ROBINVALE’S youngest residents are recording some of the greatest developmental improvements across the district, new figures show.
Data collected by the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) assesses five areas of children’s well-being: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive skills; and communication skills and general knowledge.
Over the past six years in Robinvale there has been a steady decline in the number of children deemed developmentally vulnerable in the physical, social and emotional areas.
In 2009, 20 per cent of Robinvale children aged five years old were considered to have vulnerable communication skills, but now that figure is hovering around six per cent.
Similarly, 20 per cent of the same group in 2012 were considered to have vulnerable language and cognitive skills, but this has dropped back to around 11 percent for the current set of Robinvale children aged five and under.
Advancing Country Towns (ACT) strategic projects manager for Robinvale Glenn Stewart said the data was especially poignant for children deemed developmentally vulnerable in two areas, as this figure had halved between 2009 and 2015.
In 2015 only 11.1 per cent of Robinvale children faced possible developmental problems in two of the assessed areas, compared to 15 per cent of Swan Hill children and 18.2 per cent of Beverford children.
“The Robinvale community has had a very proactive approach to early years intervention since 2009 and the positive improvement in the number of vulnerable young people starting school is a direct correlation to the improved service integration in this community,” Mr Stewart said.
The new AEDC data will help inform Robinvale District Health Service’s decisions around early years childhood education, with a particular focus on Indigenous children and children from other cultures.
Robinvale’s data forms part of a larger pool of AEDC data that encompasses more than 300,000 children at 7500 Australian schools and is collected every three years.
