180,000 Rural Children are waiting on Critical Development Services

Due to the long distance from the main cities, rural children living in New South Wales are not getting the proper health and education support. As a result, the number of country children needing development services has grown by 23% every year for the past decade. Currently, 180,000 children need childhood development services.

Children in the central west and far west NSW are more developmentally vulnerable than the rest of NSW. There is a large gap between services available in rural areas and major cities. The demand has increased so much that there were enough job advertisements to rehire 13% of the speech pathology workforce.

Studies have shown that developmentally vulnerable children are at risk of a cycle of disadvantage stemming from behavioural issues and learning difficulties. A lack of specialists in rural and regional Australia has compromised the scheme for country communities.

Source: Guardian