Danijel Malbasa grew up in Australia at a financial, economic, and linguistic disadvantage.
He fled from conflict in what is now known as the Czech Republic when he was just thirteen years old, arriving in Australia where his family did not speak a word of English and had little money to their name.
Feeling restricted by the poor postcode he lived in Adelaide's northern suburbs, Danijel felt unsupported and overlooked.
"I knew that the cards were stacked against me, and I'll have to work four times or five times harder than the kid across the road, just to be the exception. So I think, you know, you have to have a whole lot of self-belief to be able to overcome these entrenched social disadvantages."
Today 17.7 per cent of Australian children under the age of 15 are living in poverty.
The Disrupting Disadvantage Report, produced by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia [[CEDA]], finds the country needs to change how it identifies and supports people at disadvantage to prevent up to half a million Australian children from experiencing poverty in the next decade.
CEDA Chief Economist Jarrod Ball says those who experienced poverty in childhood are more than three times more likely to experience it in adulthood.
"I think one of the really difficult things is that we know that early interventions tend to be the most effective. But of course, people slip through the cracks, we don't make the right interventions earlier enough. And what we end up with is we end up with people cycling through the justice system, and other really, you know, narrow and intense kind of parts of the system that simply don't rehabilitate or bring about better outcomes."
Click on the player at the top of the page to listen to the feature in Punjabi.
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