What is Best Start

The Best Start approach is to strengthen the local capacity of parents, families and communities and early years services to better provide for the needs of all young children and their families.
This is achieved by:

• listening to parent and family knowledge and expectations
• the inclusion of vulnerable children and families in early years services
• the inclusion of Aboriginal children and their families
• ensuring services are inclusive of culturally diverse children and families
• mobilising community interest, resources and infrastructure to create child-friendly communities
• translating early childhood evidence into practice
• coordinating and integrating existing services
• introducing innovative changes to services, based on evidence
• developing strong cross-sectoral local partnerships.

For more information, see: Best Start Program Overview (PDF - 364Kb).

The evidence

The early childhood literature provides substantial evidence that:

• the early years are crucial in setting the stage for later life
• young children develop through their relationships with others
• children’s development is shaped by the balance between risk and protective factors
• supporting families effectively requires a comprehensive, coordinated family-centred service system.

Setting the stage for later life

Brain research shows that the early years of development from conception to age six, particularly the first three years, provide the basis for the development of competence, coping and emotional skills that affect learning, behaviour and health throughout life. There is growing evidence that good nutrition, nurturing and responsive care-giving in these early years, combined with high-quality early childhood development programs, can improve the long-term outcomes for all children’s health, development, learning and wellbeing. 

Developing through relationships with others

All young children’s learning and development occurs in the context of their relationships with their caregivers. These early experiences form characteristic ways of relating to other people and of coping with the ebb and flow of emotions. These patterns of behaviour are not just psychological tendencies, but are actually built into the architecture and physiology of children’s brains.

The balance between risk and protective factors

The balance between factors known to place development at risk and those known to have protective properties shapes children’s development. Children exposed to multiple risk factors become vulnerable to developmental problems of health, learning and wellbeing, whereas those exposed to protective factors are more likely to be resilient in the face of environmental adversities. These determinants of child development have an impact at all levels: family, neighbourhood, community and economy. To ensure more children develop well, we need to reduce the factors that place them at risk and promote those that are protective. Among other things, this means building more child and family-friendly communities.

Providing a comprehensive, coordinated family-centred service system

To achieve better outcomes for children and families, we need an integrated system of services that can respond to the emerging needs of children and families in local community settings. To become more effective, service systems need to adopt a family-centred approach to working with families, a partnership approach to working with communities, and a strength-based approach to policy and service development. Better outcomes are also achieved when services are comprehensive and inclusive.

Best Start Partnerships

International experience shows, and the Best Start evaluation confirms, that a strong and effective partnership platform is essential for effective planning and is an indicator of success.

Local partnerships are the cornerstone of the Best Start approach. Many benefits are derived from forming broad partnerships that bring together expertise and experience in child rearing, early years service delivery, local planning and good practice. This expertise and experience that can be used to develop innovative and collaborative responses to improve outcomes for children and their families.

The Best Start partnership, and its individual members, is expected to lead the way in cultural change, service coordination and integration. Early indications from the evaluation of Best Start are that service cooperation and collaboration has been effective in the Best Start partnerships.

The partnerships include representatives of local parents, providers of services for young children and their families, the tiers of government, and other key groups who are involved in, and can impact upon, the day-to-day lives of young children and their families within a community.
 
Best Start partnerships build on existing early years partnerships, such as those developed through Municipal Early Years Plans. They are embedded within other local planning structures and processes to ensure better integration and sustainability of change beyond the life of the project.

There are 6 key steps of the Best Start approach. These steps are undertaken by all of the Project sites across the state. 

Read more about the Best Start steps, see Best Start in Action: Program Guidelines (PDF - 1.3Mb)

To read outlines of evidence-based interventions for the 15 Best Start indicators, see the Catalogue of Evidence.