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Children and adolescents spend more than one-third of their time sleeping. Yet, we know little about the causal impact of sleeping on their development. This paper is the first to exploit variation in local daily daylight duration measured on pre-determined diary dates across the same individuals through time as an instrument in an individual fixed effects regression model to draw causal estimates of sleep duration on a comprehensive set of child development indicators. 

Physically locating liquor stores near schools can strongly influence the chances of youth accessing and consuming alcohol, and may also increase children's exposure to alcohol advertising. Investigating the association between the presence of a liquor store near a school and the prevalence of outdoor alcohol advertising is crucial from a policy perspective, as it can inform future regulations on the placement of liquor stores and outdoor advertising near educational institutions. 

The transition to parenthood is a high-risk period for many parents and is an important period for child development. Research has identified that parental mental health, reflective functioning (capacity to consider mental states of oneself and others) and coparenting (capacity to work together well as a parenting team) may be particularly significant predictors of later child outcomes, however these factors have seldom been considered together.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at a substantial risk of harm to themselves and others, experience high levels of functional impairment and typically are high users of tertiary healthcare to address their mental health concerns. As indicators for BPD typically emerge in adolescence, a day therapy service in Bentley, Western Australia, Touchstone Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), was developed as an intensive intervention for adolescents with indicators for BPD and its associated symptomology.

Infants (<1 year old) are the age group in Australia with the highest rate of involvement with child protection. Many jurisdictions across Australia and internationally are implementing policies focused on prenatal planning and targeted support.This study investigates Australian trends in prenatal and infant child protection notifications, substantiations and out-of-home care; and the extent of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infants.

As families increase their use of mobile touch screen devices (smartphones and tablet computers), there is potential for this use to influence parent-child interactions required to form a secure attachment during infancy, and thus future child developmental outcomes. Thirty families of infants (aged 9-15 months) were interviewed to explore how parents and infants use these devices, and how device use influenced parents' thoughts, feelings and behaviours towards their infant and other family interactions.

This article continues evaluation of the construct validity of the Australian Early Development Census through comparison with linked data from a sample of 2216 4-5 year old children collected as part of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

People with intellectual disability experience a high risk of being neglected and family members are often identified as the perpetrators. Analysing the media provides insight into public narratives about social problems. A search of Australian newspapers published between 2016 and 2021 identified 27 articles that predominately reported on a single case of familial neglect of an individual with intellectual disability.

Co-design of a program supporting paternal involvement in preterm care.

Tassie Kids will bring together information about what early childhood services families use across the first five years of a child’s life.