Findings from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children This paper presents findings from a study commissioned by The Smith Family and conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which aimed to identify key influences on Australian children’s school readiness, particularly children in financially disadvantaged households. A range of child, family...

Around twelve percent of people who were currently in an area affected by drought have mental health problems compared to seven percent in areas which haven’t been hit by drought in the last three years according to this paper. Note: This paper was given at the 2009 Australian Social Policy Conference and is only in...

Being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, but the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear. One possible yet unexplored mechanism is that breastfed infants may spend their time differently to infants who are not breastfed. This paper analyses infants' time use according to breastfeeding status in order to help inform the...

This national evaluation covers three of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS) initiatives: Communities for Children (CfC), Invest to Grow and Local Answers. It examines service provision, service coordination, Indigenous families and children in CfC sites, factors that facilitate or hinder service provision and outcomes, and sustainability.

This facts sheet is about the diverse range of families in which Australians live and the diverse ways in which they provide support to one another. Families are very diverse and take many shapes and forms. They also typically extend across a number of households. Despite this diversity, there is a set of functions that...