Submission 222 — Griffith University — Inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative

Submission to the House Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability

Introduction

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Committee’s inquiry into the Thriving Kids initiative. Our submission draws on nearly a decade of work with First Nations communities, regional and urban health services, primary care providers, educators, NGOs, child safety, youth justice, and families across Australia.

We have learned that early identification of developmental vulnerability is not simply a matter of screening tools or awareness campaigns. What families need is an ecosystem: a system that makes developmental care everyone’s business, connects sectors, and ensures children receive the right support at the right time.

The Tracking Cube was co-created with Aboriginal Elders and Mount Isa community, and has since grown into a national initiative. It is now being implemented in health services, schools, early learning centres, and community organisations across multiple states. The model has shown that when families and frontline practitioners are supported by the right digital and training infrastructure, children with mild to moderate developmental concerns are recognised earlier, supported locally, and families no longer have to carry the burden of navigating fragmented systems alone.

What is the Tracking Cube

The Tracking Cube links research evidence with a community-co-designed, culturally-responsive, scalable system of early identification and support for children with developmental concerns, including neurodevelopmental and mental health presentations. It spans across health, education, early learning, child safety and youth justice sectors. www.yourtrack.org

• Parents are guided through six Tracking Cube tiers. Tiers are only completed as needed, and can be completed in any order, the digital system stitches information together to present a meaningful whole.
  1. Informed Consent (Dreamtime story)
  2. Developmental History (risk and protective factors)
  3. Rapid Assessment (e.g., Rapid Neurodevelopmental Assessment (RNDA); ASQ; ASQ-Trak; PEDS)
  4. Parent/Teacher Collaborative Information
  5. Feedback & Support
  6. Specialist Assessment when needed
• Accessible to all ages and contexts, without waiting for a formal diagnosis.
• Parents receive actionable guidance, whether building at-home strategies or navigating the system, guided by trusted care providers based on a holistic understanding of the child and context.

It is the integration of Tiers 2 (risk/protective history), 3 (practitioner observations), and 4 (parent/teacher perspectives) that produces evidence-based triage, the best possible support plan, and enables predictive modelling. This integration is the heart of the Cube.

By localising the Tracking Cube to each community, and stitching data together across tiers, the digital system that underpins the Tracking Cube provides the foundation for sovereign predictive models of child development, avoiding imported systems and ensuring culturally safe, Australian-designed solutions.

Over $12M in Commonwealth research funding has been invested to achieve this minimum viable product. Now is the critical window to translate the Tracking Cube into a secure, nationally-scaled platform.

Supporting Parents and Trusted Care Providers to Identify and Act Early

Parents or local Trusted Care Providers (GPs, child health nurses, Aboriginal Health Workers, school teachers, early learning staff, NGO staff) are often the first to notice that something is not quite right. Too often, however, children are left waiting years for these initial concerns to be validated. Specialists and tertiary services, who diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders (ADHD, Autism, FASD, Intellectual disabilities, Learning Disorders), have waitlists across the country of 1 to 3 years. Adding more of the most scarce and costly healthcare resource is just not viable. The Tracking Cube solves this problem by harnessing the power of every day trusted care providers. It offers:

• A clear, tiered pathway to local supports: Beginning with consent (Tier 1) and developmental history (Tier 2), moving through structured rapid assessments like the RNDA (Tier 3), and including collaborative input from parents and teachers (Tier 4), the Tracking Cube provides evidence-based triage that can be completed by non-specialists, or everyday trusted care providers.
• Plain language feedback: Guided by trusted care providers, parents receive understandable, actionable reports that map out “best next steps,” not just a list of problems.
• Equity of access: Families do not need a referral to a specialist or a diagnosis to begin receiving support.

This approach amplifies the role of the trusted care provider. Rather than feeling powerless, waiting for referrals to be actioned, trusted care providers who work with families every day are supported to become active partners in the child’s developmental journey.

Effectiveness Across Community and Mainstream Settings

We have tested and refined the Tracking Cube across diverse contexts:

• In remote Aboriginal communities, the model has resulted in the identification of 7 times more children with developmental concerns and increased access to local support six-fold. Referrals to specialists stayed the same, because rather than referring all children with a concern (current care model), the right children were referred. The majority of identified children were supported in community and primary care. Staff confidence in supporting children improved and family trust in health care services improved.

• In mainstream primary care, our “Precision Triage” project in an urban specialist paediatric clinic used the Tracking Cube to re-triaged 200 children on their waitlist. Collecting evidence-based triage information (often missing from referral templates) enabled more accurate decision-making and immediate support. 20% of children were re-routed, triaged back to primary care for ongoing support.
• In schools and early childhood settings, the Tracking Cube provides teachers, educators, guidance officers with structured ways to observe, record, and share developmental information, ensuring concerns raised in classrooms lead to timely health follow-up.
• In allied health and maternal child health services, the Tracking Cube streamlines communication, ensuring families do not have to repeat their story at every new doorway.

