Published December 2020

This report provides preliminary empirical evidence on the prevalence and nature of potential protective factors that may offset the detrimental effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on indicators of school readiness. These results are generated from an observational study based on the availability and choices made about accessing health care, early childhood education, and social services. We conduct a broad search for mutable factors that have a statistically significant differential impact of ACEs on seven indicators of school readiness of children in the Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) birth cohort. ACEs include exposure to maltreatment, witnessing violence, living with household members with mental illness, those who abuse substances, have a history of incarceration, or have experienced parental divorce. Our sample consisted of 5,562 children followed over nearly five years and four separate parental surveys. We combed through the GUiNZ data for every possible protective factor that we could identify. This resulted in a total of 372 distinct measures that were placed into the three categories of Health Care, Early Childhood Education and Social Services, and further demarcated by the areas of Utilisation, Access, Quality and Preference. We estimate the associations between ACEs and school readiness indicators using regression analysis while controlling for family income, neighbourhood deprivation at time of pregnancy, maternal education, child’s ethnicity, and maternal cohabiting status at birth. Our exploratory analysis finds that such protective factors are relatively rare with an overall prevalence rate of 1.6% (i.e., where interactions between the 372 mutable factors and the total number of ACEs have statistically significant effects on the seven indicators of school readiness). When we concentrate on one of the more concerning ACEs of physical abuse, this prevalence rate increases only slightly to 1.7% of all potential protective factors. The mutable factors with the largest absolute effects with respect to the total numbers of ACEs are found to involve Health Care Access related to the ability to see a general practitioner. The mutable factors with the largest absolute effects with respect to the physical abuse ACE involved Social Service Utilisation and Early Childcare Education Access. (Executive summary). Record #7099