Summary

The Closing the Gap Clearinghouse was established by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to bring together research and evaluation evidence on overcoming disadvantage for Indigenous Australians. This report and its appendices summarise the findings of the Clearinghouse on what works in relation to the three COAG building blocks that were the focus of the Clearinghouse in Year 3: ‘early childhood’, ‘health’ and ‘safe communities’. It also draws attention to demographic and other data from a number of Australian data sets, and identifies major gaps in the evidence.

The findings from research and evaluation were drawn from accumulated evidence in the Clearinghouse in the form of issues papers and resource sheets that synthesise the evidence on particular topics, and from the 264 publicly released items in the Research and Evaluation Register. More details about this evidence are provided in Section 3 of this report, and summaries of Research and Evaluation Register items classified by theme are provided in Appendices B, C and D. For a list of published and forthcoming Issues papers and Resource sheets see Table 2.1.

The building blocks addressed in previous years’ reports were ‘schooling’, ‘economic participation’, ‘healthy homes’, and ‘governance and leadership’. See the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse website for a summary of what works for all COAG building blocks .