That the State Government sets a 20-year goal to reduce the rate of South Australian children entering school developmentally vulnerable, as measured by the Australian Early Development Census, from the current rate of 23.8 per cent to 15 per cent.

The State Government should introduce new legislation establishing the Office for the Early Years as a steward of South Australia’s early child development system, with a mandate to increase the proportion of South Australian children who are developmentally ‘on track’ when starting school and to reach the goal defined in Recommendation 1.

The legislation should describe an early child development system which includes families, communities, local government, non-government and government providers in health, human services, and early childhood education and care.

It should note the particular role of early childhood education and care as a backbone service in the universal child development system.

It should describe the particular responsibility of the Office to promote the cultural safety of early childhood education and care services for Aboriginal children.

The functions of the Office should be separate from State Government responsibilities for service delivery.

These functions should include:

• establishing and maintaining a child development data system
• ensuring the universal reach of child developmental checks
• building early childhood education and care as the backbone of a universal early child development system
• ensuring universal access to three and four year old preschool, including commissioning new integrated service hubs, developing funding models, and ensuring that preschool providers are connected to the broader early years system
• ensuring supports and services are aligned with needs of children by partnering with non-government organisations, and local and Commonwealth governments
• providing overall strategic direction to State Government early years services (noting operational planning and delivery should remain in current line agencies)
• commissioning or recommissioning State Government services as required.

The governance outlined in the legislation should reflect a cross-sector and partnership approach.

That the State Government seeks a national settlement of roles and responsibilities in relation to early childhood education and care, noting that the Commission’s preferred national settlement would see:

• states and territories having primary responsibility for:
  • ensuring quality in long day care, preschool and out of school hours care (OSHC); and
  • enabling families to be connected to the information and supports they need by building the capacity of early childhood education and care services to form the backbone of an early child development system;
• the Commonwealth having primary responsibility for:
  • ensuring that long day care is accessible and affordable for all;
  • ensuring preschool for three and four-year-olds in long day care is accessible and affordable for all;
  • ensuring out of school hours care, including that provided for preschool aged children in government preschools, is affordable, with service accessibility a shared responsibility given the role of the states and territories in enabling OSHC delivery at government schools and preschools; and
  • providing inclusion support in long day care, preschool and out of school hours care, including meeting the needs of children requiring 1:1 support to ensure their health, safety and wellbeing and to encourage active participation in the program.

This new national settlement could be pursued via the National Cabinet’s consideration of a National Vision for Early Childhood Education and Care.

That in establishing the Office for the Early Years, the State Government includes the legislative basis for an integrated child development data system that enables:

• families to have a better experience, not needing to retell their stories or be responsible for ensuring all information is passed on
• service-to-service sharing of relevant information about individual children, for
  the purpose of providing better support
• services to engage in data sharing to support service targeting, planning, evaluation and research
• population wide, individual level de-identified data for planning, evaluation and research
• communities to meaningfully plan and take action, and engage with governments
• in certain circumscribed cases, population wide, individual level identified data to allow the targeting of services and supports
• all participants—policymakers, educators, service provider—to engage in a process of continuous improvement and reflection
• data sovereignty for Aboriginal people.

Such a system requires rigorous ethical and legal frameworks to ensure that data is used appropriately, and that families are active partners and beneficiaries of the system.

That the Commonwealth Government:

• ensures the State Government has regularly updated access to Child Care Subsidy data to support system design and insight into system-wide participation
• extends changes to the Child Care Subsidy to enable all families to access up to three days a week of care without the need to meet any activity test
• considers adopting a needs-based funding model for early childhood education and care, in recognition of the additional costs of effective inclusion of disadvantaged cohorts
• considers introducing differential pricing in the Child Care Subsidy for younger children with higher educator-to-child ratios
• ensures families of those children accessing out of school hours care (OSHC) located on a special school site are not unfairly financially disadvantaged by the higher costs associated with the provision of care to children with complex needs and disability
• supports an increase in the pay of early childhood education and care educators.

That the Commonwealth Government promptly amends the Child Care Subsidy Minister’s Rules 2017 to allow out of school hours services operating on government preschool sites to be eligible for the Child Care Subsidy.

This recommendation is made:

• noting that Royal Commission modelling (PDF, 557.3 KB) suggests South Australia currently misses out on approximately $35.5 million per annum in Child Care Subsidy because it directly provides government preschool
• in light of the commitment made by the Commonwealth on signing the Preschool Reform Agreement to progress this matter
• most importantly, recognising that this facilitates the optimal arrangement
  for many children—the provision of in situ care on government preschool sites
  outside government preschool hours.

