Welcome to the final edition of TQKP enews for 2024!
TQKP enews is published quarterly. In between editions, we invite you to bookmark our website to stay informed and connected with the latest updates about Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership's initiatives as well as news and events from our partner organisations.
Explore all the ways you can get involved in our collective efforts to create lasting, positive change right across Queensland so that every child and young person, their families, and our communities can thrive – now and into the future!
In this edition:
Convenor's update
Partnership updates
TQKP Year in Review 2023-24
TQKP portfolio highlights
Partner and sector news
Opportunities
Resources
Get involved
Executive Convenor's update
As we approach the end of 2024, we want to express our best wishes for an enjoyable and safe festive season to our growing TQKP community. We also want to express our deep appreciation to all those who have engaged and enabled the collective and practical systems work we have been privileged to facilitate this year.
As you can see from our new website at www.tqkp.org.au, our 2023-24 Year in Review and this e-bulletin, many of the initiatives we’ve kicked off together are now bearing fruit.
We are very grateful to the TQKP Management Board (now chaired by Jane Yacopetti), the TQKP Leadership Table, our colleagues in the broader ARACY team (led by Prue Warrilow), fellow ‘nested’ intermediaries in the IDAC team (led by Simon Factor), and the ARACY Board (chaired by Shamal Dass).
We are confident from what many of you have told us in our recent 2024 Partnership Survey and other feedback that our work is already strengthening connectivity, capacities and capabilities across our eco-system. We get a good sense that TQKP is adding value for the leaders and change makers across many communities, systems, sectors, levels and disciplines who are working hard to enable young Queenslanders to thrive.
We are now well into the final year of our current Phase 2 and have making the case for another phase. Our many thanks to the philanthropic and other partners who share our vision. We'll share more news a out this in the new year.
With plenty on our shared plate to advance through the last part of Phase 2, we are excited about what more we can achieve together going forward. If you haven’t yet had a look and a say about our draft TQKP Phase 3 Strategy, please check it out and provide feedback via the link.
We anticipate the first quarter of 2025 will see a lot of preparatory work: finalising our Phase 3 Strategy, partnership building and resource wrangling – all coming to fruition to get us ready for a big next five-year phase.
All the best to you and for the young Queenslanders you help to thrive.
Michael Hogan
On behalf of the TQKP team
Upcoming webinar: Social Network Analysis for Country Queensland Kids
TQKP's latest publication, the Child and Family Hubs Framework, developed with support from The Bryan Foundation, was launched on December 3 at a webinar co-hosted by ARACY and the National Child and Family Hubs Network. and attended by nearly 400 people across the country.
The webinar brought together a panel of experts and practitioners for an informative discussion on how an integrated approach supports children's wellbeing and provides opportunities to strengthen family resilience. You can access the webinar recording here.
The Child and Family Hubs Framework distils the available evidence and practice wisdom on integrated approaches to service provision, and is designed to help inform the design and/or delivery of best-practice hubs aimed at 0-12 year olds. It is presented in two parts designed to be read side-by-side: Document 1 presents the background, purposes, underpinnings and principles on which the Framework is based; and Document 2 presents the Framework elements.
TQKP's development of the Framework was informed by consultation with more than 160 people including Steering Committee members of the National Child and Family Hubs Network. The Framework will be used as the basis of a national version for esting as part of the Network’s Strategic Plan 2024-2029, as well as development of a related evaluation framework.
You can find the Framework, together with other materials to support implementation of a hubs model, in a new section of the TQKP website devoted to child and family hubs. We'll continue to grow this resource bank over the coming months, so please let us know about any hub-related resources you think should be included.
Over the past 18 months, TQKP has been active in the Thrive by Five Queensland Alliance, deftly convened until recently by Brad Chilcott with support from the Minderoo Foundation. In early 2025, TQKP will engage Alliance members to explore priorities for continuing collaborative efforts, calling on governments to prioritise early childhood education for all Queensland kids.
The alliance – comprised of over 30 organisations from across the child development and well-being, education, university, union, early learning and childcare sectors – achieved some great outcomes in 2024 in response to its action plan, What Queensland Children Need to Thrive by Five.
Together with TQKP's Early Childhood Development Better Systems Roadmap, the action plan outlined measures that governments should take, both to address long-term systemic issues and to improve the lives of our Queensland kids in the short-term. While these recommendations have influenced the Queensland Government's Putting Queensland Kids First plan and investment package, there is plenty more to do!
