Watch Me Grow program: Invest early to break the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage
For many children, the chance to receive early support depends on whether developmental concerns are identified in the first years of life. Through Watch Me Grow, SPHERE funding helped test a new equitable way to reach families earlier, connect health and wrap around social-care services more effectively and give every child the opportunity to thrive regardless of their cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic or demographic background.
Initially supported by SPHERE seed funding, Watch Me Grow has grown from early feasibility testing in South Western Sydney into a major program of research, implementation and policy influence. It has attracted more than $10 million in follow-on funding, expanded across health districts, GP practices, community hubs, playgroups, libraries and early childhood education settings, and helped inform NSW Health policy, including the 2022 Blue Book revision and Brighter Beginnings initiative.
Watch Me Grow: the backstory
Watch Me Grow was developed to address a significant gap we identified as an “inverse care law”: those children from the most disadvantaged background with the highest risk of developmental problems were least likely to access child developmental checks and services early. Although developmental surveillance checks are recommended through the NSW Personal Health Record program, commonly known as the Blue Book, many children were missing these critical assessments during the early years (only 12% -30% uptake) when intervention can have the greatest impact.
Led by Professor Valsamma Eapen from UNSW Sydney and South Western Sydney Local Health District & Ingham Institute, the project focused on overcoming the social, cultural and structural barriers that prevent families from engaging with developmental monitoring and support services.
“In our clinical work, we could see that many children were not being identified until much later, when valuable opportunities for early intervention had already been missed,” Prof Eapen said.
“We wanted to create a system that would provide equitable access to developmental surveillance for all families including those who were hard to reach due to service system barriers.”
The initial SPHERE-funded project tested the Watch Me Grow Electronic platform (WMG-E) and integrated care approaches in general practices and community hubs serving culturally and linguistically diverse families in South Western Sydney. The digital platform was designed to empower parents to monitor their child’s development while creating clearer pathways to assessment, support and intervention when concerns were identified.
The early pilot demonstrated that digital developmental surveillance was both feasible and acceptable to families and service providers. More importantly, it showed that integrated, digitally enabled approaches could improve uptake of developmental checks and identify developmental and psychosocial risks earlier than traditional models of care.
Those early findings became the foundation for a much larger program of research, implementation and policy change.
Watch Me Grow expands
Since receiving SPHERE support, Watch Me Grow has attracted substantial follow-on funding, including an NHMRC Partnership Grant worth approximately $1.5 million, an Autism Co-operative Research grant for autism surveillance of around $900,000, NSW COVID 19 grant of around $500,000; NSW Translational Research Grant Scheme funding for First 2000 Days Care Connect of around $850,000, MRFF funding of approximately $2 million, an ARC grant of approximately $1.5 million, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence funding of approximately $2.5 million, a NSW TRGS grant for Integrated Kids Connect program for around $500,000 and another NHMRC Partnership Grant funding for integrated tiered Connect and care program of $1 million. This also led to the establishment of the Fairfield Integrated Child and Family hub to provide health with wrap around services under one roof at Karitane, which received $6.5 million from NSW Government and $6.5 million from Paul Ramsay Foundation.
These investments have supported large-scale randomised controlled trials, implementation studies, economic evaluations and workforce development initiatives aimed at transforming developmental surveillance and early childhood intervention across Australia.
“SPHERE’s seed funding allowed us to establish proof of concept and demonstrate that this approach could work in real-world settings,” Prof Eapen explains.
“That evidence gave us the platform to secure larger competitive grants and expand the program well beyond what was originally possible.”
Watch Me Grow: a suite of programs
Today, Watch Me Grow has evolved into a comprehensive suite of programs supporting children and families across multiple health and community settings including urban and rural, multi-cultural and Aboriginal, government (multiple states and Commonwealth) and non-Governmental services.
Watch Me Grow Electronic has directly influenced NSW Health policy, contributing to the 2022 revision of the Personal Health Record Blue Book program and informing the NSW Government’s Brighter Beginnings initiative. The Watch Me Grow Integrated model has been implemented across general practices and in community and preschool educational settings across South Western and Central Sydney, Murrumbidgee, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth etc. while the First 2000 Days Care Connect program has expanded integrated health and social care hubs across South Eastern Sydney (Rockdale), South Western Sydney (Fairfield and Miller), and Hunter New England (Taree) etc.
National and international recognition
The Watch Me Grow Program has also been implemented in India, Vietnam and Indonesia and was selected as one of only three international research programs highlighted for impact at the 2019 American Psychiatric Association meeting for promoting equitable access to early identification of developmental and behavioural/emotional problems. It was also featured in the Australian Health Research Alliance Impact Report 2022 as one of ten examples of research successfully translated into practice and delivering tangible benefits for patients, families and health systems.
The impact of the work has also extended into workforce development and research capacity building. Through SPHERE’s Early Life Determinants of Health (ELDoH) Clinical Theme, the program has supported early- and mid-career researchers including clinician researchers, generated new projects focused on parenting support and early childhood mental health, and strengthened the evidence base for integrated approaches to child development and family wellbeing.
Today, Watch Me Grow stands as one of SPHERE’s strongest examples of how a small investment can drive large-scale impact. What began as a pilot project focused on improving developmental checks in South-West Sydney has evolved into a nationally recognised program influencing policy, reshaping service delivery, attracting millions of dollars in competitive funding and helping ensure more children receive support during the most critical years of development.
“Early intervention is not just about responding early in illness. It is about supporting children early in life,” Professor Eapen said.
“Our vision has always been to create a system where every child, regardless of their cultural background, postcode or family circumstances, has access to early identification and support. SPHERE’s funding helped turn that vision into reality.”