The Australian Child and Youth Wellbeing Atlas and UNICEF Australia collaborated to strengthen how data on children and young people is understood and used across the country through the 2025 State of Australia’s Children Report.
While UNICEF Australia’s State of Australia’s Children work provided a national and state picture of wellbeing, the Atlas played a complementary role, bringing these insights to life at a local, community level through interactive maps and visualisations. By enabling exploration and comparison of data across states, regions and communities, the Atlas helped translate high-level findings into meaningful, place-based insights.
Combining national evidence with the Atlas’ detailed geographic data, this collaboration played a critical role in helping stakeholders move beyond national averages, enabling a better understanding of how outcomes vary across communities. Policymakers, service providers, and community organisations are better equipped to identify priority areas, uncover drivers behind trends in child and youth wellbeing, and design targeted and equitable responses.
The partnership also created new opportunities for engagement, including joint webinars that connected national evidence with local QLD context and lived experience. These activities supported knowledge sharing across sectors and helped embed data-informed approaches into planning and decision-making.
Overall, the collaboration demonstrates the value of integrating local data into national narratives. By integrating the strengths of both, UNICEF Australia and the Atlas supports more informed, coordinated and community-responsive decision making — helping ensure that efforts to improve child and youth wellbeing are grounded in the real experiences of communities.