Watch this space for more information in 2025.
Data Learning Lab with Griffith University completed
The Data Learning Lab, undertaken in partnership with Griffith University's Centre for System Innovation (GCSI), is now complete. While GCSI (formerly the Yunus Centre) has come to the end of its five-year exploration period, its leaders have developed a Challenge-led Innovation workbook for future labs. The work commenced at GCSI continues via a spin-out entity, The Good Shift, which focuses on three areas of action for a fair and sustainable future: civic innovation; institutional innovation; and systems capital.
Operationalising Resilience joint initiative with Logan Together
The Operationalising Resilience joint initiative between Logan Togetherand TQKP, funded through a Queensland Mental Health Commission (QMHC) Better Futures grant, has begun with a co-design team and governance structure established.
The initiative will engage Logan communities and services to map pathways and support capability development aligned with The Resilience Scale, Brain Builders, and other key child development frameworks. Outcomes from this work will include the rollout of tiered training to support workforce efficacy, wellbeing, retention and productivity.
TQKP to facilitate philanthropic support for First Nations Youth Futures – Regional Leaders Groups
TQKP has been asked by the Office of First Nations Community Engagement and Innovation to facilitate agreement with three philanthropic entities – the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation (TFFF), Hand Heart Pocket (HHP) and The Bryan Foundation (TBF) to support the First Nations Youth Futures – Regional Leaders Groups that have begun to meet across Queensland. Representatives from TQKP, TBF, TFFF and HHP were privileged to be invited to engage with community leaders from Cairns, Townsville and Bundaberg in early December to hear their powerful insights and proposals for engaging young people in their communities.
PLACE – Partnerships for Local Action and Community Empowerment
The Australian Government has joined with leading philanthropic foundations, to support the establishment of a new national centre for place-based work in local communities across Australia.
Partnerships for Local Action and Community Empowerment (PLACE) will support hundreds of communities and initiatives nationwide, working with local communities to address complex and persistent socioeconomic barriers. It is an independent not-for-profit organisation governed by an innovative community accountability model. TQKP looks forward to engaging with the PLACE team and supporting its contribution to the work of Queensland place leaders and enablers through the Thriving Places, Thriving Kids Network.
IDAC backing community-led change
The Investment Dialogue for Australia's Children (IDAC) – an exciting joint initiative of the Australian Government and Australian philanthropies – recently convened its second roundtable in Adelaide. The group has agreed to collaborate in up to 50 communities by 2030, providing a structured approach to align existing and future investment and efforts to better support community-led place-based change.
This collaboration will be guided by a strategic framework focused on three portfolios of work: place, early years, and young people. The Early Years portfolio will include a focus on First Nations-led approaches, holistic early learning models, integrated services, workforce uplift, as well as full-service school models.
The group will partner with three place-based community organisations to co-design innovation zones, enabling established place-based approaches to be part of the enabling reforms needed to break through major barriers for achieving intergenerational change. The IDAC backbone team is led by Simon Factor, and like TQKP, is supported and hosted by ARACY.
Place Data Initiative
Place-based leaders and data experts have created the Place Data Framework for Shared Decision Making and Measurement – a 'how to' guide for practitioners seeking to access, collect and use data for shared purposes.
TQKP is funding and supporting four projects that are developing practical resources and tools to guide practitioners in the ‘how to’ of accessing, collecting and using data for shared measurement and shared decision-making.
Project 1 – Logan Together
This project will document, explore, and disseminate insights into achieving shared decision-making and action through knowledge exchange. Through comprehensive case studies, it will empower stakeholders with skills and confidence for effective place-based initiatives.
Project 2 – Gladstone Region engaging in action Together
The focus of this project is to develop, test and create tools and resources that can support other places in generating and using service level data.
Project 3 – University of the Sunshine Coast
This project will identify the specific workforce data competencies required in place and scope out the current qualifications that align and develop a workforce competency toolkit.
Project 4 – Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation/Good Shift
Working to design and develop a Data Lab learning space to connect place data practitioners, cultivate space for learning and test the content of data framework components and identify opportunities for further development.
TQKP Year in Review and Initial Evaluation
2023-24 was another huge year for TQKP, with great strides made in all our portfolio areas. Our partners and collaborators have shared feedback indicating notable improvements in cross-sector collaboration and connectivity; collective efforts focused on identifying and actioning opportunities for change at a systems level; and building capabilities within workforces, communities and families to support healthy child, youth and family wellbeing across the lifespan.
