Enterprise and Wellbeing Platform (EWP)

Existing systems fail First Nations youth. Children’s Ground’s Enterprise and Wellbeing Plaftorm is a new long-term integrated system designed to engage children who sit outside education and employment opportunities. It adds literacy to strong identity, language and culture, has a no-barrier-to-employment approach and leads to local enterprise outcomes.

Children’s Ground was designed by Aboriginal people. It is the first Australian system for First Nations people to integrate the social, cultural and economic factors known to lead to long-term wellbeing. It is unique in having a long-term evaluation in place which will be crucial to change the existing piecemeal and short-term approaches which have consistently widened the gap of disadvantage experienced by many First Nations people in Australia.

The Children’s Ground System has five reform areas: Governance, Workforce, Investment, Evidence and an Integrated Services Platform. Integrated services encompass Learning, Health, Culture, Employment, and Community Development. All are required, and complement child, family and community wellbeing. This system is implemented deeply across a generation to bring about sustainable change.

Children’s Ground is the first organization of its kind in Australia. Where intergenerational poverty and inequity are devastating, we work with each child, in every family in a community, to realise their aspirations for the cultural, social and economic wellbeing of the next generation. It combines local cultural knowledge systems with leading international and national evidence and practices. It leads to high levels of engagement across entire communities, and remarkable short and long-term outcomes.

The Children’s Ground System and its service delivery platform are designed so that the children of today emerge into adulthood with the locally-determined skills to enjoy employment and economic independence. The Children’s Ground model also provides for immediate employment - at scale - of local people who have previously experienced chronic unemployment. This has been tested over four years and the outcomes exceeded expectations.

Children’s Ground makes sure children and their families have the sort of opportunities that most Australians enjoy: a quality education, creative and cultural life and agency in their health and wellbeing, employment and the right to make decisions over their lives.

Children’s Ground was designed in response to a system that has failed First Nations peoples and established to address extreme poverty and inequity in too many Australian communities. In Australia, Aboriginal children are more likely to die in infancy, less likely to be enrolled in early childhood, less likely to finish year 12 and more likely to find themselves unemployed or excluded from the workforce as adults. Children’s Ground recognises that all children are able and brilliant, but it is the conditions within which people are born and raised that determine their opportunities and choices.

Children’s Ground has evidence that this approach works. Community members were empowered and engaged. In Kakadu West Arnhem, we employed on average 50 Bininj (Aboriginal) people each month, with only one person previously employed. Patterns in our employment and participation data shows that children’s attendance in learning programs increases when a family member is employed by Children’s Ground. This resulted in incredible outcomes in engagement in school and early childhood. In Kakadu, in partnership with the school, we achieved– from a near zero base - all Bininj children aged four and five years attending early years learning in
the region.

Children’s Ground economic development and wellbeing platform has short and long term outcomes.

• Immediate employment through a ‘no-barriers to employment’ policy which enables direct economic engagement for youth and adults to provide a gateway to meaningful employment. (This includes recognising cultural educators and local creative artists, together with entry-level practical roles without penalty for cultural absences 
• Support for locally specific enterprise development responding to existing capacities and opportunities to build long-term employment opportunities
• Enterprise specific curriculum for senior students to ensure employment prospects on completing secondary education, with globally-connected components including coding, media and other IT opportunities.

The number of people gaining employment through Children’s Ground - Previously unemployed people subsequently engaged in meaningful work through Children’s Ground

The number of people engaged in local enterprises creating independent sources of sustainable income - People are engaged in local enterprises creating independent sources of sustainable income

Creation of educational and curriculum material aligned with local enterprise opportunities including tourism, creative arts, online IT platforms, and environmental management - Senior educational curriculum aligned with local enterprise opportunities including tourism, creative arts, online IT platforms, and environmental management

The Children’s Ground System is the first combining traditional culture and leading Western practices, designed by First Nations people for the future of their children. The system includes corporate and local governance. As part of this IP, economic development is anchored in traditional country, culture and leadership, allowing communities to strengthen agency over activities that support culture, safety, learning, health, economy, and skills development. Through this community agency - the consent, support, and active involvement of the community in governance, design, delivery, and evaluation - enduring change can be achieved.

Children's Ground was designed for children and families who find themselves the most excluded and economically disadvantaged in our current society. Children’s Ground was founded by Arrernte leader William Tilmouth (Chair) and Jane Vadiveloo with the input of many senior First Nations elders and decades of practical experience. High quality resources, people and services, delivered over the long term, will build on local strengths and capacity to break the cycles of fractured service delivery and intergenerational poverty to equip children for opportunities, locally, nationally and globally. Long term change can only occur through the agency of local families and communities.

Children’s Ground starts with community engagement, and builds on local leadership. In First Nations culture, everyone is valued and involved. Parents are educators; elders are cultural leaders, young people are role models for children. This new system backs local people through the funding provided by a collective investment model, with a balance of philanthropy and Government funding providing long-term stability and the ability to be responsive to local priorities. Accountability to supporters is via regular reporting against a clear Outcomes Framework, overseen by an external and eminent Research Advisory Group. 

Children’s Ground has adopted a collective investment model, with funding drawn from Australian and Northern Territory governments, and private donors and corporate philanthropy. The model anticipates that government funding for Children’s Ground operations will increase over time as social and economic benefits are realised. Ultimately, the Children’s Ground System expects to be adopted and scaled across a wide number of communities, potentially drawing on innovative social impact bonds and other shared outcomes approaches to sustain operations over longer funding periods.

One of the unique features of Children’s Ground is an ethics-approved 25-year longitudinal study, backed by our external Research Advisory Group (RAG) made up of experienced researchers and academics. The RAG provides valuable guidance to our monitoring and evaluation activities, allowing us to build an evidence base underpinning an approach that seeks to address extreme disadvantage in the long term.

The current levels of funding sustains a grassroots approach, however our five-year plan envisages implementing the full model or a more funded partial model. The investment required for a partial approach (beyond grassroots) costs $645,000 per community site each year and would require an additional $200,000 - $300,000 per annum per site. The full model is costed at $1.6m per site per annum. Additional funds would enable our model to be articulated as a transferable model. Specialist staff have been secured for operations in four locations in Central Australia, and a long-term evaluation and data collection process has been established.

https://www.facebook.com/childrensgroundaus/

The flourishing of humankind is diminished anywhere people experience chronic poverty and disadvantage.  Children’s Ground provides an empowering approach to end poverty, with opportunities for First Nations children in Australia to celebrate their future, grounded in the world oldest continuous cultures. It is built on decades of learning, backed by evidence, and is designed and implemented by First Nations people. It is a new system to replace existing approaches which have been shown to be expensive and ineffective. It makes sense.

Solve will help Children’s Ground present its evidence, and secure scale and adoption in Australia, and elsewhere.

Children's Ground's current partners include, the Australian Government, the Northern Territory Government, Third Link, PMF Foundation, Limb Family Foundation, Ryan Cooper Family Foundation, English Family Foundation, Ramses Foundation, Ian Potter Foundation, Gandel Philanthropy, The Sidney Myer Fund, The Brunner Family, The Duggan Foundation, Johnson and Johnson, Virgin Unite, Igniting Change.

Cathy Freeman Foundation, First 1000 Days, Save The Children