Topic-specific gaps
Australia’s children aims to provide a national overview of how Australian children are faring at a particular point in time, which can be regularly updated and progress tracked. For this reason, the report focuses mainly on national data, collected periodically and which supports population-level comparisons. Table 1 summarises current topics where national data for this purpose are not available or limited.
Topics are grouped according to the child-centred domains, and a separate category—the Environment. Environment includes built and natural environment topics as well as those covering contextual factors, such as service availability.
Table 1: Topic gaps in national reporting of children wellbeing by domains
Health
- Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
- Overall mental health and wellbeing
- Impact of device and social media usage on health
- Body image
- Sleep
- Neonatal hearing screening
- Medical technology and devices used by children with health conditions
Justice and safety
- Prevalence of child abuse and neglect
- Children’s exposure to violence
- Bullying
- Non-parental care living arrangements
Education and skills
- School expulsions and suspensions
- Student engagement (cognitive)
- Quality and time of early learning experiences
Social support
- Parenting
- Play
- Cultural identity
- Children’s personal social networks
- Family functioning-related topics
- Shared care arrangements
- Extracurricular activities
Housing
- Impact of physical address
Income, finance and employment
- Parental underemployment
Environment
- Physical environment (built and natural)
- Social environment
- Service availability
- Community governance