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Understanding the Context

Social context refers to families' social networks as well as geographic aspects of their particular living situation, such as how well connected they are to other adults and the surrounding community, and how stable their caregiving arrangements are from day to day. There are three main issues to consider under this concept; namely social or geographic isolation, parental breakup or separation, and children's placement in substitute care due to their being removed from their family home.

Attachment theory explains the importance of social context further. A small child gains his/her perception of safety and security from the reliability of close relationships. The literature by Ainsworth and Bowlby, which forms the foundation for the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), argues that the child's pattern of attachment is formed during this crucial period (AGDE, 2022). According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, social isolation also has a detrimental effect on parenting by weakening the supports available through social networks (Goldfeld et al., 2017).

The situation keeps changing, as families continue to become more varied in their arrangement, while kinship-based care becomes more used when compared to foster care. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still overrepresented in child protection, continuing what has been characterised as a cycle of mistrust that makes establishing trust complicated (AIFS, 2022).

Impact on Children and Families

The consequences of separation, isolation, or a journey through the care system are felt by children when they arrive at their ECEC experience. Feelings of unresolved grief and hyper-vigilance may not be expressed in a child's extreme upset but may be reflected in extreme passivity. For families who are isolated, particularly those who have no extended family in proximity, informal supports which serve to maintain regular attendance at services are altogether absent.

Where separation is recent, children may frequently test the limits of the pick-up process — this is simply a manifestation of an adjustment to an uncertain transition rather than a behaviour issue. For children in out-of-home care, a change of placement may also involve a change in service provider, depriving the child of the very relationship they need the most when they are least capable of handling another loss.

For any service involved, this means transferring information between various care providers has to be done in accordance with strict legal requirements, careful adjustments must be done to accommodate changes of placements, and the key educator system becomes essential, giving a child one predictable relationship inside the service even when everything else is changing.

Social Policy and Australian Responses

Child protection and out-of-home care are managed at state and territory levels, while AIHW handles national reporting. Family preservation is preferred if achievable, and this is reflected in the reforms aimed at “family-led decision making.” Also, mobile early childhood programs funded by the Regional Australia Institute and the state governments help reduce isolation.

The weak point is the gap between theory and practice because family-led decision making is well-established but it is not implemented at different levels of depth due to heavy workloads, which causes ECEC services to adopt informal channels of working with families.

Strategies for Practice

1. Designated key educator system. Nominating this at the registration stage ensures that there will always be a "known stable person" supervising the child (AIFS, 2022).
2. Flexible, trauma-sensitive registration. Allowing incomplete forms to be accepted can avoid excluding any child whose custody arrangements are in progress (SNAICC, 2023).
3. Active community building. Introducing a newly isolated family to a settled one at drop-off could work better than simply inviting them to attend (AGDE, 2022).
4. Joint communication over care. Everyone on the approved caregiver list has access to a shared diary and therefore is not burdened with informing the other adults (AIFS, 2022).
5. Rituals of transition. A goodbye song or a photo book with pictures of adult caregivers creates a common structure when adults change around a child (Goldfeld et al., 2017).

Community and Professional Partnerships

Resources for Educators and Children

Understanding the Context

Cultural and diversity contexts refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and immigrant and refugee families whose children cross early childhood in two or more cultural worlds at the same time. The importance of this is unmissable in the sphere of ECEC as cultural identity and language are crucial for ‘belonging’ (one of the three key concepts outlined in Australia’s National Curriculum Framework).

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory provides clear insights as development occurs via participating in activities of cultural significance. This means that while children grow in an environment not reflecting the culture around them, it may very well feel that way (AGDE, 2022). Self-determination theory is of crucial importance in regard to the situation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, it means that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should have the right to take decisions in regard to their children and communities themselves (SNAICC, 2023). The relevance of this is explained by the history of colonisation and forced relocation; effective work is starting to shift the response towards cultural safety rather than a deficit model.

This is a rapidly changing area. There may be an increasing number of migrant and refugee children, an effort that is admittedly not totally successful to absorb First Nations children and a commitment from the Australian government to address the developmental gap though progress has been mixed, but these targets may still fail (SNAICC, 2023; AGDE, 2022).

Impact on Children and Families

The data for 2021 shows that just approximately 34% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were “developmentally on track” in all five AEDC domains, as opposed to 56% of non-Indigenous children who were considered “developmentally on track,” according to AIHW (2025). The importance of preschool participation in one’s growth is evident in the fact that as many as 37% of First Nations children who have been to preschool were “developmentally on track,” in comparison to 21% of the children who had not gone to preschool (AIHW, 2025). The immigrant and refugee families, on the other hand, may have to deal with the language barrier at the exact time when a child’s language skills are being developed the fastest, while they may have to deal with a totally unfamiliar social system with the parents speaking limited English. Refugee families, as a rule, can experience much stress of resettlement on top of painful experiences that they went through before migration.

