• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Background
• Methodology
• Communities for Children service outcomes
• Communities for Children sector outcomes: service coordination and collaboration
• Communities for Children outcomes for families, children and communities
• Communities for Children model: strengths and weaknesses
• Local Answers
• Invest to Grow
• What works in early intervention? Cross-strategy findings from Communities for Children, Invest to Grow and Local Answers
• Appendix A: Methodological limitations
• List of shortened forms
• Endnotes
• References
• List of Tables and Boxes

National evaluation (2004–2008) of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy 2004–2009

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1. Introduction

The Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) contracted the National Evaluation Consortium to develop the evaluation framework for the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS) 2004–2009. The consortium comprised the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), University of New South Wales (UNSW), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and research advisers. The evaluation ran from 2004–2008.

The SFCS 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
• improve the ability of communities to help themselves.

The SFCS contained four strands: Communities for Children (CfC), Invest to Grow (ItG), Local Answers (LA) and Choice and Flexibility in Child Care.¹¹

The national evaluation was designed to evaluate both the SFCS as a whole and each of the three strands (CfC, ItG and LA), with the main focus on CfC. The national evaluation was both formative—contributing to the development and refinement of policy and practice—and summative—addressing the implementation and effectiveness of the SFCS 2004–2009. The detailed methodology and logic model for the evaluation is available in the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy National Evaluation Framework (Stronger Families and Communities Strategy National Evaluation Consortium 2005).

This report presents the findings from the national evaluation. It triangulates data from multiple methodologies to examine and assess the models and their outcomes, the effectiveness and challenges experienced in relation to CfC, ItG and LA. The report should be read in conjunction with the six web appendixes¹² and other stand-alone SFCS evaluation reports (Berlyn, Wise & Soriano 2008; Cortis, Katz & Patulny forthcoming; Edwards et al. 2009; Flaxman, Muir & Oprea 2009; Soriano, Berlyn & Wise 2008), which include detailed discussions on findings from the range of methodologies used in the national evaluation.

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