Building children’s potential – ARACY’s new capability investment strategy

Freya Lucas

Jul 22, 2020

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A webinar will be held 5 August, supporting elements of ARACY’s new policy brief Building Children’s Potential - A Capability Investment Strategy which centres on equipping families, children and young people to make better decisions.

ARACY believes the making of better decisions is “the key to helping ensure these young Australians can escape the pull COVID-19’s gravity – a force it will exert for many years to come”.

COVID-19, ARACY continued, “poses a massive challenge to the mental, physical and economic wellbeing of this generation of young Australians. Even before the crisis, Australia was “short-changing our children and young people” with around one-fifth of Australian children beginning school ill-prepared to succeed, and with this percentage rising to almost one in two in communities experiencing disadvantage.

There is an “abundance of robust evidence” on how to equip families, children and young people to make better decisions, ARACY continued, noting the number of programs internationally that are achieving results in, for example, helping families and young people develop better executive function skills.

Core executive function skills can enable children and adults to manage their lives and improve their capacity to deal with difficult and stressful circumstances.

“So far, in Australia, this approach is non-existent at worst, and haphazard at best. This must urgently change,” a spokesperson said.

To support interested parties to learn more about how the policy brief and its strategies may be used in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) and other sectors working with children and families, ARACY will hold a series of webinars, the first of which features ARACY Principle Adviser Lori Rubenstein, who will present a snapshot of the evidence for the effectiveness of this approach and discuss ARACY’s goal of establishing a collaborative Brain Builders Alliance.

Title: Webinar - The case for investing in the brains of children, young people and their families to break the cycle of disadvantageDate: Wednesday, 5 August 2020Time: 12.00-1.00pm AESTPrice: Free of charge

For more information on the work of ARACY, please visit their website, here.

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