Increased funding of community hubs, training in cultural competency and trauma-informed care for state funded services and more bicultural and bilingual workers in early childhood services are among the recommendations of a new report aimed at improving access to childhood services for diverse families.

The report, by Victoria’s Legislative Assembly Legal and Social Issues Committee, addresses current barriers that culturally diverse families face in accessing services that would help them to feel more connected to the Victorian communities in which they live.

It also highlights the importance of early learning opportunities in laying the foundations for children’s long-term development, and indicates that this is particularly relevant for children from refugee backgrounds.

The report has made 49 recommendations aimed at improving access to and connections with early childhood services in Victoria.

The report also recommends: enhanced support for refugee families by the Maternal and Child Health Service; identifying children of refugee background as a priority group for mental health services, and; culturally diverse speech therapy workers to ensure speech and language delay assessments can be conducted in a child’s first language.

It also calls for funding for playgroups that specifically target culturally diverse communities and targeted funding to assist people from culturally diverse backgrounds to engage in training and development, such as Free TAFE in the early childhood sector.

The report says there is a need for expanding Early Start Kindergarten to ensure children of refugee background are immediately eligible for free 3-year-old kinder and also adopting a state-wide approach to kindergarten enrolment, with a single, easily accessible and central enrolment process across Victoria.

“Families continue to experience barriers to accessing early childhood services, such as language and communication barriers, costs, limited awareness of services and their benefits, discrimination and fear of judgement, among others,” said

Legal and Social Issues Committee Chair Natalie Suleyman said the report was aimed at addressing the barriers diverse families face and ensuring that services are inclusive in supporting families and their children.

“Multiculturalism has benefited our state greatly and we need to ensure that the families we welcome to Victoria can access and benefit from early education and health services to enable their children to get the best start in life,” Ms Suleyman said.

“Families feeling like they belong in the community and in specific environments, such as kindergartens or schools, is critical to successful engagement,” she said

Migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia made several submission to the report’s preparations, including taking a strengths based approach and not categorising people as overly vulnerable, while also acknowledging the unique experiences that people from refugee backgrounds have prior to their arrival in Australia. It is also important for the broader community to be aware of and acknowledge these experiences.

It also discussed the benefits for families in having workers from the same background:

“In group learning environments for pre‑school children, many CALD communities highly value their child’s carer or educator sharing the same cultural and linguistic background as their own. Cultural diversity in early childhood services can help to improve access for CALD families, and can help children to learn or retain their parents’ heritage language and culture,” the AMES submission said.

See the full report here: https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/lsic-la/article/4236