The term “inclusion” in relation to services cannot mean enrolling children from different backgrounds in a program that remains unchanged. Inclusion necessitates work that actively adapt resources in two languages, adopt other culture-specific practices, and establish an authentic partnership with families acting as the authorities on their own children.

Social Policy and Australian Responses

Within the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, there are 17 objectives of which 5 are related to education; this includes, culturally appropriate early childhood education as well as the well-being of children (Australian Government Department of Education, 2025). With effect from January 2026, the carers of recognised First Nations children will have the right to access 100 subsidised hours per fortnight irrespective of the type of activity of the children, thus easing access barriers. This falls under the broader “3 Day Guarantee” reform, which will fully replace the CCS activity test by 5 January 2026 and ensure that all eligible families are granted at least 72 hours of subsidised hours per fortnight — with First Nations families receiving the higher 100-hour entitlement (Services Australia, 2026). The early childhood care and development policy partnership that was established in 2022 between the governmental bodies and SNAICC assists in establishing the power of the First Nations in the process of making decisions regarding the local policies.

The implementation has failed to meet the set goals, especially concerning remote areas. In 2021, merely 16% of the First Nations children in Northern Territory were developmentally on track compared to 39% of children in New South Wales, which demonstrates that this is not a uniform picture across the country. In the case of refugee families, who are supported financially by the federal government in their settlement process, services that should assist them in this process are often disconnected from the ECEC system.

Strategies for Practice

1. Incorporate First Nations viewpoints and ideas consistently rather than only occasionally. Use language and stories from Aboriginal people, such as their culture and country.
2. Collaborate with families and Elders — invite them to contribute their knowledge of language and culture. Employ an Elder regularly to assist in bridging the language gap and ensure that families are involved in the education of their children (SNAICC, 2023).
3. Use bilingual resources. Read books in two languages to enhance understanding and create activities for children that merge their first language with English (AGDE, 2022).
4. Facilitate awareness of trauma and cultural factors when welcoming children. Ensure that culturally appropriate behaviours are implemented (AIFS, 2022).
5. Conduct cultural audits with families. Check the images that are displayed and stories that are told in order to determine whether there is a match between image and reality (AIHW, 2025).

Community and Professional Partnerships

Resources for Educators and Children

Understanding the Context

The context presented here pertains to the development of children growing up alongside a parent's mental illness or substance use, or who have themselves experienced trauma, grief, or abuse. This is very significant for ECEC, as these experiences occur in the primary attachment relationship, and the influence on the brain is maximal during the early stages of children's development.

Infant mental health frameworks draw on attachment theory and stress-response research to explain how chronic adversity, sometimes called ‘toxic stress’ when unbuffered by a supportive adult, can genuinely alter a young child's developing stress-response system. This differs from an isolated frightening event, which most children recover from with support. A second useful lens is the cumulative-risk framing introduced under Economic Contexts: mental illness, substance use, and financial hardship frequently co-occur in the same household, and it's the accumulation that predicts poorer outcomes (Goldfeld et al., 2017).

Australian practice has shifted markedly toward "COPMI-aware" and trauma-informed models, recognising children of parents with a mental illness as a distinct, often invisible group on any roll — a room might have several without a single formal disclosure.

Impact on Children and Families

Children here can present in ways easy to misread. Dysregulated behaviours or hypervigilance are recognisable, but the opposite is just as common and easier to miss: an unusually compliant, "parentified" child who has learned to manage a caregiver's needs, and looks like one of the easiest children in the room. Parents may struggle with consistency — missed pickups, an unpredictable mood at drop-off — not from lack of love but the illness or trauma response itself.

Where grief or a specific event is involved, children often process it through repetitive play or regression in a previously mastered skill — normal processing, not evidence something is "wrong," provided a stable adult is nearby.

For services, predictable routines act as a stabilising counterweight, information-sharing needs careful handling when a parent is unwell, and behaviour an educator might label "difficult" is often a survival adaptation rather than defiance — which changes how the whole team talks about that child.

Social Policy and Australian Responses

The National Mental Health Commission and state health departments fund perinatal and infant mental health services, while Emerging Minds' National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health provides Commonwealth-funded training for the ECEC workforce. COPMI, a national program, funds resources specifically for children of parents with a mental illness, filling a gap mainstream adult mental health services historically overlooked.

