Stronger Families in Australia study: the impact of Communities for Children
2. Community context and child development
2.1 Community influences on child development
2.2 Place-based or area-based initiatives
2.1 Community influences on child development
Children’s developmental trajectories depend upon a range of factors, which include the characteristics of the child (biological and other characteristics), and the family, economic and social environment in which they live. Furthermore, research has also found that interactions between these factors are important in influencing outcomes for children.
One of the most important influences on child development is the nature and quality of the parenting they experience.3 However, all parents need support from friends, family and the wider community to promote their children’s health and development. Communities provide essential support for families, furnishing them with relationships with people outside the family. When problems arise, those people are an important source of help and advice. Moreover, positive connections between family and community can promote positive personal development and help strengthen the parents’ own capacity to respond to their children’s needs (Wise 1999, 2001).
A wide range of universal and specialist services and professionals also provide support to parents in bringing up children, as well as a range of services directed at children that aim to enhance development. Thus, community-building—developing networks of relationships involving friendships and support outside the family—is a key process that can help children develop their talents, capacities and abilities.
The importance of community in the lives of children and their families is supported by a growing body of research. The characteristics of the neighbourhood in which children live have been related to children’s cognitive development and educational achievement (Crane 1991; Harding 2004), propensity for risk-taking behaviours (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan & Aber (eds) 1997), teenage childbearing (South & Crowder 1999; Sucoff & Upchurch 1998), emotional and psychological wellbeing (Aneshensel & Sucoff 1996) and physical health (Morland et al. 2002; Winkleby & Cubbin 2003), as well as social–emotional and learning outcomes (Edwards 2005). Living in a more disadvantaged area can have a negative effect on children and these effects have been found to be present after taking into account differences in family characteristics (Goering & Feins (eds) 2003; Harding 2004).
Studies of community effects on children have identified a number of ways in which local communities can impact on child and family wellbeing. Here, the availability and quality of social, educational, health and recreation services and facilities is important. The level of social cohesion and social capital and, related to this, the types of relationships and social contacts parents and children establish within the community have also been found to be important (Coulton, Korbin & Su 1999; Edwards & Bromfield 2009; Kohen et al. 2008; Sampson, Morenoff & Gannon-Rowley 2002).
As well as the community context having an impact on children via effects on the family, there is evidence that children also observe and imitate what they see in neighbourhood and community contexts. Children who live in physically safe and resource-rich environments may be more likely to be exposed to positive role models and have access to high-quality after-school academic and community programs, and at the same time are less likely to be exposed to stressful events in everyday life (Aneshensel & Sucoff 1996; Parcel & Menaghan 1993; Pebley & Sastry 2004).
The geographic concentration of disadvantage is due to both the characteristics of the people and families living in disadvantaged communities (for example, education levels, employment, substance use) and the effect of the community context itself (over and above individual and family characteristics). While disentangling the effects of the characteristics of people and families and community context is difficult, it has been suggested that even in circumstances where disadvantage is geographically concentrated, neighbourhood effects are of relatively minor importance compared to individual and family characteristics (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn 2000).
2.2 Place-based or area-based initiatives
Evidence that geographic disadvantage can place children at risk has resulted, over the last 15 years, in the development and implementation of place-based or area-based initiatives aimed at alleviating adverse neighbourhood effects and stimulating local economic, social and environmental development (Bloom 2005). Often, these policies have involved the provision or funding of additional services in disadvantaged areas and/or have attempted to promote information sharing, collaboration and understanding between local service agencies.
A potential advantage of area-based models of service delivery is that all children and families within a prescribed area are the targets of intervention, which means that services are universally available, thus minimising the possibility of stigmatisation of those being targeted by the policies. However, some questions have arisen about whether the most disadvantaged actually benefit from area-based initiatives.
The Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) in the UK are perhaps the largest and among the best known area-based initiatives currently in operation. Sure Start was launched in England in 1999 to tackle child poverty and improve child and family services, with SSLPs targeted at relatively small areas of marked deprivation. SSLPs target all children aged under 4 years and their families and, at the commencement of the initiative, each SSLP had extensive local autonomy in terms of the services that were developed to enhance child and family functioning. Early findings from the National Evaluation of the Sure Start (NESS) initiative suggested positive and adverse effects among the disadvantaged families living in the prescribed SSLP areas. Early findings also indicated that families with 3 year-old children with greater human capital were better able to take advantage of SSLP services compared with individuals and families with higher needs and experiencing greater disadvantage (for example, teen parents, lone parents, jobless households) (NESS Team 2005).
However, results from the second phase of the evaluation were far more positive. No adverse effects were observed, and no consistent differences were found in effects for SSLP subgroups (NESS Team 2008). Specifically, children in Sure Start Local Areas were more likely to be immunised (1.46 times), were less likely to have accidents requiring treatment (1.37 times), and had significantly higher scores on measures of positive social behaviour and independence/self-regulation. Although there were methodological differences between the two phases of the evaluation, it is unlikely that the positive results in the second phase of the evaluation were due to this factor. The evaluation team conducted several tests that suggested that the findings were robust. By the second phase of the evaluation, the SSLPs had had an opportunity to refine their models of service provision so that children residing in SSLPs were exposed to better quality services from birth.
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