4 Children's services
4.1 Introduction
Children are generally defined as people under a certain age. The age cut-off point
differs according to the purpose of the definition. For example, the United Nations
defines a child as a person under the age of 18 years and the Australian Bureau of
Statistics defines a child as a person under 15 years (full-time students 15-24 years old
are denned as dependents). The age cut-off for children's services also differs. The
definition of a child for the purposes of child welfare legislation is a person under the
age of either 17 or 18 years (a cut-off point which varies across jurisdictions). Children
for whom formal child care is provided are usually defined as those up to the age of 12
years (although some child care services provide care to 12-year-olds as well).
In the last five years, the total resident population of children has become more
demographically stable than previous trends, with a change to a much flatter
population distribution across the 0-16 years age group. This is demonstrated by an
overall percentage increase of 5 per cent in the 0-12 years age group and a 1 per cent
increase in the 0-16 years population from 1987 to 1992 (Table 4.1). The size of each
yearly age bracket is similar and the proportion of children in the total population has
not changed significantly since 1989 (with the 0-16 years age group consistently
representing 25 per cent of the total population from 1989 to 1992 (ABS 1993c)).