March 2021 Digest 1 Looking Ahead Australian Children and Young People’s Knowledge Acceleration Hub Sector adaptation and innovation shaped by COVID-19 and the latest evidence on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and young people A collaboration between ARACY and UNICEF Australia Introduction The Australian Children and Young People’s Knowledge Acceleration Hub is an initiative created by ARACY and UNICEF Australia to ensure that the impacts of COVID-19 on children in Australia are fully understood and communicated to decision makers at all levels. To do this, we will draw upon data from Australia and international comparators, the latest research and analysis of COVID-19 and its impacts on children and families, and related research with applicable lessons for the known and anticipated impacts of COVID-19 and their potential mitigation. Our Approach to Wellbeing The Australian Children and Young People’s Knowledge Acceleration Hub uses both ARACY’s The Nest child wellbeing framework and UNICEF’s Children’s Goals. The Nest looks at wellbeing as a series of six connected and interdependent domains. A child needs to be doing well in all six domains to thrive. Deprivation in one domain is likely to affect wellbeing in other domains. UNICEF’s Children’s Goals are derived from the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child and align with the domains of The Nest. Please visit the ARACY website for more information on The Nest and its uses in conceptualising child wellbeing, and the Australian Children and Young People’s Knowledge Acceleration Hub online library for summary content and future digests. Find out more about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child here: https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention 2 Looking Ahead Issue 7: March 2021 This seventh release covers information and analysis released from December 2020 through to March 2021. Throughout the pandemic in 2020 we have released new digests regularly, bringing together the latest research and information to inform policy, practice, and decision-making. On 23 February 2021, ARACY and UNICEF Australia launched Kids at the Crossroads: Evidence and policy to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 to an audience of MPs and policy makers at Parliament House. This report synthesised the findings of the first six monthly digests (July to November 2020), resulting in a suite of recommendations to help support children, young people and their families going forward. The summarised recommendations can be found on the next page. Launch of the Kids at the Crossroads report at Parliament House, 23 February 2021. Katie Allen MP, Peter Khalil MP, ARACY CEO Penny Dakin, ARACY Board member Professor Ngiare Brown, Professor Matthew Gray ANU, UNICEF Australia Young Ambassadors Atosha Birongo and Monique Worsley. We are delighted to again partner with UNICEF Australia to continue producing this digest throughout 2021. We will highlight the data sources available that assess the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of children and young people in Australia, and report on headline indicators. Each digest will take a more in-depth focus on particular issues. If you would like to jump to information on a specific wellbeing domain, click one of the squares. This report was prepared by Lauren Renshaw and Sadhana Seriamlu (ARACY). 3 Looking Ahead Summary of Recommendations from the Kids at the Crossroads report Support economic recovery and Protect against deepening and strengthen systems widening inequalities ✓ Permanently raise Job Seeker, Youth Allowance ✓ Reduce the digital divide through greater and other benefits investment in access to technology for children and young people, and the necessary ✓ Increase access to affordable, high quality early infrastructure to support technology education and care (ECEC) ✓ Build on investment in a learning recovery ✓ Prioritise additional employment support and package programs targeted at young people to improve opportunities for secure and sustainable ✓ Develop a National Housing Strategy to ensure employment safe, affordable housing of mixed tenure ✓ Build on improved funding and supports for ✓ Respect cultural leadership and strengthen the children and their parents impacted by family capacity of Aboriginal Community Controlled violence Organisations (ACCO) to improve wellbeing of ✓ Enhance the child protection system to develop children and families preventative approaches and better links with ✓ Establish a National Commissioner for related systems Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children ✓ Support the mental health and wellbeing of and young people new parents Promote resilience and mental Foster citizenship and fight wellbeing disempowerment and disengagement ✓ Update the National School Reform Agreement • Ensure information is presented and made to include student wellbeing as an outcome for widely available in formats appropriate to the education system children and young people, for example ✓ Fund a model of integrated child and family care through children’s only news conferences on that brings together a multidisciplinary team issues of importance to children including child and youth psychiatrists, • Engage young people more meaningfully in all paediatricians, psychologists, mental health formal political processes and design nurses, occupational therapists, speech participation mechanisms that are suited to pathologists, physiotherapists, and social young people workers • Improve the collection and reporting of racially ✓ Routinely offer evidence-based parenting motivated incidents and attacks in Australia programs to parents and carers at key developmental milestones for their child 4 Every child thrives Material Basics and survives This wellbeing domain represents children having their basic needs met. This includes a roof over their heads, sufficient family access to income and access to basic goods such as food, clothes, toys and technology. Given the economic crisis that is following the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to assess how these multiple crises have impacted children and young people. Australian data sources While few available data sources examine the availability of material basics to children, an increasing number of data sources measure the impact of COVID-19 to the material basics of young people. There are also a number of available data sources which present information on the material wellbeing of the Australian population at large which can be extrapolated to also reflect the situation of children and young people. Available data sources include: • ABS Household Impacts of COVID-19 survey series1 • ABS weekly payroll data2 • Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) – Domestic violence survey3 • ANUPoll COVID-19 series4 • AIFS Life during COVID-19 Survey5 • COVID-19 pandemic adjustment study6,7,8 • DSS Payment Demographic data9 • Equity Economics disadvantage forecast – A wave of disadvantage across NSW: Impact of the COVID-19 recession10 • Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey11 • Impacts of COVID-19 on children and young people who contact Kids Helpline • Our Lives Longitudinal Study12 • Melbourne Institute’s Taking the Pulse of the Nation survey13 (includes information specific to young people aged 15-24) • Mission Australia Youth Surveys14 • YouthInsight survey series15 • VicHealth Coronavirus Victorian Wellbeing Impact Study – follow up survey16 • Youth Unemployment Monitor, Brotherhood of St Laurence17 • The ACOSS/UNSW Poverty in Australia 2020 Report18 • SNAICC COVID-19 Ongoing Impacts Survey report19 • UTS study – The experience of precarious housing among international students20 • Survey of temporary migrants - As if we weren’t humans: The abandonment of temporary migrants in Australia during COVID-1921 • The 100 families WA Project22 • University of Melbourne’s Hallmark Research Initiative – The Impact of COVID-19 on Victorian share households23 5 Every child thrives Material Basics and survives Headline indicators • The ACOSS/UNSW Poverty in Australia report finds that a major source of child poverty is the high poverty rate (44%) among sole-parent families, who generally rely on a single income24 • Fulltime employment for young women (15-24 years) fell by 12.7% from February to October 2020, while full-time employment for young men fell by 4.9%25. • The number of young people (16-21 years) receiving income support nearly doubled from December 2019 to May 202026 • The overall number of people on Newstart/Jobseeker rose from 728,405 in December 2019 to 1,471,534 in May 202027 Links and resources • Grattan Institute blog – 'The Jobseeker rise is not enough'28 • When backpackers went home, these Australians gave farm jobs a go. Here’s how they went29 • Child poverty will remain above pre-COVID levels for at least five years in high-income countries – UNICEF30 • APH report – 'The impact of COVID-19 on JobSeeker Payment recipient numbers by electorate'31 • Ongoing toll of COVID-19 on child poverty revealed32 • Guardian article – Freedom lost: the generation coming of age in Australia's pandemic fuelled recession33 • UNICEF report – Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19: Social protection in high-income countries34 • Youth Employment Study35 • Journal article – 'Continuing the precedent: Financially disadvantaging young people in "unprecedented" COVID‐19 times' • Journal article – 'Intersecting marginalities: International students' struggles for “survival” in COVID‐19' • Policy analysis – 'Never let a crisis go to waste: Opportunities to reduce