Early Years Edit | April 2025

Welcome to the April 2025 edition of the Early Years Edit. In this Edit we cover:

• New infant sleep standards
• Inklings Program now offering regional WA in-person support 
• Eyes and ears check
• National Early Years Strategy, Outcomes Framework and Action Plan
• Prospective associations between preschool exposure to violent televiewing and externalising behaviour in middle adolescent boys and girls
• Little Aussie Bugs

New infant sleep standards

New infant sleep standards

Sadly, between 2001 and 2021, 151 babies died in Australia due to inclined products such as rockers, bouncers, and propped items. To reduce the risk of sudden death and injury from inclined products two new mandatory (safety and information) standards were introduced in July 2024. These standards apply to infant sleep products (such as cots, porta cots etc) and non-sleep products which infants may also tend to fall asleep in (rockers, bouncers, swings etc). 
The safety standard outlines the design, construction, performance, and testing requirements for these products and the information standard outlines the detail (such as assembly, how to use the product, warnings etc.) to be supplied with these products. 

Understanding the risks

 These standards outline some of the hazardous design features associated with sleep and inclined non-sleep products including:

• Inclines and curves: the surface of an infant sleep product must not have an incline greater than 7 degrees to the horizontal. It must be flat and not curved.
• Padded surfaces: the sleep surface, including the mattress, must be sufficiently firm and rigid.
• Pillows: moveable soft sleep related products (including toys) can cover an infant’s face and cause suffocation. It is recommended that these products are kept away from an infant’s sleeping environment. 

Avoid anything that restricts easy movement, breathing and causes entanglement. 

While Consumer Protection undertakes regular market monitoring, it is important to be aware that unsafe products still exist. Always check the instructions, ensure the product you are using complies with the current standards and check that it does not have hazardous design features.  
Learn how to keep sleeping babies safe: Red Nose Safe Sleeping Recommendations | Red Nose Australia.

Read more about Consumer Protection and stay updated with Product Safety Australia. For further reading on the standards, please visit Mandatory safety and information standard for infant products.

Inklings Program now offering

regional WA in-person support  

The Kids Research Institute Australia is expanding the Inklings program, supporting babies aged 6–18 months who show early signs of differences in social interaction and communication development.

While the program has been available via telehealth statewide, new partners Out Loud Developmental Services in Bunbury and CONNECT Paediatric Therapy Services in Karratha ensure families in regional WA can now access in-person support, alongside our eight metro delivery partners.

Families may benefit from Inklings if:

• Babies show delays or differences in social and communication development (e.g. not smiling back or using eye contact to get attention).
• Caregivers are concerned about their baby's social interaction and communication development.

The program is funded through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for eligible WA families and is delivered in collaboration with The Kids, Child and Adolescent Health Service, and WA Country Health Service.

For further information on the program and for regional support, please contact:

Phone: (08) 6319 1155
Email: inklings@telethonkids.org.au
Website: inklings.org.au/wa

Eyes and ears check

We always want to ensure children are at their best and ready to learn, make friends and feel confident.

The Child and Adolescent Health Service provides a free health check for all children in the year they start school. This is generally in school hours and is conducted by a health nurse. With parental consent, a nurse will check vision, hearing, growth, teeth, and general health. Results will be shared with parents confidentially and, if needed, arrangements made for follow-up assessments or referrals. 

Further information on these health checks is available on the School Entry Health Assessment website. This includes a short video to demonstrate what the nurse will do in a health check, as well as information about developmental skills for most three-year-olds.

It is important to consider repeating health checks as children grow and develop, and as school becomes full-time, with greater expectations to learn and concentrate for extended periods. Having regular eye/vision and hearing checks can have an enormous impact. The earlier anomalies are detected and intervention delivered, the greater benefit for your child’s health and wellbeing, participation and learning at school. 

Regular eye checks are also important given the growing concern for increasing cases of myopia (short-sightedness) in children, with links to both genetic and environmental risk factors such as increased time spent indoors and on devices. The Lions Eye Institute is conducting research into early onset myopia and, alarmingly state ‘the fastest rise in prevalence is occurring among school children as young as six years of age’. Myopia can lead to more serious outcomes if left untreated, visit the Lions Eye Institute website to find out more about eye conditions such as myopia, their research and services.

