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Indigenous families and children: coordination and provision of services
Stronger Families and Communities Strategy 2004–2009

Appendix A: Stronger Families and Communities Strategy 2004–2009 model

Description

Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS) 2004–2009 was an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA).

The SFCS 2004–2009 aimed to help families and communities build better futures for children, build family and community capacity, support relationships between families and the communities they live in, and improve communities’ ability to help themselves. It contained:

Communities for Children

Implementation of CfC was delegated to non-government organisations (NGOs), unlike most other government programs, which are funded and implemented directly by government agencies. Under the CfC initiative, NGOs were funded as Facilitating Partners (FPs) in 45 community sites around Australia to develop and implement a strategic and sustainable whole-of-community approach to early childhood development, in consultation with local stakeholders.

In each site, a FP established a Communities for Children Committee (CCC) with representation from a broad range of stakeholders in the community. Each FP, together with their CCC, oversaw development of a four-year Community Strategic Plan and annual Service Delivery Plans. The FPs also managed the overall funding allocation in their communities. Most of the funding was allocated to other local service providers called Community Partners (CPs) to deliver the activities identified in the local Community Strategic and Service Delivery Plans. CP agencies varied widely in size and organisational capacity; the spectrum included state government departments, large and small NGOs, and volunteer-run community groups.

The funding model—whereby an FP organisation was engaged to manage and distribute funds within each particular site, and foster service coordination and cooperation—was based on the logic that service effectiveness is dependent not only on the nature and number of services, but also on the degree to which service delivery is integrated and seamless. Consequently, the CfC program had a strong focus on service coordination and cooperation and a considerable amount of effort was devoted to ‘joining up’ existing services in addition to providing new services in CfC sites.

Invest to Grow

ItG—another discrete component of the SFCS 2004–2009 program—provided funding for early childhood programs and development of tools and resource materials to be used by families, professionals and communities supporting families and young children. Like CfC, ItG had a prevention and early intervention focus. The program aimed to develop an Australian evidence base around these issues and to support expansion of successful program models. ItG funding supported establishment of resources such as the Parenting Information Website, the National Indigenous Child and Family Resource Centre, and the Australian Early Development Instrument.

Local Answers

The third strand of the SFCS 2004–2009 program—LA—funded local, small-scale, time-limited projects that aimed to help communities identify opportunities to develop skills, support families and children, and foster proactive communities. LA also aimed to listen to local communities and use local knowledge and experience to develop effective, practical solutions that met their particular needs. LA aimed to build community capacity and develop initiatives that communities could create for themselves in partnership with local government, business and community organisations. The initiative funded a diverse range of projects, some of which focused on early childhood, parenting and family relationships, while others concentrated on mentoring, leadership, volunteering and community building.

Focus of Indigenous themed study

In evaluating the SFCS 2004–2009 initiative, this report focuses mainly on CfC and the FP model. The reasons for this emphasis were numerous. Most existing evaluation data about service use by Indigenous families and children related to CfC. The mainstream evaluation aimed to measure the effectiveness of the FP model for mainstream service users, and so it was important to compare the model’s effectiveness and outcomes for mainstream service users with outcomes for Indigenous service users.

The ItG initiative shared many characteristics of CfC. Both programs were aimed at children in their early years and their families. Hence, many of the ItG interventions were similar to those funded by CfC, and so the impact on children, families and (to a lesser extent) communities should be similar. The ItG framework did not include the dimension of services working together, but a number of ItG projects were focused on improved service coordination and/or community capacity building.

Despite these similarities, ItG was structured and targeted differently to CfC in a number of respects: ItG did not operate an FP model and was (generally) not a place-based program (that is, interventions were not targeted towards specific communities). ItG interventions were generally much more structured and larger in scale than CfC initiatives and there was more emphasis on direct service provision under ItG and less emphasis on joining-up different services.

Importantly, the suitability of ItG initiatives for broader application was a key criterion for the ItG evaluation, and ItG projects had a greater proportion of their budgets (up to 10 per cent) set aside for local evaluation. Bearing these differences in mind, local evaluators undertook most of the assessment of ItG, and so the national evaluation analysed and summarised local reports for this component of the evaluation.

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