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Tuesday, 2 June 2015

The Smith Family’s Anne Hampshire and the Fogarty Foundation’s Annie Fogarty will discuss the importance of early intervention and innovation in childhood education at a UWA-hosted lunch tomorrow.

Anne Hampshire, Head of Research and Advocacy at The Smith Family, will speak about her recent work published in the CEDA report Early intervention: The key to preventing entrenched disadvantage .

“Children cannot choose the circumstances they are born into. For one in 10 Australian children growing up in disadvantage, it can limit their choices, opportunities and outcomes in life,” Ms Hampshire said.

“Helping children to do well in their educational journey– from early childhood, through school and beyond – delivers long-term benefits to them, their families and, potentially, generations to come. It’s also unquestionably of economic and social benefit to Australia as a whole.

“The Smith Family is delivering its core educational support program, Learning for Life , to more than 100,000 disadvantaged children and families in 94 communities across Australia, including around 10,000 in WA. We are seeing great improvements in school attendance, Year 12 completion and post-school engagement in employment or further education among our Learning for Life students.”

Annie Fogarty AM, Executive Chair of the Fogarty Foundation , will discuss the Foundation's programs aimed at ending entrenched disadvantage.

“Australia has a significant minority of students who are not achieving even minimum educational outcomes and these children predominantly go to schools in low socio-economic communities. We need to support these schools so that every child receives the quality education they deserve,” Ms Fogarty said.

“We believe an essential strategy is to build the capacity of school leadership teams to enable highly effective teaching and enhance parent and community engagement thereby improving the educational outcomes of the students.”

The lunch will include a panel discussion with Anne Hampshire, Annie Fogarty and Jo Ferrie, Social Investment Manager at Woodside Energy. The Woodside Development Fund represents one of the largest and most innovative corporate social investments in early childhood development and is focused on a collaborative approach to creating early childhood development outcomes.

“The Woodside Fund is our $20 million, ten-year commitment to achieving the vision that every child thrives in their development, learning and life. A lot of exploration went into that vision, but the short story is that we ultimately came to see that young children are the highest point of leverage in making real social change. And by investing in early childhood, we can stop issues before they start,” Ms Ferrie said.

The lunch is part of the 2015 Social Impact Festival hosted by UWA Business School’s Centre for Social Impact . UWA CSI Director Professor Paul Flatau said: “Tomorrow’s lunch features some of Australia’s most innovative programs in education and early childhood development aimed at ending entrenched disadvantage.”

Hosted by the UWA Business School’s Centre for Social Impact, the lunch will take place on Wednesday 3 June at 11.50am at The University Club of Western Australia.

Tickets are available here for $125 per person.

For further information, contact Margaret Ritchie on 6488 5691 or [email protected]

Media references

Karen Della Torre (UWA Business School)                                           (+61 8) 6488 8538
Verity Chia (UWA Business School)                                                     (+61 8) 6488 1346

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