Changing life trajectories: The Early Years Education Research Project

It is now well known that infancy and early childhood are the most critical period of life for the development of cognitive and social skills. Abuse and neglect impairs all aspects of this development, and young children who are victims of abuse and neglect are therefore less likely to achieve their full potential. Over their lifetimes they are more likely to drop out of school; become teenage parents; engage in substance abuse; experience poor physical and mental health; become homeless; be unemployed; and become incarcerated.

The Early Years Education Program (EYEP) is a new three-year program being offered in Victoria by the Children’s Protection Society (CPS) that is designed to meet the needs of these vulnerable children. The program combines best practices in attachment-based care, infant mental health, parental engagement, and the application of the Australian national early learning frameworks. Children who participate will receive five days per week of high-quality education and care totalling at least 25 hours. EYEP targets children aged 0–3 (at the time of entry into the program), providing the intervention for three years or until the child is of school age. The program for each child is designed to address their individual needs, and there is a focus on building alliances with parents to sustain their participation.

The CPS estimates that there are more than 30,000 children aged under five years in Australia whose development is compromised by abuse and neglect. According to Dr Alice Hill of the CPS Board of Management, “Children in child protection and family support are the children who have most to gain from high-quality early childhood care and education, yet funding and regulatory barriers prevent them from participating.

“We hope to measure how early investment in these children improves their life chances and choices while reducing governments’ expenditures on services like remedial education, mental health and incarceration,” she said.

To accomplish the task of evaluating the effects of the EYEP the Children’s Protection Society has assembled a diverse group of researchers. Included in the team are Professor Jeff Borland of the Department of Economics and Dr Yi-Ping Tseng of the Melbourne Institute of Social and Economic Research, and Associate Professor Brigid Jordan from the Department of Paediatrics, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital. The team also includes Dr Anne Kennedy, an adjunct Professor at Charles Sturt University and co-author of the first national early childhood curriculum framework, as well as researchers from the Children’s Protection Society.

According to Professor Borland the project is an example of academic expertise being utilised to benefit the broader community. “It is a great example of the University of Melbourne helping to develop evidence-based policy,” Professor Borland said.

“By knowing how EYEP improves outcomes for children, and how the benefits it provides for society compare to its costs, we will be in a much better position to make policies for early childhood in Australia,” he said.

Professor Borland, Dr Tseng and Associate Professor Jordan have been involved throughout the planning and initial stages of implementation of the project. Their roles have included setting up the evaluation of EYEP as a randomised trial, designing the data collection that will take place throughout the project, and documenting the details of EYEP. Professor Borland and Dr Tseng will be undertaking the statistical analysis of the data set and will also complete a cost-benefit analysis.

See: www.eyerp.org