Focus on children to improve national wellbeing

In July, the Government introduced a national wellbeing framework with the goal of aligning economic and social objectives to improve the wellbeing of our nation. However, a critical aspect is missing – the perspective of children and young people.

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) has provided a sobering picture of what it's like to be a young person in Australia, but this incredible data source is only fleetingly acknowledged in the Framework. To improve wellbeing, we must focus our efforts on children and young people, putting them at the heart of policy and interventions. It's time to play the long game.

Currently, we're grappling with a multitude of crises – the skyrocketing cost of living, housing affordability, mental health, education, and ongoing and devastating occurrences of sexual and physical violence against women and children. For many, survival is the primary concern. Wellbeing feels like a luxury.

Nevertheless, this Framework is a positive first step. It reflects a government taking measures to consider what is truly important to people and to find ways to measure success that have meaning and could make a difference to ordinary Australians.

The Centre was part of the public submission process in developing the Framework. Our recommendations focused on the importance of early childhood, poverty reduction, place-based (local) services, and self-determination . But even with a dedicated chapter on the importance of children's early years, the Framework is sorely missing key data points to track the experiences of children and young people.

The Wellbeing Framework outlines a series of measures for the Government to track progress, including health indicators such as access to health services and mental health, security indicators such as childhood experience of abuse and online safety, sustainability indicators such as air quality and emissions reductions, and cohesive indicators such as First Nations languages spoken and social connections. A dashboard of these indicators paints a picture of the current wellbeing of our nation.

Wellbeing now sits alongside the traditional and relatively dull measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, unemployment figures, and wealth indicators that measure our success.

By conventional standards, Australia is a consistently strong contender. We have the 9th highest GDP per capita in the world and the 12th largest economy, consistently ranking highly in global indexes as a desirable destination to live, work, study, and invest. But GDP doesn't say anything about the reality for homes and communities across Australia.

Another perspective comes from a report released in January 2023 by Oxfam, which found that the richest 1 per cent of Australians have accumulated ten times more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent in the past decade. This divide between the richest and the rest shouldn't persist at such an alarming rate.

Australia has the 15th highest poverty rate out of the 34 wealthiest OECD countries, higher than the OECD average and higher than Germany, the UK, and New Zealand. These measures are more telling, but they still don't describe the experiences of our children.

The missing piece is building better measures for children and young people into the Framework. It must be backed up with accountability and commitment – perhaps it requires a legislated commitment - from every department and at all levels of government to report and perform against wellbeing. Placing children and young people at the centre of those measures is crucial.

There is no doubt establishing measures that encourage early intervention, such as the Early Intervention Investment Framework in Victoria, can drive commitment across government and sector to stop harm before it begins.

When we hold the Framework up against the findings of ACMS – and the areas of need it highlighted - we can see some glaring gaps.

For example, the Mental Health dashboard doesn't separate measures for children and young people, which is a significant oversight considering the findings of the ACMS. The mental health outcomes for young people aged 16 – 24 years whose child maltreatment experiences are so recent are devastating to read and require an urgent response.

Also, wellbeing measures on "childhood experience of abuse" don't yet include all four forms of child maltreatment outlined by the ACMS. And measures of the "experience of violence" don't include childhood exposure to domestic violence, which the ACMS measured as an experience reported by 42.8 per cent of young people.

Now armed with the ACMS data – a sample of 8,500 Australians – we have a unique opportunity to prioritise, track, and measure initiatives to improve our children's lives and wellbeing.

Getting this data into a Wellbeing Framework backed by a shared vision and commitment is an excellent place to start. And we must get started; our children deserve nothing less.

First published on Power to Persuade , an independent platform for global discussion about social policy, founded in 2011 and based in Australia.