The SCAFOLD (Strengthening Children and Family Outcomes using Linked Data) group at the Centre for Child Development and Education (CCDE) focuses on research using linked data to better understand and improve health, educational and social outcomes for Northern Territory (NT) children, young people and their families.
Information about many of our life experiences, from birth through to death are recorded by government agencies, services and programs in a wide range of administrative datasets. Data linkage is a method for reliably identifying and combining records for individuals across these whole-population administrative datasets to conduct research that would otherwise be impractical or impossible. It enables inclusion of harder to reach, vulnerable groups such as children in the care or justice systems with minimal risks to privacy. Strict security processes for accessing and using the data ensures privacy and safety of individuals and communities is maintained. Research using linked data is one of the safest and most cost-effective ways to produce high quality population-level evidence to inform improved targeting of interventions, evidence-based policy, and equity in child outcomes.
Over the last 15 years, research in the Centre has used linked data to produce high quality, locally relevant evidence on risk and protective factors across the life course, supported investments in early childhood, evaluated welfare programs, and informed key policy and system reforms, such as the recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children.
Central to much the program of research undertaken by SCAFOLD is the Child and Youth Development Research Partnership (CYDRP), a strategic research partnership between Menzies and the NT Government that supports the development, management, and use of whole-population linked data assets to investigate a range of outcomes for NT children and families. This program of research is supported by the First Nations Advisory Group who help us ensure principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (ID-SOV) are applied to all aspects of our work.
Our current linked data asset, Extract 3, supports research across several themes and is supported by a comprehensive set of governance arrangements and processes that ensures use of the data not only satisfies our aims of improving outcomes for children and families but produces scientifically rigorous evidence that is relevant to policy-makers and communities.