Executive summary
The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (the Strategy) 2000–2004 was an Australian Government initiative funded by the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) to help build family and community capacity to deal with challenges and take advantage of opportunities. In 2002, a consortium led by CIRCLE (the Collaborative Institute for Research Consulting and Learning in Evaluation) at RMIT University was commissioned by FaCS to undertake a national evaluation of the Strategy.
This report discusses what has been learned from the Strategy 2000–2004 about how to strengthen Indigenous families and communities. These lessons have implications for future interventions funded through the Strategy 2004–2009, and through other funding initiatives and programs. The report provides insights into critical factors that explain the success of some projects and some of the frustrations experienced by others.
Evidence for this study has been drawn from multiple sources, including research and policy literature and the data gathered as part of the national evaluation of the Strategy 2000–2004. This has included: questionnaire responses from Indigenous projects; three in-depth qualitative case studies; site visits to nine other Indigenous projects; review of progress reports and final reports (where available) for these projects and a further 16 projects; and consultations with FaCS staff.
Achievements of the Strategy
The evidence shows that the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy has made an important contribution to the process of strengthening Indigenous families and communities. These findings are consistent with the research literature (that investment in capacity building and using an early intervention and preventative approach can be effective in strengthening families and communities).
There has been a high level of community participation in some (but not all) project activities. This is a substantial achievement given that many projects operate in an environment where there are multiple factors that militate against involvement, including lack of transport and substance abuse.
The Strategy has strengthened internal bonds and relationships within Indigenous families and communities. Outcomes reported include more positive interaction between mothers and infants, between young mothers and their women Elders, and between fathers and sons. The Strategy has also raised awareness and understanding about a diverse range of family and community issues, from parenting to depression.
The Strategy helped develop and deliver several new family and community services and social activities for Indigenous people, as well as improving their access to existing services. New skills and capacities have been developed in a range of areas ranging from life skills, to child care, to leadership. Training of both participants and staff has been a core activity undertaken by Indigenous projects. As a result some participants have been enabled to make life choices, such as returning to education, that arguably would not have been open to them were it not for the Strategy. It also appears that in the course of doing family and community development work and training, some service providers have become more oriented towards a preventative and early intervention approach to working.
The historic pattern of interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people has left a legacy of distrust that can be difficult to change in the short to medium term. Nevertheless many Strategy projects have been successful in building new partnerships, including new relationships with bodies that have generally not been involved in Indigenous projects in the past. This includes mainstream non-government organisations (NGOs), local government authorities and universities. Some partners have contributed to enhanced coordination and have become new sources of funding.
These are all important achievements on the path towards stronger Indigenous families and communities.
While this report has a focus on Strategy projects funded as Indigenous projects it is important to note that Indigenous families and communities also participated in many Strategy projects that were not specifically targeted at Indigenous families or communities and were therefore not classified as Indigenous projects.
What's working?
Some interventions to strengthen Indigenous families and communities were particularly effective.
Some projects have been adept at piggybacking project initiatives on the back of existing activities, social events and structures rather than creating new ones. This approach of seeking to engage project participants by working through activities in which they are already meaningfully involved has been effective. Where this has been done it has not been necessary for projects to establish new mechanisms in order to get their message out.
Projects have received effective support from several quarters. In particular, projects need the support of competent and committed staff possessed of close relationships with the local community, cultural competence, and relevant subject matter expertise. In most cases this has meant a team comprised of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous project staff with complementary capacities.
Projects have also benefited from the support of an auspice with demonstrated strengths in the areas of administrative capacity, relevant previous project experience and established links with Indigenous people. Where the auspice is a non-Indigenous body without existing relationships with the Indigenous community, difficulties are likely to be experienced in developing relationships within the limited lifespan of the project. Such organisations need to invest heavily in building trust with participants. There appear to be efficiencies of scale and certain other advantages where the auspice is a regional organisation. Small scale and fledgling community organisations sometimes struggled to adequately fulfil the role.
Furthermore, projects value external assistance in areas such as project planning, preparing funding applications and budgets, and being linked with the right project partners. Some projects also needed intensive after-care during the implementation phase. FaCS officers gave most of this external assistance, but in some instances it came from other project partners.
Many projects benefited from their engagement in action learning processes, which involve: experience and critical reflection on that experience; group discussion; trial and error; discovery; and learning from one another. Many projects applied the action research cycle (action, observation, reflection and planning) to ensure program/service delivery continuously improves and remains relevant to key stakeholders. These processes have the potential to contribute to our understanding of what works, under what conditions, and why it works in Indigenous contexts.