The model has proven adaptable. Whether in a small ACCHO clinic, a metropolitan hospital, or a remote school cluster, the Tracking Cube provides a consistent framework that still respects local context and culture.

Equity and Intersectional Issues

Equity is at the heart of the Tracking Cube. The model was born in partnership with First Nations communities and continues to be guided by Indigenous leadership through NACCHO and ACCHO partners.

• First Nations leadership: Community Elders shaped the Cube’s symbols and processes, ensuring cultural resonance and trust.
• CALD families: Materials and processes can be easily adapted for language accessibility.
• Precision support: The Tracking Cube does not assume one pathway fits all. Instead, predictive modelling will soon project the most likely effective next step for each child, based on individual history (risk and protective factors), screening results (practitioner observation), and parent/teacher concerns. This ensures children from diverse backgrounds are not forced into programs designed for “the average child” from the dominant culture.
• Tool-agnostic: Communities choose the tools they trust based on local expertise, evidence relevant to their region and cultural preferences, ensuring equity but providing a unified national framework for interpretation and outcome.

Equity also means practical respect for family burden. The Tracking Cube’s consent-driven Hub allows families to choose when and how their information is shared across sites. This prevents the repeated, traumatic retelling of histories that is common in current systems.

Workforce Support and Training

One of the strongest lessons from our 8 years of co-design is that frontline practitioners are willing but not always able. Developmental care has historically been “no one’s day job.” There are no designated roles in primary care, NGOs, schools, or child safety for developmental coordination.

To succeed, we need developmental care to start in community, cross-sector connectors, and dedicated workforce pods in health and:

• Developmental care begins in communities: Trusted care providers are trained to deliver universal and low-intensity supports locally and to triage only those children who truly require health services.
• Connectors in each sector: Local champions from health/education/NGO sectors (e.g., teachers, support workers, child safety caseworkers, Aboriginal Health Practitioners, child health nurses) are rebadged as Tracking Cube Weavers, linking their sector’s work to a shared understanding and developmental pathway across sectors.
• Dedicated pods in health services: A GP (0.5—1.0 FTE), a child health nurse or Aboriginal Health Worker (1.0 FTE), and a coordinator (1.0 FTE). Together, this pod can support between 600 and 1,200 children per year, and triage only those who need to be referred to specialists or tertiary care.

Training starts with online modules and workshops (Bronze level), but ongoing integration (Silver level) requires more than a workshop. The Training Ecosystem is built on behaviour change science: on-the-job coaching, reflective practice, peer networks, and credentialling. Workforce enablement extends to organisations. Managers receive leadership support, workflows are redesigned (Gold level), which is key to sustainability. Integration Labs bring health, education, child safety and youth justice together to address the bottlenecks between sectors (Platinum level), resulting in systemic reform. True systemic change happens over two years, not two days.

Digital Ecosystem and Research-to-Practice Pipeline

Alongside training, the Digital Ecosystem will make this work possible:

1. Data Warehouse & Governance: A research repository, governed by Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles, where data is stored and algorithms are developed.
2. Commercial-Grade Platform: Transitioning the current research system into a licensed, cyber-secure national platform.
3. Consent Hub: A family-controlled “locker” that allows information to be shared across sites with explicit consent.
4. Clinical Analytics & Fidelity Engines: Dashboards and outcome measures to ensure accountability.
5. Precision Support: Predictive modelling that generates personalised best-next-step recommendations: a concierge model of developmental care.

These elements are not linear stages but interdependent parts of an ecosystem. Training and digital must be built together; one without the other will fail.

International and Domestic Best Practice

The Tracking Cube aligns with international best practice by:

• Embedding community leadership in design and delivery.

• Providing precision, personalised support recommendations (low-intensity/high-frequency strategies; universal; preventative), supporting the right families to access more intensive, evidence-based programs.
• Creating seamless transitions between sectors, reducing duplication and waitlists.
• Establishing fidelity measures and dashboards to guide continuous improvement.

Domestically, 23 sites across Australia are using the Tracking Cube (spanning health, education, child safety, early learning). The model has been endorsed by NACCHO, PHN (Gold Coast and North Queensland), Queensland Mental Health Commission, Queensland Health (including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Division) and the QLD Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety. It is aligned with ARACY’s Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership.

The Tracking Cube aligns with a substantial number of domestic and international policies (see Appendix A).

