Project Overview

The aim of the Western Australian Child Development Atlas is to support communities, services, and government agencies in collaborative efforts to raise healthy, happy, and successful children and young people, regardless of where they live.

The Child Development Atlas project is made possible thanks to the generosity of our funders, the Ian Potter Foundation and the Minderoo Foundation.

The Child Development Atlas in an online, interactive tool that maps data on indicators of learning, wellbeing, social, and developmental outcomes for children and young people in Western Australia. Administrative, census, and survey data are mapped at different levels of geography, providing a snapshot of how children are developing across different communities. 

In June 2018, the project reached the first milestone - the development of a pilot Child Development Atlas. The pilot Atlas has been developed as a 'proof of concept', with the aim of gathering feedback on the functions and format of the tool. The pilot includes a limited set of indicators, primarily focused on the physical and mental health of children and young people in Western Australia. This version of the Atlas will be restricted to a select group of users throughout a period of evaluation, expected to take up to 12 months. 

During the pilot evaluation, further refinements were made to the Atlas, and the range of indicators was expanded from 24 to over 100. The full version of the Child Development Atlas was made available in November 2020, with access available to all users.

Project timeline:

• June 2018: Launch of the pilot Child Development Atlas
• November 2020: Launch of the full version of the Child Development Atlas
• Ongoing: Annual updates to maps and addition of new data