TY - JOUR
T1 - Findings from the Kids in Communities Study (KiCS)
T2 - A mixed methods study examining community-level influences on early childhood development
AU - Goldfeld, Sharon
AU - Villanueva, Karen
AU - Tanton, Robert
AU - Katz, Ilan
AU - Brinkman, Sally
AU - Giles-Corti, Billie
AU - Woolcock, Geoffrey
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: The initial work for data collection and analysis was funded by Kids in Communities Study (KiCS), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant (LP130100411) led by The University of Melbourne. From this work, the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) funded the development of community-level indicators for early childhood development (ECD) and draft manual of community indicator measures and methodologies (4-4FE66UX). DSS and Organisations as part of the ARC Linkage Grant are gratefully acknowledged for their generous in-kind and financial support. The KiCS collaboration includes the University of Melbourne (lead institution), University of Canberra, University of New South Wales, and The University of Western Australia, RMIT University and The University of Southern Queensland, and a range of government and non-government organisations such as The Australian Government Department of Education, the South Australian Department of Education, the Victorian Department of Education and Training, New South Wales Department of Education, Queensland Department of Education, the Australian Capital Territory Community Services Directorate, NSW Family and Community Services, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Wesley Mission Queensland, The Smith Family, The Benevolent Society, Uniting Care, Children?s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, Murdoch Children?s Research Institute, Mount Saint Vincent University, University of British Columbia and the University of Ohio. SG (Lead Chief Investigator) and SB is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellowship (1082922 and 1160185 consecutively), and BGC by a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship (1107672).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Goldfeld et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - There is increasing international interest in place-based approaches to improve early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. The available data and evidence are limited and precludes well informed policy and practice change. Developing the evidence-base for community-level effects on ECD is one way to facilitate more informed and targeted community action. This paper presents overall final findings from the Kids in Communities Study (KiCS), an Australian mixed methods investigation into community-level effects on ECD in five domains of influence–physical, social, governance, service, and sociodemographic. Twenty five local communities (suburbs) across Australia were selected based on ‘diagonality type’ i.e. whether they performed better (off-diagonal positive), worse (off-diagonal negative), or ‘as expected’ (on-diagonal) on the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) relative to their socioeconomic profile. The approach was designed to determine replicable and modifiable factors that were separate to socioeconomic status. Between 2015–2017, stakeholder interviews (n = 146), parent and service provider focus groups (n = 51), and existing socio-economic and early childhood education and care administrative data were collected. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were undertaken to understand differences between 14 paired disadvantaged local communities (i.e. on versus off-diagonal). Further analysis of qualitative data elicited important factors for all 25 local communities. From this, we developed a draft set of ‘Foundational Community Factors’ (FCFs); these are the factors that lay the foundations of a good community for young children.
AB - There is increasing international interest in place-based approaches to improve early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. The available data and evidence are limited and precludes well informed policy and practice change. Developing the evidence-base for community-level effects on ECD is one way to facilitate more informed and targeted community action. This paper presents overall final findings from the Kids in Communities Study (KiCS), an Australian mixed methods investigation into community-level effects on ECD in five domains of influence–physical, social, governance, service, and sociodemographic. Twenty five local communities (suburbs) across Australia were selected based on ‘diagonality type’ i.e. whether they performed better (off-diagonal positive), worse (off-diagonal negative), or ‘as expected’ (on-diagonal) on the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) relative to their socioeconomic profile. The approach was designed to determine replicable and modifiable factors that were separate to socioeconomic status. Between 2015–2017, stakeholder interviews (n = 146), parent and service provider focus groups (n = 51), and existing socio-economic and early childhood education and care administrative data were collected. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were undertaken to understand differences between 14 paired disadvantaged local communities (i.e. on versus off-diagonal). Further analysis of qualitative data elicited important factors for all 25 local communities. From this, we developed a draft set of ‘Foundational Community Factors’ (FCFs); these are the factors that lay the foundations of a good community for young children.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114270764&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0256431
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0256431
M3 - Article
C2 - 34469452
AN - SCOPUS:85114270764
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 16
SP - 1
EP - 21
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 9 September
M1 - e0256431
ER -