That the State Government invests on a long-term basis in a leading research institute or consortium of research nodes, which should become central to creating and sustaining an
evidence-based early childhood education and care system. The aim of the institute or
consortium would be to position South Australia at the forefront of translating new global research insights into practical and deliverable reforms.

The State Government should undertake the following initial research agenda and involve the newly established institute or consortium once it commences work:

a. Trial, evaluate and continuously improve models of service connection and integration in the early years.

b. Partner with the Commonwealth to trial Inklings, an early intervention program for children at risk of being diagnosed with autism.

c. Work with the Commonwealth and other partners to fund and trial intensive early intervention in targeted cohorts.

d. Build the evidence base about how best to engage families of children identified as highest risk to ensure successful engagement across a range of contexts (noting risk is not limited to lower socio-economic areas). This should build on the opportunity identified in the Interim Report to trial different designs of outreach and engagement from 2024.

e. Trial and evaluate different models of allied health and other support provision (for example, small group versus educator capability building) in early childhood education and care, with a view to continuously improving the offerings.

f. Build the evidence base of the:

• impact on attendance and outcomes of the current delivery model of the universal preschool entitlement of 15 hours each week over three days for 40 weeks, versus two days with longer hours, with a view to considering whether 15 hours is the appropriate use of government preschool hours at age three or four if clear evidence emerges
• best method of targeting additional hours/days for children who require additional support at age three or four
• impact of consecutive days on attendance and outcomes
• impact of consistent groupings on outcomes
• impact of transitioning between different settings in a child’s daily life
• benefit of two years of preschool with a stable cohort
• relationship between workforce consistency and quality over time.

That the State Government ensures sufficient resources are available to the Education Standards Board (ESB) so that every early childhood education and care provider is assessed and rated at least every three years.

That the State Government appoints an independent change management panel to support the reform agenda of the Education Standards Board.

This panel should comprise experts in change management and comparable regulatory functions who are appointed for up to two years to work with the Education Standards Board and its Registrar to:

• build capacity across the legislated functions of the Education Standards Board
• ensure the Education Standards Board clears the backlog of services that have not been assessed and rated in the last three years
• establish a benchmark timeframe for assessments and systems to ensure the benchmark is met
• introduce or improve the internal quality review function to understand how well the Education Standards Board operates the assessment and rating approach, to improve the consistency of assessments and ratings by Authorised Officers and to benchmark against interstate regulators
• improve interactions with services that are rated as ‘Working Towards’ the National Quality Standard or having issues with noncompliance
• position the Education Standards Board as the first point of contact for services with quality or regulatory questions
• review the recruitment processes for Authorised Officers to ensure the right skills are prioritised and that new officers receive sufficient induction, shadowing and mentoring.

That the State Government promotes a vision of place-based, responsive and connected service delivery in the early years. This should include:

a. creating regular opportunities for connection (‘the glue’) between different service providers working with families with young children in local areas, leveraging the local teams for implementing three year old preschool in Recommendation 16

b. making integrated services the default for all newly established State Government early years services, including preschools and schools, community health, parent and infant mental health and parenting supports, with variance from the default only occurring because of the needs of the local community

c. integrating into the normal process of maintenance and upgrade the creation of appropriate physical space for integrated or multidisciplinary work in State Government early years services which lack such facilities

d. identifying and sharing the most effective and cost efficient models of supporting service connection and integration, both when services are co-located and when they are not. This could include, for example, trialling linkage models, community navigators and different governance approaches to co-located services

e. building a community of practice for integrated service provision, drawing on the strengths of the existing Children’s Centres network, and building out to include non government providers and different service types.

That the State Government plays a proactive role in identifying and resolving questions of child care and out of school hours care (OSHC) accessibility, including:

a. negotiating with the Commonwealth to reach the new national settlement described in Recommendation 3

b. as detailed in Recommendation 10 in relation to child care:

• taking action itself in order to meet critical needs, with such changes viewed as models which can provide an evidence base for the intergovernmental negotiations
• once a new national settlement has been reached which encompasses the Commonwealth meeting access and affordability needs, continuing to provide the needs identification and supply support roles.

c. as detailed in Recommendation 33 taking on going action in relation to OSHC accessibility.

