Let's Start: Exploring Together
Want to take part in Let's Start? Visit the program website
Let’s Start is a targeted group program primarily for Indigenous children aged three to seven and their parents. Based on developmental principles, it focuses on enhancing children’s social and emotional learning, reducing problem behaviour, improving parent-child interaction and enhancing parenting skills.
Adapted from Exploring Together, a program first developed at Victoria’s Austin Hospital, Let’s Start responds to the diverse social and cultural circumstances of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory. It follows on from the successful Ngaripirpliga’ajirri program, which was the implementation of Exploring Together for 6 to 12-year-old children on the Tiwi Islands from 2004 to 2006.
The implementation and evaluation of Let’s Start will provide vital information on how to support and implement evidence-based intervention strategies in the health and education sectors in the Northern Territory.
Delivered in a range of remote and urban communities across the Tiwi Islands, Darwin and Palmerston and Victoria-Daly Shire, Let’s Start is supported by the Northern Territory Departments of Education and Training (NT DET) and Health and Families (NT DHF).
Project Leader: Dr Gary Robinson
Program funding: Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health (CRCAH), Commonwealth Department of Family, Community Services, Housing and Indigenous Affairs (FACSIA), Northern Territory Departments of Education and Training (NT DET), and Health and Families (NT DHF).
Program evaluation funding: Australian Research Council linkages program (ARC linkages)
Partners: NT DET, NT DHF, Top End Group Schools (TEGS), Catholic Education Office, participating schools and communities, Menzies School of Health Research, Institute of Child Health Research, University of Western Australia.
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Robinson, G. and B. Tyler (2006). Ngaripirliga'ajirri: An early intervention program on the Tiwi Islands, Final Evaluation Report (.pdf). Darwin, School for Social and Policy Research, Charles Darwin University
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