Up to 40% of disadvantaged children live in middle-to-high income areas, research commissioned by the government has found, making it critical to identify the range of factors associated with disadvantage – not just location.
About 22% of Australian children start school developmentally vulnerable, meaning they lack the experiences and environments needed to thrive for preventable reasons. This rises to 33% of children in the most disadvantaged communities.
Researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute led by paediatrician Prof Sharon Goldfeld linked de-identified national health, socioeconomic and geographic datasets provided by government agencies relating to almost 300,000 Australian children.
The federal education department commissioned the researchers to use the data to identify factors associated with disadvantage that may have previously been underestimated or overlooked, leaving some of the most vulnerable children ignored.
“We often look at where children live geographically and the association with disadvantage, but actually it turns out that [a] child’s levels of disadvantage and where they live don’t line up 100%,” Goldfeld said.
“So between 30 to 40% of children who live in the most disadvantaged households don’t live in the most disadvantaged areas. It means if we only target what we consider to be disadvantaged areas, we’ll miss many children in disadvantaged households.”
For children living in the least disadvantaged communities, 10.8% had family income in the lowest bracket of $56,137 or less, the report found. While these children were considered least disadvantaged based on their area, they were disadvantaged on child-level income measures.
The report also found that not being read to at home was more strongly associated with child disadvantage than a family’s geographic location.
“Rather than finger-waving, saying, ‘you should read to your child more’, we need to think of all the factors that might get in the way of being able to read to a child, and then wrap support services around those families,” Goldfeld said.
For example, there might be learning difficulties, time constraints due to working multiple jobs, family violence, a lack of money for books, or lack of access to or awareness about services like libraries.
“Most people think disadvantage equals socioeconomic disadvantage, but actually disadvantage wears many hats,” Goldfeld said. “And there is no one easy fix – we need to ensure families are supported in a range of ways from pregnancy through the first five years of life especially.”
The epidemiologist Prof John Lynch, who is deputy dean of research with the University of Adelaide’s faculty of health and medical sciences, said for the findings to be meaningful, a critical next step would be to incorporate jurisdictional service data.
This could include data around contact with child protection services, use of food banks, or access to family violence services.
“So while this data is a good first step, we need to go further if we really want to support disadvantaged families.”
Lynch said too many people fail to perceive disadvantage as chronic.
“In medical care, we fully accept that something like diabetes is actually a chronic condition that might occasionally lead to a crisis where somebody ends up in hospital, and we understand that once the person is out of hospital we must still be supporting them with their diabetes,” Lynch said.
“I don’t think we fully appreciate that these crises that hit children, like a child dying while in guardianship, or encountering child protection, are underlined by conditions for families that are chronic.
“We’ve got to do better and have a social contract that says, ‘we’re going to be here to support you from the first time we come in contact with you,’ which is probably during antenatal care.”
He said from there, families need to be supported throughout that child’s life course.
“Instead, we have a lot of systems where you only get a service when you are in crisis, and sometimes you’re not deep enough in crisis to it to be eligible for the service.”
Prof Gerry Redmond, a sociologist and public policy expert with Flinders University, said the report reiterated that poverty in Australia was significant, and the failure of governments to address low income and subsidies for disadvantaged families was having serious consequences for child development.
“Children living in low-income families is a strong indicator of developmental vulnerability across the domains of physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication skills,” he said.
“Governments will claim that where you come from shouldn’t determine your opportunities and where you end up. But it’s important to take into account family circumstances as well as community circumstances when you’re thinking about disadvantage and policies to address it.”