It is also crucial to check children’s hearing regularly. Hearing loss can be due to a wide variety of causes, including illness, injury and/or inherited conditions. Hearing Australia provides more information on the many causes for hearing loss, including these that may be identified at early screening appointments, and others not present until later in children's development. The Kids Research Institute Australia’s Ear Health team is working towards understanding causes of childhood hearing loss, including research projects, and intervention design and evaluation, including partnering to develop the WA Child Ear Health Strategy and Otitis Media Guidelines.

Raisingchildren.net has a range of information about children’s health for parents and carers, including why you might see an optometrist or an audiologist, types of tests for different ages, and costs, including Medicare and bulk-billing eligibility.

National Early Years Strategy

Outcomes Framework and Action Plan

The Australian Government released the 10-year national Early Years Strategy (Strategy) in May 2024. Extensive consultation informed the strategy design, including an advisory panel, early years summit, survey, public submissions, and roundtables. The Strategy’s vision is:

‘That all children in Australia thrive in their early years. They have the opportunity to reach their full potential when nurtured by empowered and connected families who are supported by strong communities.’

An evidence summary, ‘Why children and their early years matter’ also informed the Strategy and is publicly available. The summary addresses brain development, early childhood health and wellbeing and the outcomes of investing in young children. This information may also support the wider community to understand, prioritise and promote the importance of the early years.

In December 2024, the First Action Plan for the Strategy was released, providing the steps planned under each priority focus area over the next three years (2024 - 2027). The Outcomes Framework was also released at this time, providing transparency of how Strategy implementation will be measured over the next 10-years, including progress against outcomes informed by the Strategy’s priority focus areas and vison. Of the eight outcomes, six are child-centred, and one each focusses on families and community.

For more information, including an opportunity to subscribe for updates and access above-mentioned documentation in accessible formats, please visit the Australian Government, Department of Social Services, Early Years Strategy website.

Prospective associations between preschool exposure to violent televiewing and externalising behaviour in middle adolescent boys and girls 

A recent Canadian study of typically developing girls and boys (with a sample size of over 900 per gender) has identified associations between exposure to violent media in the early years and antisocial behaviour in adolescence, particularly for boys.

Data included parent’s records of how often their children viewed violent television at age three-and-a-half and four-and-a-half years old. A decade later, when the children were 15 years old, they self-reported antisocial behaviours.

A range of long-term risks and aggressive behaviours were predicted for boys who had viewed violent content in their early years. These included hitting and threatening others, use of weapons and appearances in court. These findings were discussed in the context of relevant factors including boys’ preferences and social learning theory, perceived rewards for aggressive behaviours in media content, and the link between violent content and desensitisation and reduced empathy.

Prospective Associations Between Preschool Exposure to Violent Televiewing and Externalizing Behaviour in Middle Adolescent Boys and Girls was Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in January 2025. The findings provide a potential opportunity to educate parents and communities around reducing risks and supporting optimal development, in youth and beyond.

Little Aussie Bugs

A cross-disciplinary team at Edith Cowan University (ECU) has developed a suite of resources to promote health literacy among children aged 2-4 years. The Little Aussie Bugs books incorporate dialogic reading techniques and cover topics around personal hygiene, healthy eating and oral health, featuring well-known and loved Australian animals, with the ‘bugs’ who either support health or make us unwell. Each book includes a series of learning activities to assist adults engaging with children to embed health literacy experiences in daily life, using routines and rituals familiar to children. They could be used in the family home, playgroups, childcare centres or other community settings. The books are also available as an online resource, together with downloadables and online professional learning to build knowledge about health literacy and dialogic reading.

For more information about these resources, including how to order your own copies, please visit the ECU Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute Little Aussie Bugs website.

Early Years Edit archive

Did you know that previous versions of the Early Years Edit can be found on our website?

Visit Early Years Edit (www.wa.gov.au) to find previous versions of the newsletter and Connecting Early Years Networks (www.wa.gov.au) for general information about the Early Years Networks.

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