8.1 Community activity

Children may be in care due to abuse or neglect, or because their family is unable to care for them (for example, due to illness or incarceration). It is important that children in care have the opportunity to participate in sporting, cultural and community activities.

This indicator uses results from a national survey of children in care; those whose care arrangements have been ordered through the Children’s Court, where parental responsibility for the child or young person has been transferred to the Minister/Chief Executive.

Children were asked about whether their carer or someone else encourages them to participate in sporting, cultural or community activities.

Trend data: For all indicator displays, the yearly trend is limited to indicators with 3 or more years (including the current year) of comparable time series data. To see the trend click on “Yearly Trend” button on the display. Where 3 or more years of comparable data including the most recent year is not available, a “No time series data” message is shown on the display.

The horizontal stacked bar shows the proportion of children and young people aged 8–17 in care who report they may choose to do the same sorts of things (sporting, cultural or community activities) that children and young people their age who aren’t in care do in 2018. Data are disaggregated by Indigenous status, sex, age group, remoteness and living arrangement. Each bar shows the proportion of children in each perceived support category.

Source: AIHW Out-of-home care survey national dataset 2018

See the supplementary data tables for further information and footnotes about these data.

Indicator technical specifications

The information below provides technical specifications for the summary indicator data presented in the quick reference guide.

National Standards Indicator 8.1 Community activity: Proportion of children and young people who report they may choose to do the same sorts of things (sporting, cultural or community activities) that children and young people their age who aren’t in care do
  Definition Data source
Numerator Number of children aged 8-17 years in care who report they receive adequate support to participate in sport, community or cultural activities AIHW Out-of-home care survey national dataset
Denominator

Number of responding children aged 8-17 years in the reference period

 AIHW Out-of-home care survey national dataset

Explanatory notes

Data are sourced from a national survey of children in care. Further interpretive information for the indicators, and background information on the survey, is provided in the AIHW report The views of children and young people in out-of-home care: overview of indicator results from second national survey, 2018.

 

Children ‘in care’ are those who were residing in out-of-home care (including foster care, relative/kinship care, family group homes, residential care and independent living), whose care arrangements had been ordered by the relevant Children’s Court and where the parental responsibility for the child had been transferred to the Minister or Chief Executive, and who had been on a relevant court order for three months or more. Please note that the titles of the relevant ‘Children’s Courts’ may vary across states/territories.

Children aged 8–17 years were asked three questions: ‘Does your carer or someone else encourage you to do sports or other physical activities?‘, Does your carer or someone else encourage you to do youth or community activities?, ‘Are there any sports, physical, youth or community activities you would like to try? And one open-ended question: ‘Please tell us which sports, physical, youth or community activities you would like to try.’ Questions one and two had five response categories: ‘All the time’, ‘Most of the time’, ‘Not very often’, ‘Never’, and ‘I am not interested in these things’. Question three had a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response category. Responses to the open-ended question are available in the report.

The numerator includes children who reported ‘All the time’ or ‘Most of the time’ to the first two questions.

The numerator and denominator exclude children with a ‘not stated’ or ‘I am not interested in these things’ response to the questions.