Importantly, it is an example of a solution developed by Australians for Australians, resulting in sovereign data management and ownership, and provides and exemplar for the Department of Industries research to commercialisation plan.

It is a rare example of an intervention that has demonstrated success in both First Nations and mainstream settings.

Mechanisms for Seamless Transition

The Tracking Cube Family is a community governance structure. It includes monthly community-led meeting of sites, families, Elders, and practitioners, ensuring accountability and continuous co-design. Families see their voices shaping the system in real time.

The consent-driven Hub will provide the technical mechanism for seamless transition across services and geographies. Families move their child’s story forward, without the exhaustion of retelling it at every step.

The Tracking Cube will link with existing practice management software, enabling interoperable care. This ensures information collected in the Tracking Cube flows directly into the systems clinicians already use, reducing duplication, supporting continuity across sectors, and strengthening handovers.

Integration Labs and policy briefs can ensure that local lessons around cross-sector integration flow upward into state and Commonwealth decision-making, creating an iterative feedback loop between practice and policy.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The Thriving Kids initiative presents an opportunity to embed a truly national backbone for foundational supports. The Tracking Cube offers this backbone:

• A digital and training ecosystem built in parallel.
• Custodial Australian-based ownership to ensure fidelity and protect equity.

• Dedicated workforce pods and sectoral Connectors to embed developmental care into mainstream services.
• A consent-driven Hub to empower families.
• Community leadership and accountability through the Tracking Cube Family.

We recommend that the Committee:

1. Endorse the Tracking Cube as a model for Thriving Kids.
2. Fund continued development of the custodial backbone (digital + training ecosystems).
3. Support rollout within the community, with sector Connectors, and dedicated workforce pods within health.
4. Prioritise equity by embedding First Nations and CALD leadership and governance.
5. Mandate mechanisms for seamless transitions, including the consent Hub, Integration Labs, and affordable interoperability with practice management software.

By investing in the Tracking Cube ecosystem, the Commonwealth will prevent thousands of children from falling through service gaps, ensure culturally safe and equitable pathways, and deliver long-term savings through earlier intervention.

Appendix A:

Tracking Cube Alignment with National and International Policies

National Policies Alignment

1. National Agreement on Closing the Gap (2020 Agreement & 2022 Report)
   • advancing equity, cultural safety, and community-led governance.
2. National Indigenous Health Equity Agenda
   • addressing systemic inequities and embedding Indigenous leadership.
3. Australia’s Primary Health Care 10-Year Plan: 2022—2032
   • strengthening primary care, integration, and foundational supports.
4. National Health Reform Agenda 2020-2025
   • driving coordinated, connected, and value-based care across systems.
5. National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy (2021)
   • early identification, stepped care, workforce enablers.
6. National FASD Strategic Action Plan 2018-2028
   • improving early recognition, reducing wait times, and enabling community-based responses.
7. NDIS Review (2023-2024)
   • foundational supports and appropriate triage to reduce unnecessary specialist demand.
8. ARACY’s Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership
   • place-based, community-led, integrated infrastructure.
9. National Digital Health Strategy & Digital Economy Strategy (2022 Update)
   • consent-driven, interoperable, family-centred systems, sovereign digital capability.
10. NHMRC & MRFF Funding Principles / Commercialisation Mandates
    • ensuring translation of Australian innovations into practice at scale.
11. National Coordination for RD&I Impact
    • supporting integration of research, development, and innovation to deliver measurable system outcomes.
12. Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) Framework
    • supporting early monitoring and system accountability.
13. National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021-2031
    • embedding cultural safety, community governance, and Indigenous data sovereignty.

International Policy Alignment

1. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989)
   • enshrines every child’s right to health, development, education, and protection.
2. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2015-2030) — particularly:
   • Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing
   • Goal 4: Quality Education
   • Goal 5: Gender Equality
   • Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
3. WHO Nurturing Care Framework (2018)
   • promotes holistic, family-centred, community-based early childhood development.
4. WHO Global Strategy on Digital Health (2020-2025)
   • supports sovereign, interoperable, culturally safe digital health ecosystems.

OECD Recommendation on Integrated Child Wellbeing Policies (2021)

• calls for cross-sector collaboration, early identification, and evidence-based triage.

UNICEF Child-Friendly Cities and Communities Framework

• reinforces the role of local systems and governance in enabling child rights.

Global Mental Health Action Plan (WHO, 2013-2030)

• promotes early detection, community-based supports, and stepped care approaches.

Heckman Curve & Global Early Investment Evidence (Front Project, 2019; Heckman, 2019)

• demonstrates high returns on investment in early intervention.

UNESCO Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education Framework (2019)

• stresses culturally relevant, equitable, and community-driven approaches.