Read our full Year in Review below, as well as the interim evaluation report prepared by evaluation consultancy ARTD and commissioned by TQKP's philanthropic funding partner, the Paul Ramsay Foundation (PRF) to evaluate progress between July 2022 and June 2025.
To further explore the findings from ARTD's interim report, Engaging the system and improving evidence, watch this recording of a recent webinar hosted by PRF, focused on insights from the evaluation around enhancing multi-sector engagement.
At TQKP, we know that partnerships are central to creating the conditions we need for kids to thrive now, and into the future. This is especially true of country communities, where tight knit local systems play a critical role in supporting the health and wellbeing of kids and families, but are sometimes less connected with larger metro based systems. That's why members of the Thriving Queensland Kids Country Collaborative have joined forces with First Person Consulting to undertake the Social Network Analysis Project (SNAP).
The purpose of the SNAP is to enhance our understanding and help quantify the value of partnerships across the child, family and youth systems involved with rural, regional and remote Queensland communities. Social Network Analysis enables us to uncover gaps, rubs and fragmentation in our systems to understand how the way we work together influences the wellbeing of country kids.
Join Thriving Queensland Kids Country Collaborative Lead Jacinta Perry and Matt Healey, Principal Consultant from First Person Consulting to learn more about Social Network Analysis, how you can get involved and how you might apply it within your own organisation at our upcoming webinar.
This webinar will be of benefit and interest to people:
In organisations with a service footprint in rural, regional and remote Queensland
In organisations based in rural, regional and remote Queensland
With research ties to rural, regional and remote Queensland
With government, political and/or advocacy ties to rural, regional and remote Queensland
In organisations who fund child, family and youth initiatives in rural, regional and remote Queensland
Please reshare and spread the word! In the meantime, connect with Jacinta Perry, Jacinta.perry@aracy.org.au if you would like to learn more.
Between September and November 2024, TQKP delivered a series of three webinars exploring key considerations and practical examples for designing and implementing disaster management protocols that care for and support the safety, wellbeing and resilience of infants, children and young people.
Click the links to watch the webinar recordings.
Webinar 1: Supporting children and young people’s concerns, capabilities and actions around climate change and disaster risk reduction
Webinar 2: Supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of infants, children, and caregivers in disasters
Webinar 3: Resilient Kids – designing and delivering a collaborative child- and youth-centred flood recovery program in Northern NSW
Thriving Kids Brain Builders Initiative
Over the past 21 months, the Thriving Kids Brain Builders Initiative (TKBBI) has focused on deepening partnerships, strengthening messaging around why and how to nurture growing brains, developing resources for people to learn basic brain building principles and strategies, and raising the profile of the initiative.
A progress report – Brain Building in Queensland: Year 1 in Review prepared by the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland (QBI) is now available for download.
TKBBI is led by TQKP and QBI, with contributions from other research, government, NGO and social enterprise partners across Queensland. In October 2024, QBI and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, with the support of the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation, launched a collaborative Brain Health in Schools initiative.
At the TKBBI website, you'll find information on each of the elements of the initiative, as well as research, resources, events and learning opportunities to dive deeper into brain building knowledge and practice.
Thriving Kids Strategic Framing Initiative
Members of the Framing for Change champions group have been working together on developing helpful narratives and key messages for shifting mindsets around issues affecting children and young people in Queensland. Over the coming months, these will be refined and presented in easily accessible formats for use by anyone needing to produce targeted, impactful communications to influence change.
To find out more about the framing principles we're working with, including the research that underpins their development and examples of effective framing in action from Australia and around the world, explore the Framing for Change Learning Hub and consider joining our Community of Practice – email usfor 2025 dates.
This webinar with framing expert Annette Michaux from the FrameWorks Institute provides an overview of key framing concepts and discussion of how and why to apply framing principles when the goal of communication is to change mindsets and behaviours for improved outcomes.
TQKP has been co-leading a Queensland Place-based Network, which has prepared a capability and investment development proposal, aimed at ensuring that kids and places in Queensland have what they need to thrive. Dozens of organisations and individuals living and working in places across the state have contributed to the model, which is presented in the linked slide deck.
In 2025, we will be working with partners across places, government and philanthropy to enable implementation of the model in Queensland.
