$2 million boost to child development research
Researchers at Perth's The Kids for Child Health Research have been awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council linkage grant to examine child, family and community factors affecting child development.
The grant, worth more than two million dollars, will provide funding for the project over the next 5 years.
Institute Director Professor Fiona Stanley said this project will build on previous successes by the Developmental Pathways research team.
"This project is all about breaking down barriers and sharing information held by different departments so that we can get a true picture of the factors affecting children's lives in Western Australia." Professor Stanley said.
"We are very fortunate that WA has a gold standard data linkage system that allows us to follow child development using pregnancy, birth, health, education and other information in a non-identifying way.
"WA is up there with Canada and Scandinavia in terms of the information we now have to improve our health and social services for children and families.
"This grant enables us to analyse this information in ways that lead to real understandings about problems such as WHY we are seeing such increases in child maltreatment and juvenile crime and what we can do to reduce them.
"Already this team has produced internationally recognised research in the areas of health outcomes, child protection and educational achievement."
Professor Stanley says the project will give new insight into the sort of policies and prevention strategies that will provide the best outcomes for child health and wellbeing.
The project is undertaken in collaboration with 11 State government departments.