CoLab for Kids to cease at the end of the year, work to continue under Minderoo banner

Following three years of significant success in the mission to combine evidence with policy and practice to improve the development and learning of children, CoLab for Kids will retire as a brand at the end of 2020.

 

The Minderoo Foundation and the Telethon Kids Institute, of which the CoLab for Kids brand is a part, have jointly agreed to enter into a new working relationship in 2021. While the CoLab brand is being retired, many key projects will continue, a CoLab spokesperson said.  

 

Both Telethon Kids Institute and Minderoo Foundation will continue to work in partnership to improve the health, development and learning of Australia’s youngest children by aligning the respective strengths of each organisation on shared projects. 

 

Specifically, Telethon Kids Institute will focus on its role as a research and evidence translation partner, and Minderoo Foundation on advocacy for systems change. 

 

Following funding for CoLab for Kids by the Minderoo Foundation in 2017, a number of major achievements resulted, including: 

 

• Unified national early childhood messaging to raise community awareness of the importance of investing in early childhood (Core Story for Early Childhood Toolkit)

 

• Providing parents with tailored child development evidence (Bright Tomorrows App)

 

• Demonstrating the quality return on early childhood investment evidence to support government decision making (Cost of Late Intervention Report, Campbell systematic review of evidence, progress on the whole-child economic index)

 

• Providing real time access to early childhood government data to support practitioners delivering services (Child Development Atlas)

 

• Driving government-philanthropy-research early childhood partnership to help those who need it most (Early Years Initiative and Life Course Centre of Excellence)

 

• Grown the early childhood sector’s evidence-based capacity (Declaration, evidence summaries, seminars, and tool kits).

 

While the CoLab brand is being retired, the Telethon Kids Institute and Minderoo Foundation will continue to work in partnership to improve the health, development and learning of Australia’s youngest children.  

 

Please contact [email protected] with any queries.