Child, Carer & Country (CCC)

The project overview

Download a project summary here (PDF format)

What?

An action research project aiming to answer two broad questions:

• What are culturally relevant quality indicators for children's services within the Western Kimberley Region of Western Australia?
• What are the possibilities for and barriers to growing quality culturally responsive services within the region?
  

• Communities in the Western Kimberly region face specific and particular challenges in the care and education of their children. As remote, predominantly Indigenous Australian communities, historical and contemporary forms of discrimination have resulted in limited access to and provision of services managed by the local communities in ways that are culturally relevant and support the growth and learning of children within the community.
• This project aims to redress this by working with communities and key stakeholders in the region to build high quality and culturally relevant services for young children.
  

How?

Over 3 years (2006 - 2009) the project team will organise and/or participate in a series of learning exchanges with communities, early childhood staff and other key stakeholders using:

• 3 bush meetings, 6 smaller learning circle meetings, 2 conferences and a web-based e-learning resource and exchange.

Communities will be invited to share:

• What they think services for children in their community should look like and do.
• What they think is important for children to know, to learn and to do.
• What they think needs to change to make things better for children in your community.
• What we learn will be given back to communities so that they can use it in their communities and with government and other funding bodies to talk about what they want and need for their children.
  

Who?

The project is a partnership between the Kimberley and Pilbara Children's Services Association and the Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood (CEIEC), a research centre in the Faculty of Education, the University of Melbourne.

The project is funded by the Local Answers initiative under the Commonwealth's Stronger Families & Communities Strategy Programme.

When?

The project will run from September 2006 - April 2009.