A community approach to improve outcomes for children
Helping raise the quality of South Australia’s early childhood education and care services
The Education Standards Board (ESB) of South Australia assesses early childhood education services for quality against the National Quality Standard (NQS). Services can receive one of these ratings in the NQS:
- Excellent
- Exceeding NQS
- Meeting NQS
- Working towards NQS.
The OECD and South Australian Education Standards Board (ESB) will work together to help services, rated as working towards NQS, to raise their quality.
The government has provided funding to the ESB to help assess services more frequently. If you have questions about assessments and providing quality education and care services to your community, visit the ESB’s early childhood website and the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) website.
We will engage with and support services achieving meeting and exceeding ratings through targeted intervention programs, currently under development.
Child health and development checks for children aged birth to 5 years
Families are at the heart of healthy child development. Engaging with families early in their parenting journey is incredibly important. The OECD works in partnership with the Child and Family Health Service (CaFHS) and other stakeholders to offer early support through health and development checks and the Early Years SA app. We know that families can find it hard to know what to do and where to find help during a child’s early years and we are working to change this.
Making checks more accessible to families
Data from the 2021 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) showed that nearly a quarter of South Australian (SA) children, from a range of backgrounds, had delays in at least one developmental domain when they started school. These domains include physical health and wellbeing, social skills, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication skills and general knowledge.
The government is expanding the frequency and reach of health and development checks for all children across South Australia, in line with recommendations from the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care. This is essential to help services identify children’s developmental needs and connect families to more supports where they need them earlier in life.
We are aiming to increase the number of Aboriginal children who are developmentally on track in all 5 AECD domains, supporting Closing the Gap Target 4.
The OECD funded 9 place-based pilots to test different ways of delivering these checks with various service providers. The learnings from the pilots have helped inform the future statewide expansion of the system.
These pilots included:
- Caring Futures Institute (Flinders University)
- Playgroup SA
- Nunkuwarrin Yunti
- Eyre and Far North Local Health Network
- Family Day Care
- Kornar Winmil Yunti (KWY)
- Children’s Centre - North
- Children’s Centre - Outer North
- Children’s Centre - West
Service model elements tested through these pilots include workforce, screening tools, location, out-of-hours service, family attendance during screening, virtual appointments and target populations. The learnings from these pilots will helped inform the future statewide expansion of the CHDC system.
Be part of the child health and development checks expansion
We are looking for service providers to help expand the frequency and reach of checks across South Australia. By working together, we can improve support for children and ensure better outcomes for their health and development.
Register your interest to become a delivery partner and help make a difference for families in your community.
No government agency can do this vital work alone. By joining our program, your organisation can play an essential role in supporting children’s early development and helping them get the best start in life.
For more information about child health and development checks, email OECD.CHDCinfo@sa.gov.au.