Project Thrive: Australia’s first RCT on ECEC educator wellbeing is underway

Anyone working in or alongside early childhood education and care knows the workforce is under strain. Educators are leaving. Centres are struggling to maintain stable teams. The children and families who depend on consistent, trusting relationships with the adults in their care are absorbing the consequences of a workforce that is stretched too thin and not adequately supported.

Burnout is not a new problem in ECEC, and it is not a mystery. Educators carry significant physical, emotional, and relational demands with limited access to the kinds of workplace support that are standard in many other professions. The conditions that erode wellbeing, including high workloads, limited autonomy, poor team culture, inadequate leadership support, and a sector funding model that constrains what services can offer staff, have been well-documented. What has remained stubbornly elusive is evidence of what actually works to change it.

That is the gap Project Thrive is designed to close.

For all that we understand about the scale and nature of educator wellbeing challenges, the evidence base for intervention has been thin. Small-scale studies and case research have offered useful signals, particularly around the benefits of leadership supervision for educators' wellbeing, practice quality, and retention. But rigorous, causal evidence showing which types of support produce which outcomes, and for whom, has not existed in an Australian ECEC context. That matters because without it, services make decisions about wellbeing investment without knowing what will work, and sector policymakers and funders lack the credible evidence base needed to develop or resource effective, scalable solutions.

Project Thrive is a 24-month research collaboration between Kinex Health and Macquarie University's School of Education. It is Australia's first randomised controlled trial focused specifically on ECEC educator wellbeing, led by Professor Sandie Wong and co-investigators Honorary Professor Rebecca Bull and Dr Nicole Jamison at Macquarie University, with the intervention delivered by Kinex Health. The trial is designed to produce the kind of rigorous, high-quality causal evidence that has been missing, and to generate findings that are useful not just to participating services, but to the sector as a whole.

The trial will involve 32 ECEC services across Australia, randomly allocated to one of three intervention tiers or a waitlist control group. Tier A services will receive access to an on-demand digital wellbeing resource library covering topics from stress and resilience to sleep, nutrition, movement, financial wellbeing, and ECEC-specific injury risks. Tier B builds on this with monthly group supervision sessions for leaders, focused on practical leadership skills, communication, conflict resolution, and strategies to support their teams. Tier C adds individual health consultations for all staff across the year, delivered by Kinex Health practitioners. Services in the waitlist control group join an active intervention tier after the 12-month period. Outcomes, including educator psychological and physical wellbeing, workplace culture, absenteeism, workers compensation, and workforce turnover, will be measured at three points: before the intervention, at six months, and at twelve months.

"This is a well-designed intervention and we look forward to understanding what it can achieve for educators, services, and the sector as a whole.” - Prof Sandie Wong, Professor, Macquarie University.

Services interested in participating do not need to have existing wellbeing programs in place. The trial is open to ECEC services across Australia, including those in regional and remote locations, and is designed to be practically accessible rather than burdensome. The trial is jointly funded by the Early Childhood Educators' Wellbeing Project and Kinex Health, with a contribution from participating services; full details are shared at the expression of interest stage. Importantly, the research extends beyond measuring what the intervention delivers. Participating educators and leaders will have the opportunity to share their perspectives on what would genuinely help, at an individual level, within their centre, across the systems they work within, and at the level of sector policy. These insights, gathered through surveys and follow-up case studies with services, will contribute to one of the most comprehensive pictures of educator experience and need that the sector has seen. Participating services will also receive tailored feedback and leader briefings at the conclusion of the trial period. The trial is expected to begin in the second half of 2026. Expressions of interest are open now and can be directed to [email protected].

Being part of Project Thrive means more than receiving a wellbeing intervention. It means your educators' voices, and your centre's experience, will contribute directly to the evidence base that shapes what comes next for our sector. The findings from this trial have the potential to influence national workforce policy, guide sector-level funding decisions, and help future services demonstrate the return on investment that wellbeing initiatives can deliver. For a workforce that has given so much while asking for so little in return, that is no small thing. If the intervention proves effective, its tiered structure means it is scalable across metropolitan, regional, and remote contexts, without requiring a one-size-fits-all approach. The sector has long deserved this quality of evidence, and the educators within it have long deserved to be heard. Project Thrive is an attempt to deliver both.