This article was originally published in November 2017.
At the International Life Course Conference 2017, we had a wide range of presentations from both academics and from our industry partners.
From the Australian Government, we welcomed Dr Margot Clifford from the Department of Social Services, Cheryl Hopkins from the Department of Education and Training, and Melissa Carney from the Department of Employment for a roundtable session on ‘Access to opportunity: research and policy challenges’, as well Professor Mark Western from the Life Course Centre.
As Mark says, ‘A core aim of the Life Course Centre is to identify the mechanisms underlying social disadvantage and provide the evidence needed to support new and innovative policy solutions to reduce social disadvantage. Two broad conceptual frameworks underpin our centre: first the human capability approach, which focuses on how individuals acquire the multiple social, economic and individual capabilities required to live the life they choose; and second, the life course approach, which focuses on the timing, sequencing and context of life events that shape life outcomes, such as educational attainment, earnings, employment, relationship status, health and wellbeing.’
Dr Margot Clifford is the Director of the Strategic Policy Unit in the Policy Strategy branch in the Department of Social Services, and is responsible for developing and facilitating the implementation of cross-cutting and forward-thinking policy advice to government. Priority policy areas for her team include access to opportunity, place-based service delivery, better approaches to service design, and new approaches to Indigenous policy within the Department.
Margot describes her unit as working across whole-of-portfolio broad themes. Her presentation at the conference specifically addressed the issue of access to opportunity; her unit has developed an Access to Opportunity framework in order to examine where disadvantage occurs, where it can be addressed, and what factors are about peoples’ life choices in life as opposed to conditions that are not under their control.
‘Access to opportunity’ is defined as an array of realisable options, or pathways, people have in their lives. Therefore, the framework focuses on the different, realisable, life pathways that individuals have across their lives, as well as the need for developing both optimal individual capabilities and favourable external contexts to enable individuals to access the broadest range of life pathways. It also acknowledges that these pathways to optimal development, which include social, human and material capital, commence in the prenatal period, with the kinds of supports given to mothers, and extend through childhood, adolescence, and onwards into adulthood.
One of the DSS’s five long-term priority areas for improving wellbeing – with a focus on greater welfare independence – is improved social mobility. Margot says it is a long-term approach, allowing her to plan in advance, to collaborate with colleagues, and to think more strategically rather than being purely reactive.
When developing the draft analytical framework, her unit collaborated with the Life Course Centre, borrowing quite heavily from the Life Course Centre’s framework. She adds that she would like to see collaboration with the Life Course Centre continue.
Cheryl Hopkins from the Department of Education and Training delivered her presentation on the National Education Evidence Base – a long-term project that brings data sets together from across education sectors. A key part of its functionality will be to provide direct access to trusted third parties, such as researchers. When complete it will provide a comprehensive view of the education pathways of individuals.
Cheryl says that the potential for analysis of the data is very exciting.
Professor Mark Western, Melissa Carney, Cheryl Hopkins and Dr Margot Clifford presenting at the 2017 International Life Course Conference.
No system will be perfect, but this affords government the ability to get closer to the ideal by using the data to improve policies and outcomes. In an ideal system the individual will be connected to a range of services most suited to them. Seamless service is becoming less of an aspirational goal for policy makers and more of an expectation among consumers of our policies and programs.
Therefore, Cheryl sees the National Education Evidence Base as providing government with the ability to provide the right advice, at the right time to people, to help them find their own pathway to opportunity. This, she says, is informed decision making at its best, where both government and the community have the information to make the most effective choices.
It is clear from this session, that there are many synergies and opportunities for the Life Course Centre to work with government departments, in order to help break the cycle of disadvantage by creating the right pathways and access to opportunity.
The Life Course Centre is a collaborative enterprise, bringing together expertise from around the globe and from across Australia. The Centre’s powerful partnership networks provide genuine interdisciplinary innovation, which translates into cutting-edge research.
This collective capacity was well illustrated at the conference with many representatives present from the Life Course Centre’s partnerships network coming together to address the problem of deep and persistent disadvantage. Participating in conference sessions were Ian McCarthy and Brianna McCourt from the New South Wales Department of Education, Dr Gillian Considine from The Smith Family, Jasmine Brooking from the Fitzroy Valley Community, Alexander Cockburn and Marilyn Chilvers from NSW FaCS Analysis and Research, Dr Mark McDonnell from the Queensland Department of Education and Training. Suzanne Purdon and Andrew Oakley from the Tasmanian Department of Education, and Mohamed Khalil from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.