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