The Untapped Potential of Neighbourhoods for Supporting Children with Disability and their Families

Source: Pexels - Daniel Frank

In today’s post, Professor Hannah Badland from RMIT University explores why neighbourhoods matter for the health of children with disability, an area largely overlooked in Australian disability policy. This blog draws on an article published this week by Hannah and colleagues, which shows that Australian disability policy does not capture the complexity of this issue.

Why are neighbourhoods important for children with disability?

Children with disability experience poorer health and wellbeing compared with their non-disabled peers and are more likely to be raised in poorer families living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

These poorer outcomes are often not associated with children’s impairments but instead relate to persistent experiences of social exclusion and material hardship.

When children with disability are not provided with adequate supports for participation in early learning and other developmental opportunities, there are major impacts on their long-term health, social, and economic trajectories, which track into adulthood and the next generation

We know early intervention is key to optimising children’s long-term outcomes, with the most beneficial window being in the early years. Collectively, improving access to and availability of neighbourhood resources for children with disability and their families supports inclusion and participation, reduces disparities and improves health and wellbeing, both immediately and over the lifespan.

Neighbourhoods are important ‘social determinants of health’ levers, which are defined as the ‘conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life’.

It has been estimated that the social determinants of health influence between 30-55% of all health outcomes, yet overwhelmingly, disability interventions have focused on more downstream drivers, such as health service access and individual support. 

What did we do?

Disability policies that enable more liveable neighbourhoods for children provide a mechanism for creating inclusive cities for children with disability and their families.

To understand whether this occurs in Australian disability policy we analysed 13 current Australian national, state, and territory disability policy documents to understand the extent that neighbourhood features were considered levers to support health, wellbeing, and social inclusion for children with disability.

A liveable neighbourhood for children is defined as: 

‘one with access to affordable housing, with low levels of traffic that provide access to attractive and safe places where children can play and interact safely with others and their environment, including access to good quality parks, facilities and services, social infrastructure, and public transport within walking or cycling distance’.

This definition was subsequently coded into eight neighbourhood life areas regarded as being important for children with disability and their families: education, family friendly destinations, food outlets, housing, public open space, public transport, traffic, and walkability.

What did we find?

Seven out of the eight life areas defining a liveable neighbourhood for children were considered by at least one, and often multiple, disability policies, with education and housing receiving the most attention. No Australian disability policy documents considered food outlets.

While most of the neighbourhood life areas that support good child health and wellbeing were considered in Australian disability policy, the strategies documented were largely simplistic and did not capture the multi-sectoral and multi-portfolio approaches required to create neighbourhoods that holistically support children with disability and their families.

We conclude that currently neighbourhoods are not considered major levers in Australian disability policy for shaping outcomes for children with disability and their families. 

What’s next?

Delivering more liveable neighbourhoods that enable participation and inclusion for children with disability has the potential to make a real difference at the population-level.

Globally, it is estimated that 240 million children have a disability,  and in 2018, 7.7% of Australian children aged 0-14 years were identified as having a disability, approximating to 357,000 children.

By moving the lines of inquiry upstream to focus on neighbourhoods as an intervention lever, we are hopeful that long-term benefits of inclusion, participation, and better health and wellbeing will more fully be realised for children with disability and their families.

This blog is drawn from an article published in Urban Policy and Research by Badland, H., Villanueva, K., Dearn, E. and Alderton, A., 2025 called Do Australian Disability Policies Support Accessible and Inclusive Neighbourhoods for Children with Disability and Their Families? https://doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2025.2541172.

In this article, we have used person-first language. Person-first language puts the person before their disability – for example, ‘children with disability’. We recognise that identity-first language is important to the many people with disability who have advocated for the use of this language.

About the author: Professor Hannah Badland is the Director of the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Hannah investigates how the built environment is connected to health, wellbeing, and inequities in both adults and children internationally, with an interest in populations disadvantaged by the system and inadequate policies. Professor Badland is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (FT230100131).

Moderator - Dr Elroy Dearn