What We Do
What is systems change?
Together, we are creating systems that:
- Prevent disease and poor health outcomes by focusing on reducing risk factors and early intervention and support.
- Make healthcare and services easier to access for families and communities.
- Strengthen connections so every child feels safe, supported, and valued.
- Are accountable for delivering real, measurable benefits to children’s health and wellbeing.
- Support caregivers and workforces so they can better nurture and protect children.
- Listen to children, young people, and families to shape policies that truly meet their needs and aspirations.
- Invest wisely in prevention and support to create lasting impact.
- Use data, evidence, and lived experience to drive better outcomes.
By working together, we can ensure every young Queenslander in every community has the chance to thrive.
What is a System?
Systems are networks of people, policies, services and structures. Many systems influence a child’s health and development—like healthcare, education, community support, housing, transport, and urban planning and development. When these systems don’t work well, and aren’t well connected, children and young people can miss out on what they need to thrive.
What is Systems Change?
TQKP is working to improve the systems that shape the health and wellbeing of Queensland’s children and young people. As an initiative of ARACY, TQKP works at local, state and national levels to ensure policies and services prevent disease, improve access to care, and create healthier futures.
Why Systems Need to Change
Right now, too many children experience preventable adversities and health challenges due to gaps in early intervention, fragmented services, and barriers to care. By working together, we can create systems that:
- Prevent disease and poor health outcomes through early support.
- Make healthcare and services easier to access for families and communities.
- Strengthen connections so every child feels safe, supported, and valued.
- Support caregivers and workforces to provide quality care.
- Listen to children, young people, and families to ensure policies meet their needs.
- Invest wisely in prevention to create lasting impact.
- Use data, evidence, and lived experience to drive real change.
How We Create Change
TQKP invites all Queenslanders to be part of this effort—how do we make the systems that shape children’s lives work better?
- Bringing people together. Solving big challenges takes many perspectives and strong partnerships.
- Thinking ahead. Every decision—big or small—affects children’s health, learning, and future wellbeing.
- Focusing on prevention and timely intervention. Addressing the root causes of diseases and poor health instead of just treating the symptoms and consequences.
Creating Lasting Change
Every child deserves the best start in life. We focus on:
- Preventing health problems early. Catching issues early reduces the risk of chronic disease, mental health challenges, and developmental delays.
- Making better decisions. Every policy, initiative and service choice shapes children’s long-term health.
- Bringing people together. Governments, organisations, communities, families and practitioners all have a role in reducing health risks and improving outcomes.
- Fixing root causes. Addressing poverty, inequality, and access to care leads to better lifelong health.
Imagine a Queensland where every child grows up healthy and supported.
This is the future we’re building together.
“Every area of domestic policy – from transport to housing, and everything in between – touches the lives of children and families. … Yet children are too often not at the centre of policy focus.”
Statutory Authority quoted in Joint Project on Systems Leadership for Child and Youth Wellbeing: Stage 1 Synthesis Report. Every Child and ANZSOG – 2021
Kids are great systems thinkers
“If every area is supported, we’re able to be happy, healthy, and fly from the nest.”
Comment from young attendee at ARACY National Summit (which formed the basis for ARACY’s The Nest)
“A community is like a puzzle, you need to have all the bits to make it work.”
M (girl, aged 9) From Putting the pieces in place: children, communities and social capital in Australia, Sharon Bessell, The Australian National University 2014
“If we act out, find out why and help us to address the cause, don’t penalise us for acting out (for example, suspension) – all that does is marginalise us more.”
Keeping kids safe and well – your voices, National Children’s Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission 2021
“A child’s ecosystem is influenced by social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors that impact healthy development and wellbeing. These influences start before birth and have an impact through an individual’s life and across generations … When outcomes are driven by forces that cut across multiple systems, even doing everything perfectly within one system is not enough. Multisector causality requires a multisector response”.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. Vibrant and healthy kids: Aligning science, practice, and policy to advance health equity.
“Fundamentally, our systems are too often experienced by children, young people and families as disconnected or duplicative, wasteful and discordant. Too often our systems don’t work together to actually ‘serve’ – in the sense of enabling people to exercise agency and to be able to change their life circumstances and trajectory.”
From Joint Project on Systems Leadership for Child and Youth Wellbeing: Stage 1 Synthesis Report. Every Child and ANZSOG – 2021
“Very often people are just role players within a system. They are not running it; they are acting within it. This has not been a popular idea with people who think they are in charge…but in fact, unless they are knowledgeable in systems, they will fall into a pattern of doing what the system dictates. If they understand the system, they can alter that behavior.”
Jay Wright Forrester, Inventor
Related links & documents
DOWNLOAD
Joint Project on Systems Leadership for Child and Youth Wellbeing: Stage 1 Synthesis Report. Every Child and Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) 2021
This report underpins the work of Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership, canvassing what’s good and not so good about our child and youth wellbeing systems. It proposes key reform directions, and shows how working at a systems level can shape better futures for children and young people.
PDF 7.9MB
WHAT WE DO
Looking for more?
Search the resource library for reports, submission, articles, videos, webinars and more to inspire you and build your knowledge and confidence to create change!
What else we do
Why TQKP?
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Our Approach
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Our Initiatives
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Year In Review
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More about our work ...
Explainer video: "What surrounds us shapes us"
This short explainer video introduces the Resilience Scale and ARACY’s The Nest framework as models to help understand how experiences and environments shape children’s health and development.
Partnerships charter
Our Charter clearly sets out the partnership’s shared goals, values and ways of working to improve systems for Queensland’s children. We invite you to review the Charter and join us if you support our shared vision for Queensland kids.
Report: Queensland Place-Based Rivermap
The Queensland Place-Based Rivermap proposes systemic actions to support our many place-based initiatives. Let’s work together to create local conditions that are good for families and kids.
