLab is further supporting this initiative by facilitating partnerships with service providers and communities to inform service delivery for WA children and families.

Bright Tomorrows Parenting App

By spending meaningful moments with children, parents and other caregivers including the wider community, can play a very important role in developing a child’s key skills for life — skills that will assist them to navigate emotions, frustrations and day to day challenges. The Bright Tomorrows app provides tailor-made information to help give children the best start in life and also to help app users further develop their own life skills.

Built by CoLab in partnership with Vroom, the Bezos Family Foundation and the Raising Children’s Network, the app includes over 1000 fun activities (called moments) for parents to do with their child as well as tips for parents that turn everyday moments into brain building opportunities.

How Australia can invest in children and return more

How Australia can invest in children and return more presents the opportunity for wise investmentss in evidence-based early intervention to radically change outcomes for Australian children and young people

The report, produced by a partnership including CoLab - Collaborate for kids, a partnership between Telethon Kids Institute and the Minderoo Foundation, The Early Intervention Foundation, Woodside Energy and the Front Project, reveals that Australian governments are spending $15.2 billion each year on high-intensity and crisis services for problems that may have been prevented had we invested earlier and more wisely.

How Australia can invest in children and return more is one of the first Australian studies to analyse the cost of intervening late in areas that affect children and young people’s quality of life.

It is the result of a partnership between five organisations representing research, not-for-profit, philanthropy and business.

We are aligned around a shared view that children are the foundation of a cohesive society, a strong economy and a prosperous Australia.

Early intervention can mean more young people have the best possible start in life while Australian governments maximise the impact of their spending with flow-on benefits to taxpayers.

Ensuring children and young people have access to effective, targeted early intervention (including services and programs) and effective support is a social and economic priority for Australia.

Economics Working Group

CoLab’s Economics Working Group is progressing a systematic review of the evidence relating to return on investment, for interventions in early childhood.

This work utilises our global network of economic experts across health, education, labour and welfare sectors to provide a unique perspective on research and policy priorities in the early years. Research and policy publications from this project will provide support in advocating investment in early childhood to reap long-term benefits to society, produced by increased health, education and wellbeing of children as they age.

Previous Projects

Midland Demonstration Project

CoLab is supporting the Midland community group, ‘we the people', to build local support for a demonstration project in the Midland region of Perth. Demonstration projects test and measure the effects of potential program changes in communities. The Midland project aims to improve the life outcomes of children and families experiencing vulnerability by supporting the uptake of services through better service coordination and design, and reducing the barriers to access. The project partners are working with key Midland service providers and community representatives to identify issues facing families experiencing adversity and what the best approaches to supporting them might be.

The findings of a research study undertaken by CoLab that looked at the developmental status of children aged zero to eight in the Midland region and the services that support them and their families was released in April 2018.

The WA Commissioner for Children and Young People (CCYP) Outcomes Framework

Telethon Kids and CoLab are supporting the Commissioner for Children and Young People WA to develop a project that aims to increase our shared understanding about whether life is improving for children and young people. Together we are developing a framework to monitor three core aspects of children’s wellbeing - safety, health and learning. This framework will be used by CCYP to inform his monitoring role (including an annual report to Parliament) and will remain consistent over the coming years.

CoLab Annual Report 2019

How we are making a difference

CoLab Annual Report 2019

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