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We welcome Professors Stephen Zubrick, David Lawrence and Catherine Taylor from The University of Western Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute.

The team is known nationally for leading ground-breaking studies of children’s health, language development, education and mental health and wellbeing.  Their research include the WA Child Health Surveys, the first and second Australian Child and Adolescent Surveys of Mental Health and Wellbeing and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. These studies are highly influential in shaping national policy and services for children and families.

“Aside from the parenting children receive, there is probably no other developmental opportunity that changes their lives more than that of receiving an education,” says Professor Zubrick.

“Our team is thrilled to join the Faculty of Education. In doing so we become both students of, and contributors to, the work of the Faculty to enhance all children’s development in ways that lead to a fairer distribution of choices and positive outcomes in their life prospects.”

“We hope to contribute to the Faculty’s research programs and to the preparation of post-graduate and post-doctoral candidates in education and related fields.”

Professor Stephen Zubrick is a developmental scientist responsible for some of the largest Australian studies of child and adolescent health and wellbeing. He was the former Head of the Division of Population Science at the Telethon Kids Institute, and a Senior Principal Research Fellow there. His qualifications are in the fields of psychology, and speech and hearing science. Stephen had a lengthy career in WA as the state’s Assistant Principal Clinical Psychologist and was based at the Neurosciences Unit.  There he specialised in assessing and managing children with complex developmental disorders. He now specialises in creating and executing large-scale state and national cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of child and family development.

Professor David Lawrence is a leading Australian statistician, survey methodologist and social researcher. His research experience covers a range of disciplines including biostatistics and epidemiology, mental health and Indigenous wellbeing. He currently leads Young Minds Matter: The Second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. He has internationally recognised expertise in the analysis of linked administrative datasets, data from complex household surveys, administrative data linked to survey datasets, multi-level modelling, non-linear modelling, and time-series analysis. David has a career-long interest in outcomes for children and families with disadvantaged backgrounds.

Professor Cate Taylor has expertise in child development and life span/longitudinal epidemiology. Her primary research is in language development and disorders in childhood and related developmental outcomes such as school readiness, school achievement and mental health. She enjoys working in partnership with government agencies and communities to create and share knowledge to improve early years services and supports for children and families. Cate has held research appointments at the Telethon Kids Institute including a term as Director of the Centre for Developmental Health.

The team bring research expertise and focus on early years development.

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Siaw Chai , Marketing and Communications Officer  +61 (08) 6488 2382