Supporting School Readiness: Locating health and development screening services in local community sites (The CUBS project)

Supporting School Readiness: Locating health and development screening services in local community sit
Check-Ups Before School (CUBS) program

TeEACH is investigating the provision of early childhood health and developmental screening in a pilot program developed in Mt Druitt in association with The Hive, FACS and NSW Health.

The Hive, under the auspices of United Way Australia, provided funding for research to evaluate the impact of the CUBS program. The proposed research commenced in November 2019 and continued into 2020, with data collection in early 2020.

Research Aims

The proposed research will be conducted in three over-lapping phases, guided by the following aims:

  1. To understand the barriers and facilitators for families in participating in early childhood health and development screening programs before starting school.
  2. To examine whether participation in the screening program leads to:
    • earlier diagnosis of child health and development challenges,
    • increased family engagement with health and other services,
    • parent awareness of children’s development and learning and supports available
    • higher levels of parent satisfaction with the supports available to them.
  3. To explore the impact of the screening program on school readiness and cross-sector partnerships to support children in the first year of school.