Mandatory reporting laws place all educators in the role of mandated reporters, giving them a responsibility of care. The funding has been moving away from only doing crisis response and instead has grown towards preventive measures and development of the workforce, as evidence indicates that early assistance is more efficient and economical. Where this still falls short is coordination: a family can be known to mental health, AOD, and child protection services simultaneously, with little of that reaching the ECEC service seeing the child daily.

Strategies for Practice

1. Predictable, sensory-calm routines. Keeping the same transition cues even on "special event" days protects predictability rather than treating it as flexible (Emerging Minds, 2023).
2. Relationship-based behaviour support. Sit alongside a distressed child before naming the behaviour, not after (Emerging Minds, 2023; Goldfeld et al., 2017).
3. Confidential, careful information practices. A simple written protocol for who needs to know what prevents information spreading informally (AGDE, 2022).
4. Mandatory reporting literacy. The aim is child safety, not "catching out" a struggling parent (AIFS, 2022).
5. Whole-team reflective practice. A fortnightly ten-minute check-in stops vicarious stress building unnoticed in a team (Emerging Minds, 2023).

Community and Professional Partnerships

Resources for Educators and Children

Understanding the Context

Crisis and emergency contexts cover sudden-onset events that disrupt a child's sense of safety: natural disasters such as bushfire and flood, family and domestic violence, and displacement, including refugee families forced to flee. Unlike chronic hardship, crisis contexts are marked by acute disruption — a home lost, a household fractured overnight — usually followed by a longer recovery period in which routines and relationships remain genuinely unsettled.

Trauma theory distinguishes single-incident trauma from complex or repeated trauma, as in ongoing family violence, and the two call for different responses. Research shows that the most critical protective factor for young children is the presence of a calm, responsive parent. A child’s level of distress is affected less by the crisis itself and more by whether a trusted adult is emotionally available. The other angle of resilience theory takes the emphasis away from asking how damaged the child might be and on focusing on what protective factors are missing — because, resilience is not a trait but rather a process developed through a supportive environment (AIFS, 2022).

In Australia, climate change has been recognised as a growing threat to children in light of the growing frequency and magnitude of climate events, and family violence remains to be a very important issue affecting women and children as well.

Impact on Children and Families

Children often show signs of regression in acquired skills and increased separation anxiety after a disaster. They tend to act out their experiences through play, which is a typical process due to the trauma. Domestic violence is a serious issue, with one in four Australian women said to have been victims of violence from their partner (Australian Government Department of Social Services, 2022), and exposing children to violence directly or indirectly in this setting creates attachment problems that last for a long time. However, one should not underestimate the influence of the consequences of the disaster on the outcomes. Children whose families have remained stable after the disaster tend to do well afterward; children of traumatised parents, however, face additional risks that have nothing to do with the severity of the disaster itself. "The crisis" for a young child is often a sequence, not a single moment. For services, this demands genuine flexibility: enrolment continuity during displacement, the capacity to operate as a stabilising space when a family's housing or safety is in flux, and real preparedness — a tested continuity-of-care plan, not one filed away untouched.

Social Policy and Australian Responses

The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 guides action across prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery, and names early childhood as a priority setting. A dedicated First Nations plan, Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices, sits alongside it, recognising a single national approach doesn't fit every community equally.

For disasters, state emergency frameworks increasingly include child-specific provisions, and Red Cross and AIFS have developed recovery guidance specific to children rather than adapted from adult material. Evaluation finds strong architecture but implementation still relies heavily on frontline services, ECEC included, to translate national commitments into direct practice — the policy sets direction, but noticing and responding still lands on educators.

Strategies for Practice

1. Maintain routine as a stabilising anchor. Resist relaxing routines "to be kind" — for a dysregulated child, structure is the kindness (Emerging Minds, 2023).
2. Support (not direct) trauma play. Naming what you notice gently, without forcing discussion, respects the child's own pace (Australian Red Cross, 2022).
3. Safety-first family violence protocols. The current list of authorised collectors should be known by every employee, not only by the director (Australian Government Department of Social Services, 2022).
4. Continuity-of-enrolment planning. A pathway agreed in advance means a family doesn't have to navigate new enrolment while managing a crisis (AGDE, 2022).
5. Educator self-care and debrief structures. Regular debriefs normalise educators seeking support rather than treating it as a failing (Emerging Minds, 2023).

Community and Professional Partnerships

Resources for Educators and Children