paul mallett advocates for a city that puts children first in every practical way. Every Child Succeeds (see paul’s book) was built on a simple idea: help early, help nearby, and help in ways that fit real family life. Instead of waiting for problems to escalate, Launceston invested in the foundations of child development from pregnancy through to young adulthood.

Imagine a cradle to career pathway that wraps around every child. Health checks. Early learning support. Daily meals at school. Trauma informed practice. Mentoring. Tutoring. After school programs. Strong transitions into TAFE, uni, and work. Not a patchwork, but a full continuum.

Schools became community hubs where families could access health services, meals, counselling, and support without stigma or delay. Early help was saturated across neighbourhoods, with most children receiving at least some support each year. A long term City Deal for Kids locked in funding and held all partners accountable through clear measures like Rumble’s Quest, public reporting, and simple, honest evaluation.

The aim is simple: readiness, confidence, stability, and opportunity for every child, not just the lucky ones.

Let’s build a city where every child succeeds, including

1. Cradle-to-Career Continuum

Establish a seamless pathway of supports from pregnancy through tertiary education and early employment.
• Integrate maternal and child health, early learning, school transitions, career guidance, and youth employment programs into a single continuum.
• Ensure no gaps between stages so assistance arrives before crises and children maintain momentum throughout their learning journey.
• Embed upstream, preventative supports to strengthen long-term wellbeing and reduce downstream service demand.

2. Integrated School–Community Hubs

Position selected schools as community anchors delivering education plus wraparound supports.
• Co-locate health services, mental-health supports, meals programs, after-school activities, and trauma-informed practice within schools.
• Build trust through whole-child support that lifts engagement, attendance, readiness to learn, and family partnership.
• Develop multidisciplinary teams that link education, community services, and youth health into one accessible entry point.

3. Place-Based Saturation Strategy

Adopt a universal, high-reach model to ensure fairness, scale, and impact.
• Aim for at least 75 percent of local children to engage with core programs each year.
• Use universal access to reduce stigma, simplify navigation, and dramatically cut “wrong-door” administrative churn.
• Run neighbourhood-level initiatives that saturate key communities with consistent, predictable supports.

4. City Deal for Kids: Long-Horizon Funding and Governance

Negotiate a twenty-year, tripartite funding agreement between state, federal, and local government.
• Align investment with jointly agreed outcomes and transparent social-impact measures.
• Publish a State of Launceston’s Children report every three years to track progress, guide mid-course correction, and maintain public accountability.
• Provide predictable, long-term funding so services can plan, scale, and retain skilled staff.

5. Evidence, Evaluation, and Accountability

Ground all initiatives in lived evidence, continuous learning, and transparent measurement.
• Use tools such as Rumble’s Quest, Results-Based Accountability (RBA), longitudinal tracking, and actuarial Avoidable Costs Unit (ACU) analysis.
• Report public value and return on investment; early modelling suggests potential returns of around $4.10 for every $1 invested.
• Build feedback loops that ensure community voice, frontline insight, and evaluation findings directly shape program refinement.

6. Youth Pathways and Scholarships

Create clear tertiary and vocational pipelines backed by large-scale scholarships.
• Support at least 500 local students each year to enter TAFE, apprenticeships, or university pathways.
• Partner with philanthropy, government, and industry to mobilise over $200 million in scholarships and pathway supports over coming decades.
• Strengthen long-term workforce and economic participation by lifting tertiary attainment across generations.