MIST initiative: Practical Application of the Atlas
In a presentation at the Children's Policy Advisory Council Forum in September 2025, Dr. Sarah Priest - Research and Advocacy Lead at Parkerville Children and Youth Care, shared a case study exploring how the Atlas could have enhanced the expansion of the Multi-Agency Investigation and Support Team (MIST) model into Rockingham.
MIST is a trauma-informed, co-located initiative jointly delivered by Parkerville and WA Police, supporting children, young people and their families following a disclosure of child sexual abuse. The feasibility mapping for its expansion relied on manually layered public datasets (ABS, SEIFA, AEDC, WA Police) to identify service gaps and community conditions. This process - while rigorous - was time-consuming and in some instances, lacked child-specific indicators.
Reflecting on this experience, Sarah illustrated how the Atlas had the potential to accelerate and enrich the analysis:
The Atlas could have instantly surfaced data on single-parent families with unemployed parents and given visual comparisons across LGAs
Crime data could have been accessed more efficiently through the Atlas’s integration with WAPOL’s Incident Management System, bringing in youth offending data for 10 - 24-year-olds and enabling a more targeted understanding of risk and service demand.
Child protection indicators such as out-of-home care admissions and care and protection orders would have enriched the overall picture of community conditions, helping to identify areas of overlapping disadvantage and inform place-based support strategies.
The Atlas’s presentation of both raw counts and rates per 10,000 for key indicators could have helped to interpret whether issues like out-of-home care admissions were concentrated or typical, strengthening the case for targeted support.
These practical applications open new possibilities for learning, collaboration, and impact with Parkerville - supporting their strategic planning, systems engagement, and policy influence. By strengthening their capacity to build and deliver services that reflect the needs of the communities they serve, the Atlas complements the organisation’s strong foundation of practitioner expertise and lived experience, ensuring their approach remains both evidence-informed and deeply responsive.