That the State Government’s proactive role in identifying and resolving questions of child care accessibility should include as continuing activities:

a. a clear definition of the current role for State Government in resolving undersupply

b. funding business cases for communities with no access

c. providing a clear description of options for communities seeking to set up new services in areas with limited supply

d. regular provision of supply and demand information by Infrastructure SA

e. reporting against a benchmark performance indicator of two years from identification of the need for a new facility in an area meeting a specified threshold of demand, to its successful establishment

f. sharing existing government facilities (for example, school sites) to support establishment of new services

g. governance and administrative support for volunteer committees setting up local, community managed not-for-profit services

h. support for innovative service models, such as ‘in-venue care’ or shared corporate services support for community-managed not-for-profits

i. targeted strategies to support localised workforce development (see also Recommendation 22).

While negotiations with the Commonwealth are ongoing, the State Government should consider direct provision or procurement of services in some circumstances, including through the expansion of rural care or potentially associated with commissioning three-year-old preschools or integrated children’s centres, with a clearly articulated and transparent policy for when the State Government will provide services directly.

Further, the State Government could consider a range of other actions to meet critical need and demonstrate new models of action, such as:

• support for family day care educator establishment, through small business grants or onboarding
• provision of concessional financing to support capital for a new service or expansion of an existing service
• provision of capital funding and/or land to support establishment of a new service or expansion of an existing service
• procurement of a provider for a new service.

a. That the State Government task the Premier’s Delivery Unit to work with the Office for the Early Years and the Child and Family Health Service (CaFHS) to ensure a successful expansion of the system of universal child development checks, including both the frequency of checks and achievement of the maximum possible participation.

b. That, as part of this work, the timeframe for connecting parents and carers to early parenting groups is monitored and reported, with consideration given to an ‘opt out’ rather than ‘opt in’ model to ensure universal provision.

a. That the State Government continue, and expand, its support for Words Grow Minds, which provides simple and consistent messaging to parents of young children about how best to support their child’s development in the first 1000 days, delivered through a variety of channels.

b. That the State Government develop and engage in a communications campaign with families and communities on:

• the importance of preschool
• the new three-year-old preschool program
• how to find a preschool program
• how to understand and assess quality at your preschool.

This could start ahead of the roll out of three-year old preschool, with additional layers of content closer to 2026.

This recommendation responds to the Interim Report Recommendation 21 (PDF, 4.0 MB) seeking feedback in relation to a ‘kindy tick’ program.

That the State Government leverage early childhood education and care provision to meet its long-term aspiration of reducing developmental vulnerability.

Noting this is an area of shared responsibility with the Commonwealth, and that the roles and responsibilities may change, this should include:

a. designing ‘the glue’, as envisaged in Recommendation 8, to promote opportunities for sharing and learning about evidence-based approaches to successful inclusion, and to enable developmental concerns identified in long day care, family day care or other services to be the subject of ‘warm referrals’ to the right service provider

b. in operationalising Recommendation 11, ensuring there are linkages and exchanges between the Child and Family Health Service (CaFHS), other development check providers, and early childhood education and care services to share knowledge about emerging developmental trends

c. closing the research translation gap by sponsoring on-demand, cost-free access to expertise on areas of particular interest, such as neurodevelopment, autism, attachment, trauma, complex behaviours or complex communication difficulties

d. providing free training for early childhood education and care services on the newly released National Guideline for supporting the learning, participation and wellbeing of autistic children and their families

e. initiating formal processes to monitor participation and attendance of vulnerable cohorts once the measures discussed above to streamline ‘the paperwork’ burden on staff and services are addressed

f. when the State Government is in a position to assess the outcomes of the Inclusion Support Program (ISP) review, considering additional investments in building the capability of services to successfully include children with additional needs, including those with disability, neurodiversity or impacted by trauma

g. sharing relevant knowledge, best practice and training materials on inclusion with out of school hours care (OSHC) providers and staff who are also facing the challenge of offering services which can be open and welcoming to all

h. facilitating community liaison programs for ongoing connection between early childhood education and care services and locally relevant cultural and linguistic groups, noting this could be an appropriate use of inclusion funding by services.

a. That the State Government work with the South Australian Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation Network (SAACCON) to develop detailed plans for commitments made in relation to early child development under South Australia’s Implementation Plan for the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

b. That the State Government leverages its increased investment in preschool to strengthen the Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (ACCO) sector. This could include:

• prioritising ACCOs in the commissioning of new integrated service hubs to deliver three-year-old preschool, where appropriate, for the community
• quarantining a portion of preschool funding for layered supports for ACCOs to partner with services on improving cultural safety.