NON-ABS RESEARCH
The Australian Early Development Index: Building Better Communities for Children
This is an exciting new project that will enable up to 60 communities throughout Australia to utilise the Australian Early Development Index.
The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) is a community-level measure of young children’s development based on a teacher-completed checklist (the AEDI checklist) that was originally developed in Canada. It has been completed on over 150,000 Canadian children. The Canadian EDI has been adapted for Australia for use in this project The AEDI consists of over 100 questions measuring five developmental domains: language and cognitive skills; emotional maturity; physical health and wellbeing; communication skills and general knowledge; and, social competence.
The Building Better Communities for Children project is conducted by the Centre for Community Child Health in partnership with the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. It is an initiative of the Australian Government’s National Agenda for Early Childhood and supported by Shell Australia. In 2004 seven communities from Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia have implemented the AEDI. Around 170 schools have been involved this year and data have been entered on the secure web-based data entry system by 330 teachers on over 6,000 children. The results and community profiles from 2004 will be available in early 2005.
In 2005 a further 30 communities from around Australia will be selected to join the project. Expressions of interest are now open and due 28th February 2005. For more information visit the website www.australianedi.org.au or phone (03) 9345 3650.
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