Submission to Department of Social Services Foundational Supports Consultation

The opportunity to thrive in childhood should be available to all children, regardless of their learning abilities, their early childhood environments, or their socioeconomic and geographic circumstances. To achieve this fairness, we must ensure that no child, for any reason, is denied access to the early learning and developmental opportunities which allow them to thrive and grow up happy and healthy. Towards these ends, SNAICC welcomes the opportunity to engage with the Department of Social Services’ consultation process for the design, development and implementation of a foundational supports strategy and system.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children stand to benefit disproportionately from foundational supports

Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children we see disproportionately high rates of developmental vulnerability and disability. Despite this, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families regularly miss out on the service systems put in place to support early assessments, identification and delivery of developmental supports for children who need them. There are persistent service gaps and barriers to access in ECEC. These are mirrored in the disability services market; for significant numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, accessing the NDIS is challenging enough, while many more families who do hold plans find it or impossible to access appropriate services in their communities.1 Even when services are available, they are often not culturally safe for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.

The development of foundational supports system presents an opportunity to redress these inequities and systemic failures.

The development and implementation of foundational supports must be developed in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

For the foundational supports strategy and system to best work for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families, Commonwealth, state and territory governments must uphold their commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap by designing, developing and implementing the system in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their representative organisations, including by not limited to the Early Childhood Care and Development Policy Partnership and the Coalition of Peaks. It must be aligned to the National Agreement by prioritising ACCOs as providers of first choice with a dedicated and fit-for-purpose commissioning model (Priority Reform 2).

The system needs to prioritise ACCOs to realise its objectives

SNAICC recommends that the system is developed with the following key characteristics to optimise its effectiveness and impact for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. Foremost among these is prioritising ACCOs to implement foundational supports, both general and targeted, for their communities. For this to be done effectively, it requires that governments:

• Develop foundational supports to be integrated into place-based, locally-specific early learning and developmental services will enable children of all developmental diversities to learn and develop within the supportive contexts of their families and communities, providing nurturing early learning and development experiences and environments.2
• Invest in new ACCO integrated early years services in communities without them
• Reform how ACCO integrated early years services are funded so they are enabled and empowered to meet the diverse needs of their communities, children and families.
• Partner with ACCOs to develop a fit-for-purpose approach to commissioning foundational supports which aligns to, builds on, and enhances these wider integrated early years funding reform efforts.
• Invest robustly in development of the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early years workforce, including providing qualifications in key foundational support disciplines such as ECEC, allied health, therapy, psychology and more, and investing in community controlled Registered Training Organisations to lead and sustain this workforce development
• Through the dedicated ACCO funding model, provide consistent and adequate funding for ACCO services to attract, train, develop and retain educators and practitioners qualified in key foundational supports disciplines, so that the burdens of implementing foundational supports do not fall on the already-overburdened Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ECEC workforce.
• Investing in national, regional and/or local backbone supports and capacity building to ensure ACCOs are equipped and supported to take on delivery of foundational supports to their communities.

The system needs to be culturally safe and accountable to communities

Far too regularly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families encounter systems which are there to support their health, wellbeing, educations and safety, but do not adequately or systematically possess the cultural capability to make for truly culturally safe environments. Moreover, there is limited oversight or means by which communities can hold government service systems and their actors to account. The foundational supports strategy should therefore articulate cultural safety as a specific objective of the system, leading to actionable plans to develop system-wide cultural capability. The system should have robust oversight and accountability mechanisms, and data collection and monitoring which is built on Indigenous Data Sovereignty, enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to hold government to account.