The opportunity to grow: How place, opportunity and disadvantage shape children’s development in Australia

Socioeconomic disadvantage and developmental vulnerability continue to intersect in communities across Australia, creating barriers that emerge early and can shape children's opportunities throughout life.

Every child should have the opportunity to thrive, regardless of where they grow up. Yet, as this report shows, the opportunities and conditions that support children’s development and learning remain profoundly uneven across Australia.

This report identifies 783 communities experiencing high early childhood disadvantage, an increase of 5% over three years. If this trajectory continues, the scale of need will continue to outpace the reach of current policy and service responses placing even greater pressure on families, services and systems that support children’s development and wellbeing. 

Regional, rural and remote communities are disproportionately represented among the 783 communities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, especially in remote and very remote areas, are also heavily represented. On the other hand, concentrated disadvantage among culturally and linguistically diverse communities is overwhelmingly in metropolitan areas and can be overlooked when using a national lens that typically focuses on regional, rural and remote communities. 

These findings do not mean that where a child grows up determines their future. Communities across Australia demonstrate significant strengths, resilience and local leadership. Rather, the findings show that children face very different opportunities depending on the economic and social conditions surrounding their families and the accessibility, quality and responsiveness of the systems and services available to them.  

Improving developmental outcomes, therefore, requires action on both the conditions in which children grow and the systems that surround them. Major early years reforms and investments underway offer an unprecedented opportunity to build a more equitable child-centred early years system.

Seizing this opportunity, however, requires greater coherence across reforms, clearer responsibility for children’s outcomes and a stronger focus on directing resources and support where barriers are greatest. The report sets out recommendations for how this can be achieved.