Raising Children

Synopsis

The Raising Children DVD is a comprehensive parenting resource, covering all the basics from birth to five years old, that will be distributed to all new parents by the Australian Government commencing later this year. The DVD is the official companion to the government-funded national parenting website, raisingchildren.net.au, widely considered the definitive online resource for quality assured parenting information in Australia.

The DVD features real families and experts filmed in a directed documentary style. Fifty families from all over Australia were filmed over six months, including a 19-year old single father from Ipswich and his 18 month old son; a young, remarried widowed father from Melbourne with a recombined family; and a young Indigenous family of five living in Redfern, among many others, all raising their children admirably and making the best of circumstances. The DVD also features a variety of Australian celebrities to demonstrate the universality of the challenges faced by parents.

The DVD was developed over five years and is based on large-scale Government research into the wants and needs of Australian families. The DVD has high production values and innovative, interactive design, to improve the effectiveness of valuable harm prevention information. Three short movies - (1) Newborn, (2) Baby and (3) Child - explaining top priority and preventative concepts - let viewers customise their experience simply by pressing the ‘Enter’ button on their DVD remote to opt-in to extra ‘pop-up clips’ that appear throughout the main movies. At the end of each optional clip, the viewer is automatically returned to the main movie which resumes playing where they left off. There are over 50 extra in-depth clips, including 16 demos, for a total of five hours of content on one dual-layer disk.

The Raising Children DVD is likely to be the most interactive documentary-style DVD of its kind. Hundreds of hours of information-architecture design and interactivity authoring were required to produce a comprehensive user-friendly resource that would be informative and accessible to the entire population of Australian new parents. The DVD has employed the most up to date science, both technical and physiological to enhance the communication value of this ground-breaking resource.


Power of Documentary. By creating a documentary about parenting, parents are given the opportunity to see other parenting styles, relate to and learn from the experiences of others, and watch practical demonstrations. Applying the tools of documentary to the quality content of the website enhances the messages, making them more engaging and accessible.

Education Tool. Already, the Raising Children DVD is used by a variety of early childhood professionals, including Maternal Child Health nurses, Communities for Children project managers, and child care workers, as an education tool with both parents and professionals.

Impact. The impact of early childhood environments and family functioning on outcomes for children is undisputed. Furthermore, it is parents - not education, intervention or any care programs they may be involved in - that have the greatest impact on a child’s healthy development. By supporting parents and helping them to make informed decisions through innovative film making, the Raising Children DVD can have a great impact on improving long-term outcomes for children.

Impact

Reach
The Prime Minister launched the DVD to the Australian public on the 20th of August 2007, announcing that the DVD would be made available free to all new parents first to order via the Raising Children website, and later in the year, in the Government’s ‘New Parent Kit’ distributed in hospitals at the birth of every child in the country. In the first two weeks over 15,000 families ordered a copy of the DVD, with awareness arising only from the publicity surrounding the launch, no advertising. In August 2007, the Raising Children website had 112,000 unique users, totalling over 2 million visits since its launch in May 2006.

Need and Importance
Extensive research has shown that almost all parents wish they had a single source of reliable information, especially the first time around. Many parents express hesitation at asking for help from professionals and support services because they feel intimidated or embarrassed - they feel they ought to know, or they feel too shy and awkward. In many cases parents don’t read books or other materials. The Raising Children DVD can overcome many of those barriers by enabling parents to pick up the basics at their own pace and in the privacy of their own homes in a common, user-friendly medium. By making the best early childhood info available to new parents, the DVD can be instrumental in improving the crucial early years of a child’s life by improving parenting confidence and engagement. This, in turn, usually leads to improved long-term outcomes for children across a broad range of indicators.

International First
The DVD is unique in that it represents an international first – the first time a nation will distribute a comprehensive, demonstrative, quality assured, educational tool to the entire population of new parents right at the beginning when it can make the most difference.

Engaging
Every effort has been made to ensure that the Raising Children DVD is engaging and accessible, and that parents can relate to the information and how it is presented. It contains essential information and strategies, parent stories, and demonstrations, recognising that, based on recent findings on mirror neurons in the brain, the most effective way of learning is by watching other people demonstrate particular strategies as they talk about important information, either in person or on film. The more engaging the demonstration, the more the viewer will understand and remember the information, and be able to implement it.

Quality Assurance
The DVD content stems from the Raising Children Website content, where each article is reviewed by two independent experts from a panel of over 100 experts from around the country. The DVD content was reviewed at key stages by a separate panel of experts and by parents all over Australia. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with parents saying that they wished they had had the DVD when they had their first child and that seeing other parents’ experiences decreased feelings of isolation and gave them more confidence. Australian parenting experts commented that a resource like the DVD was long overdue and would be a valuable tool in their work with families. The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is also formally evaluating the DVD with parents from all over Australia participating in the research.

Budget
Collaborative partnerships between Government and non-government organisations enabled this DVD to be produced at a fraction of the expense that it would otherwise have cost.