City Beach Primary school offers a Pre-Kindy Program which is already well established within
the community and recognised as providing an invaluable opportunity for pre-kindergarten children and their parents and carers. Cluey Coastal Kids offers a fun interactive story-telling and play session.

The program runs monthly at the City Beach Primary School Kindergarten. A maximum of 20 children per session - so bookings are essential. The program is presented by an Early Childhood Teacher and a Speech Pathologist (see Brochure below).

Background: School entry aged children throughout the suburb of City Beach were assessed in 2003 and 2006 as part of the Australian Early Development Index ('AEDI'): Building Better Communities for Children project, a joint project of the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne in partnership with the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth. The AEDI project is aimed at enabling communities to understand how their children are developing at the time they reach school age, to measure the health and development of populations of children to help communities assess how well they are doing in supporting young children and their families. The AEDI is a population measure of young children's development in 5 developmental domains, language and cognitive skills, emotional maturity, physical health and well being, social competence and communication skills and general knowledge.

The results of the survey conducted in the suburb of City Beach showed that more than 50% of school entry aged children in the suburb were vulnerable in one or more of the domains. When this, evidence was presented to City Beach Primary School P&C it was decided to act. In conjunction with the school staff, who have the early education skills and knowledge, and in conjunction with the Health Department a program was devised and the P&C provided funding that enabled the launch of the early childhood development program 'Cluey Coastal Kids' within the local community.

We view the benefits as invaluable. Research has shown that supporting children in their early years greatly
increases the chances of better learning and life outcomes through the development of fundamental learning skills. The program offers an opportunity for parents to interact with their child and a team of early education specialists (teacher, speech pathologist and community health nurse) that they may otherwise not have access to. The specialists incorporate strategies to develop childrens' thinking and language skills that can easily be implemented and continued at home. It is an objective to also access occupational therapist skills, conditional on funding.