Child Aware
The role of Place in Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
Wellbeing: Is the Baby disappearing
with the Bathwater?
Child Aware Approaches Conference
Melbourne, April 11, 2013
Adj A/Prof Geoff Woolcock,
Griffith University / Wesley Mission Brisbane

Child Friendly Cities / Communities:
A Resurgent Agenda
Themes:
1.

How children and young people’s lives
are affected by different urban trends and
forms

2.

How these differentially impact across
the age spectrum

3.

How increasing use of new ICTs has
affected analysis of young people’s
sense of place

4.

How the urban physical environment can
better children’s lives

Child Friendly Cities / Communities:
Key Questions
ď Ž

What are the critical processes for
understanding the actual places and
communities that most Australian children
live, learn and play in and how children and
young people's relate to these
environments?

ď Ž

What are the practicalities of attempting to
both modify and create urban built and
natural environments to be more oriented to
children and young people's needs?

Child Friendly Cities / Communities:
Key Questions






What are the most effective mechanisms
for fostering inclusion of children and young
people in the design and implementation of
child-friendly communities?
How readily can modified and newly
developed urban environments incorporate
adequate natural spaces and places so
vital to children and young people’s
development?
Can new information technologies actually
be a catalyst for child and young people to
have more direct interaction with nature
and outdoor experiences?

Reinstating Children & Young
People
• Resurgence

of concern for children in
professional, political and popular quarters

Child-Friendly but Risk
Averse?
Herald-Sun columnist,
11/08/2007
“Gill's off-hand dismissal of
schoolyard friction and his
easy acceptance that we need
to embrace the risks of
childhood might be welcome in
the happy homes that most of
us inhabit… perhaps we do
micromanage our children's
lives a little too much. But
there are kids in every
classroom willing to torment
the vulnerable. And just a few
of them grow up into Robert
Arthur Selby Lowes, blokes
who spend their days
navigating the dead ends of
their low lives looking for a
Sheree Beasley, or a Daniel
Morcombe, or a Madeleine
McCann.
Pass me the bubble wrap”.

Free Range Kids?

Child Social Exclusion (CSE)

Neighbourhood Effects

Neighbourhood Effects

Neighbourhood Effects
Janus/off diagonal communities in Australia

Density & Children

Children in Outer Suburbia

Gender Differences?

Cultural Differences?

We Built
This City!

Nature-Deficit Disorder?
Commonly credited with
helping to inspire an
international movement to
reintroduce children to
nature;
Describes possible
negative consequences to
individual health and the
social fabric as children
move indoors and away
from physical contact with
the natural world â&#x20AC;&#x201C;
particularly unstructured,
solitary experience.

Nature-Deficit Disorder?
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Today's youth spend
just four to seven
minutes outside each
day in unstructured
outdoor play such as
climbing trees, building
forts, catching bugs or
playing tag, studies
show. Yet, they spend
more than seven hours
each day in front of a
screenâ&#x20AC;?.

Nature-Deficit Disorder?
73% of respondents
played outdoors more
often than indoors when
they were young
compared to only 13% of
their children
 72% of respondents
played outside every day
as kids compared to only
35% of their children
 1 in 10 children today
play outside once a week
or less.


Proportionate Universalism
Focusing solely on the most
disadvantaged will not reduce health
inequalities sufficiently.
To reduce the steepness of the social
gradient in health, actions must be
universal, but with a scale and intensity
that is proportionate to the level of
disadvantage.
We call this proportionate universalism.
Michael Marmot, WHO