The first three years of a child’s life are critical for development and have lasting effects on their learning, behaviour and health. To develop well, children need warm and consistent relationships with parents and caregivers, stimulating home learning environments, high quality early learning services and supportive community environments.

Our Place’s 0-3 Strategy focuses on introducing innovative approaches or emphasising effective strategies that cater to the needs of families, resulting in enhanced attendance and greater involvement of parents and children in various opportunities, services, and educational activities.

Consequently, this strategy aims to boost parental confidence and cultivate skills to facilitate early learning and development in children, ultimately fostering a more nurturing and productive home learning environment.

Our Place will actively contribute our expertise to policy submissions, roundtable meetings and discussions regarding early years reform agendas, focused on these three areas:

• Advocating for supported playgroups that can be universally accessed by all families, not just those who meet certain criteria. Playgroups enable families to connect with each other and the local services.
• Trialling innovative early health and development strategies at some Our Place sites that enhance children’s readiness for school, such as Maternal and Child Health services.
• Improving parent confidence and capacity to support their child’s learning and development, such as pre and post-natal support and parenting groups.

Emphasising continuity over transition, supports an approach that develops and strengthens the relationships between early learning and schools to facilitates better outcomes for children. While both systems can achieve great outcomes for children, the current system does not ensure that children experience consistency and continuity in their learning journey, ultimately resulting in highquality
education.

Our Place has successfully elevated the importance of Continuity of Learning with site and government partners by:

• Fostering relationships and common practices between early learning and schools by establishing trust and leveraging existing relationships within each site.
• Developing a one-page framework to support sites with their working groups. This framework is a visual representation of the evidence documented in our two Continuity of Learning publications.
• Integrating Continuity of Learning as an integral part of site implementation plans.
• Illustrating instances of impact when advocating for a Continuity of Learning approach to be adopted in policy reforms.

Looking ahead to 2024, Our Place will develop a publication focusing on the social and emotional importance of continuity, as well as focus on improving curriculum and assessment continuity at Our Place sites through the developmental areas outlined by the Australian Early Development Census domains.

We believe education is key to overcoming disadvantage. Utilising schools as a platform to provide holistic support helps children and families to overcome the many barriers to education attainment.

Over the past year there has been unprecedented interest in understanding how integrated school community approaches such as Our Place can play a key role in addressing long term challenges in education, wellbeing and levels of disadvantaged faced by communities.

Our Place has contributed to these efforts through:

• Active participation in the newly established National Child and Family Hub Network, a multidisciplinary alliance supporting greater policy uptake of hubs for children.
• Supporting development of the Victorian Best Start, Best Life reforms by sharing evidence of the value of integrated infrastructure to inform the approach to the development of new kindergartens across Victoria.
• Articulation of the core components and costs of resourcing The Glue to enable uptake by other organisations.
• Hosting of site visits from Victorian and Federal policy makers, architects, academics, thought partners and local education and health leaders to share our lessons and approach.