Mentoring, role modelling, providing home-based services and using a buddy system have all been popular and successful strategies used to achieve training outcomes. There are numerous examples where Indigenous understandings, skills and initiative have been built on the job as a consequence of practical hands-on involvement in Strategy projects.
Finally, a word of caution. In many instances, definitive information about the effectiveness of particular strategies in strengthening Indigenous families and communities is hard to come by. There are contextual differences that mean that what works well in one setting may not necessarily do so in another, and few projects have run for long enough to be too prescriptive.
What's not working?
There is evidence of projects that were able to effectively strengthen Indigenous families and communities. However, the evidence suggests, for the most part, that projects have not yet achieved higher order outcomes within Indigenous communities such as greater resilience, the capacity to initiate action beyond the initial Strategy project and long-term sustainability. Furthermore it was found that the Strategy has been less effective in strengthening Indigenous families and communities than in strengthening families and communities more generally. Several inhibiting factors may explain why this is so.
To begin with, many projects operate in difficult and unsupportive social environments that are not conducive to smooth project implementation. In particular the experience of some projects has brought into sharp focus the degree to which ill health and security anxieties restrict the capacity to participate and the life choices of many Indigenous families and communities. Sometimes the peer pressure that is so influential in shaping high-risk behaviours (such as gang culture, unsafe sexual practices, petrol sniffing, binge drinking and smoking) tends to overwhelm the best efforts of project staff to change dysfunctional patterns of behaviour through awareness raising.
In some communities, projects have been inhibited by a lack of basic infrastructure, such as appropriate places to conduct project activities, suitable office accommodation and vehicles. These and other factors contribute to recurring high staff turnover, feelings of burnout and a host of other human resource issues that have long plagued Indigenous projects. Recruiting and retaining quality staff is a critical issue for Indigenous projects, especially in rural and remote areas.
Most projects reported that they needed funding and various other forms of support in order to continue beyond the expiration of Strategy funding, and there was little evidence that many projects had planned for this transition. Few partnerships have been built between Indigenous Strategy projects and mainstream business and philanthropic bodies. This evaluation found fifteen projects with some form of partnership with the private sector. Furthermore, almost no projects are generating any notable income of their own through their self-funding activities. This is understandable given that there is virtually no private sector in remote regions and most Indigenous communities are impoverished.
Indigenous family and community issues are complex. Knowledge and understanding about how best to strengthen them is still quite limited in many respects and there is still much that needs to be discovered, learned, shared and disseminated. The experience of the Strategy has contributed to understandings in this regard, but there is still a way to go.
Such factors need to be weighed in determining achievable project objectives, an adequate scale of intervention, the necessary duration of the project and the level of funding and other resourcing realistically required.
Lessons learnt
So what are the lessons for future interventions in Indigenous contexts?
- Strong Indigenous families and communities are outcomes that can only be attained through sustained, long-term intervention.
- Indigenous capacity-building activities are more effective when undertaken in connection with a specific practical social purpose in association with a particular project activity (as distinct from an isolated workshop or training exercise).
- Strengthening Indigenous families and communities is as much about healing the effects of trauma, attitudinal and behavioural change, and the rebuilding of confidence and self-belief, as it is about the transfer of particular knowledge and skills. There is an opportunity to review the effectiveness of healing initiatives.
- When investing in Indigenous capacity building, a key issue is finding the appropriate balance between upstream institutional capacity building (building the capacity of organisations to plan and implement projects) and downstream capacity building with families and communities (enhancing the self-reliance of families and communities).
- There is an opportunity for projects to learn from each other's experience by fostering dialogue about issues such as effective strategies of participation in Indigenous contexts. Some Indigenous projects appear to be isolated from other projects with a similar focus. There is an opportunity to support greater networking between similar initiatives. One option is to establish linkages between projects and organisations that are considered leaders in their field, for example, leadership development projects and the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre.
- There is an opportunity to assist and resource Indigenous projects to build partnerships and better access support from the mainstream philanthropic and business communities.
- Strategic partnership arrangements provide much-needed stocks of linking and bridging social capital for Indigenous projects, but they do require a lot of time and energy to build and maintain.
- The choice of an appropriate project auspice has a critical bearing on project success. Projects that have a well-established auspice organisation with administrative capacity, relevant project expertise, and an existing solid relationship with the Indigenous community can add considerable value to an Indigenous project.