West Heidelberg is located just 10 kilometres north-east of Melbourne's central business district, yet at least one in three children start school behind in their development.

This pocket of intergenerational disadvantage, low literacy, and poor health stands in stark contrast to neighbouring suburbs. Its rate almost four times worse than in neighbouring Ivanhoe, while in East Ivanhoe, every child starts school ready.

Local Banyule Community Health is tackling this issue through the We Love Stories project, which is giving West Heidelberg children the help they need to be school ready.

“We Love Stories is designed to create an early years partnership,” Banyule Community Centre Health Promotion Officer - Early Literacy, Rachel Roffey, says.

“We’re trying to wrap around families and children so that by the time they get to school, they're ready to learn to read.”

The project aims to provide a wide variety of tailored support for families and their children up until about age five. It tackles developmental disadvantage, preventing it from turning into developmental delay where children are then forced onto long waiting lists to see paediatricians or receive specialised care under the NDIS.

“Our project is really focused on making sure that families are strong. It includes everything they need to support their child's early development because if kids miss out on early oral language development – such as learning how to play, having parents that are mentally and physically well – it means that by the time they get to prep, it's really hard to fix.”

The We Love Stories program, which was set up seven years ago by project lead Nina Kelabora, has built a framework of academic evidence to support the work, which is bolstered by community experience and voice.

Banyule Community Health also recently ran a year-long series of community listening sessions to further find out what local families, children, and their carers thought was important. This was supported by community researcher Sarah-Jayne Shepherd.

It identified ten themes: judgment, stigma and shame; child protection; disadvantage; services; having culturally safe spaces; working on early education; having a village and space for belonging; rejuvenating spaces that families feel comfortable spending time in; connecting personal health and wellbeing; and safety. 

“We're asking the entire community to vote on those things so that we can pick a couple for our partnership to really get their teeth stuck into. One of our big focuses is to involve the community as much as possible. We don't decide – we want them to decide and we want them to lead it too.”

The project has also helped the local community to create their own books backed by social media campaigns. 

The Djilak-Djirri ABC book is just one publication that supports children to read, which has resonated with the local community. More recently, Banyule Community Health published a book about Somali folklore based on oral culture. 

Banyule Community Health’s We Love Stories project has received funding from the Equity Trustees-managed RM Ansett Trust.