Find out more about the network and TQKP's Thriving Places, Thriving Kids initiative on our website, or contact Rowena Cann: rowena.cann@aracy.org.au
Partner and sector news
Advocacy for Youth summit
The third annual Supporting Advocacy for Youth summit was held at the State Library of Queensland on 11 November 2024, organised by Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service.
Attended by more than 100 delegates, the summit featured a rich program of speakers with a focus on youth voice. Local youth advocate, Grace Sholl, kept the program on track as MC and participated in a cross-sectoral panel to round out the day.
TQKP’s Executive Convenor Michael Hogan gave a keynote presentation on the topic of Seeing, hearing and heeding young Queenslanders, emphasising the importance of elevating the voices of children, young people & their families.
For more information on why and HOW we can make our organisations and systems more inclusive of children's and young people's perspectives, needs and concerns, we encourage you to visit the new TQKP Learning Hub: Amplifying the Voices of Children, Young People and Families.
Supporting a systems approach to Foundational Supports
TQKP recently joined a group of passionate disability, ECEC and health service providers meeting to inform state and national consideration of Foundational Supports – specific supports that would be available outside the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to help people with disability, and their families and carers.
We look forward to bringing a systems lens to the upcoming day-long workshop on service design for this important and fast-moving reform opportunity.
For an introduction to Foundational Supports, see here.
Opportunities
Growing Deadly Brains Symposium
Save the date: 2 April 2025
We are very grateful to Minderoo Foundation for supporting a national Growing Deadly Brains symposium led by our partner Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation, to be held in April 2025. Yiliyapinya's Deadly Brains work is focused on place-based neuroscience initiatives developed with, by and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Keep an eye on our LinkedIn and Yiliyapinya's for updates in the new year.
Community of Practice: Infant Mental Health
This inter-professional network, hosted by Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service, is designed as a platform for those involved with nurturing the mental health and emotional wellbeing of infants and todders.
Held monthly on Wednesdays (sessions resumefrom 5th February 2025), topics covered include:
Dysregulation and regulation strategies in early years education
First 5 Forever Early Years Story and new learning modules
State Library of Queensland has just launched three new First 5 Forever learning modules, freely available on Public Libraries Connect for Queensland library staff and their early years community partners.
Included in the modules is The First 5 Forever Early Years Story, developed with Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership, as well as learning materials adapted from the Tasmanian government's B4 Early Years Coalition, designed to help libraries and Indigenous Knowledge Centres work collectively with their local communities to give every Queensland child the best start to life.
The National Child and Family Hubs Network has just released a pack to help organisations promote the value of child and family hubs and advance the Network’s collective priorities and advocacy efforts to:
support existing hubs across Australia to improve their quality and reach families that need it the most; and
advocate for new hubs in areas of need across Australia.
Neighbourhood ‘double disadvantage’ and child development in inner city and growth areas
Co-authored by researchers from RMIT's Social Equity Research Centre and Centre for Urban Research, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and others, this paper examines potential associations between urbanicity – living in inner, middle, outer or growth areas – and children's developmental vulnerability. It also explores the effects of neighbourhood ‘double disadvantage’, conceptualised as living in an outer or growth area with high neighbourhood disadvantage.
Towards a trauma-informed Australian early childhood education and care system (ECEC)
This discussion paper, published by Social Ventures Australia, explores barriers and enablers of trauma-informed organisations and systems and implications for early childhood education and care in Australia today.
Supporting infants and children in disasters: A practice guide
Emerging Minds have recently released a new practice guide, drawing together a wealth of knowledge and practical strategies to best support infants and children in disasters. Developed in partnership with child development and disaster experts from across Australia, this resource is invaluable for anyone supporting children to navigate the impacts of natural hazards.
Supporting educators and services to help young children and their families use digital technologies
Young Children in Digital Society is a project bringing together leading national organisations and researchers supporting educators and services to help children and their families use digital technologies. The website offers a variety of resources designed to help children and adults use technologies to build relationships, support physical activity and transitions away from sedentary use of digital devices, promote online safety, and provide opportunities for children’s digital play and learning.
If you share our vision for a Queensland where every infant, child, young person and family has what it takes to thrive, we invite you to join Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership in creating a movement for change.
Please get in touch via email or LinkedIn and start a conversation about what thriving means to you, and how we can work together to create better systems for Queensland kids. We look forward to hearing from you!
What did you think of TQKP's December eNews?
Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership, Level 1, 826 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, QLD 4006, Australia
