Engaging hard-to-reach families and children

4. Who is hard-to-reach?

Participants’ definitions of hard-to-reach groups ranged from all parents in a community, to nobody. However, all but one participant identified that some families or individuals were hard-to-reach. One participant from a Communities for Children funded service defined hard-to-reach rather literally, referring to families who could not be successfully engaged in the service after three visits. However, most used more fluid definitions, considering hard-to-reach families to be those perceived as difficult to engage due to their social circumstances, characteristics and behaviours, and their institutional relationships, such as not using health or other services. Some interview participants indicated that there would always be some groups that their services would not be able to engage, and while some were concerned about this, others accepted that not all services can reach all client groups.

Overall, Indigenous families were overwhelmingly considered the most hard-to-reach. Indigenous families were seen as the most challenging to engage, because of their experiences of multiple disadvantage and cultural differences. In some communities, Indigenous families were found to be difficult to initially identify. Where Communities for Children sites contained large Indigenous populations, they tended to be better set up to engage Indigenous families, although some with large Indigenous populations still reported difficulties in this area.³

Other groups mentioned were:

families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, including, in some areas, new refugees
those with low incomes or living in poverty
young parents
people with disabilities
grandparents
fathers
families with child protection issues
isolated families.

While responses include groups underrepresented, invisible and service-resistant, reflecting the insights of Doherty, Hall and Kinder (2003), the responses extend this literature by portraying who is hard-to-reach as largely dependent on project context, in particular community characteristics and which group projects were seeking to target.

Community characteristics also have an effect on which groups are found to be difficult to reach and engage. For example, in non-metropolitan settings, socially isolated families, those with transport difficulties (largely low socioeconomic status families) and those in very remote areas were identified as hard-to-reach. In a project aimed at strengthening families and communities in rural fringe and growth corridors, diverse language groups were seen as hard-to-reach.

Overall, hard-to-reach families were generally perceived as being synonymous with the most disadvantaged groups, but this was not always the case. For example, in one Communities for Children site, participants described how the hard-to-reach families did not fall into the usual categories considered indicative of social disadvantage, alluding instead to categories of families who may be overlooked in the terms of Doherty, Hall and Kinder (2003). In that community, hard-to-reach families were considered to be those moving into the new private housing estates from the city, who were under mortgage stress and whose high levels of isolation meant they required access to information about support.

In another site, children with special needs, such as those with disabilities, were perceived as difficult to engage if they were not using child care services, as their place outside existing service networks could render them invisible to service providers. A participant in another site perceived that families from particular religious communities could be hard-to-reach, depending on the religious association of the agencies involved with Communities for Children. In this way, which groups are hard-to-reach depends on the specificity of service delivery context as well as community context.

In addition to their social circumstances, parent characteristics and behaviours were perceived by participants to make engagement difficult. Factors cited included being frightened or mistrustful, being involved with violence, substance abuse and addiction, and being ‘on the run’. Further, families’ institutional relationships were perceived to make them hard for services to reach.

Table 1 summarises the range of groups considered hard-to-reach in Local Answers and Invest to Grow projects. Commonly, being involved with child protection systems (or having been so in the past, or being fearful of being reported for abuse or neglect) were cited as factors making engagement difficult. Families were also perceived as difficult to engage if they were not involved with other services or families that ‘don’t show up in the usual places’ as one participant described, such as early childhood clinics, child care services or playgroups. Participants perceived that families may not be aware of services or may not trust services. Another service —involved in strengthening service delivery capacity through an initiative for early years workers—considered workers in private child care centres to be isolated and hard-to-reach in terms of engagement in professional development.

Another factor for services was their own targeting strategy. Some services believed their target group constituted a hard-to-reach group, for example, young parents, while another pointed out that young parents were generally hard-to-reach in the absence of a specific strategy, saying:

‘They are hard-to-reach if we don’t have targeted groups for them.’
Participant 19

Projects that served a broader section of the population tended to equate hard-to-reach with ‘higher priority communities’. One participant, for example, described an approach of targeting hard-to-reach or ‘higher priority’ families from within a universal model (in this case, Indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, young parents, and families who were socially or economically disadvantaged).

For a parenting project serving at-risk parents, hard-to-reach groups were seen as those sections of the population who were underrepresented in services: Indigenous people and young mothers and fathers. Indeed, the definition of who is hard-to-reach to some extent depends on a project’s reach and referral strategies. Several youth-focused projects, for example, (including those targeting young parents), relied on referrals from other services, and so found young people not accessing the mainstream health and support services to be hard-to-reach.

Most commonly, participants identified subgroups of their target group as hard-to-reach and engage. For example, Afghan refugee mothers were considered hard-to-reach and engage in a service aimed at culturally and linguistically diverse families generally. In a service for young parents, fathers were considered hard-to-reach, despite the efforts of a male youth worker. In part, social norms, expectations and behaviours make it difficult to reach and engage young fathers.

‘Young men think it’s not cool to talk about feelings, about how you’re coping. They’re looking at doing manly things, a lot of blokes. And most wouldn’t be having planned pregnancies. It’s hard to work out how to engage them in a way that isn’t too challenging for them.’
Participant 3

In another interview, young parents who had vulnerable upbringings themselves presented particular challenges.

‘They’ve had no opportunities to make positive connections as they were growing up. They’ve come from family backgrounds where there has been abuse. They may have difficulties with trust … if they don’t have secure housing they tend to be moved through the refuge system, the short-term housing system. They’re moving a lot, and can’t establish connections because they move between workers. For some there’s domestic violence and the partners won’t let you engage with them. Also those that have their children very young, say under 18, they, from what I read and observe, struggle more with the tension between them as a teenager and parent ... there can be more trouble bonding with their baby.’
Participant 10

In other cases, participants pointed out that by targeting one hard-to-reach group, for example, Indigenous parents, they were effectively excluding other vulnerable groups who were not being served by local services.

In another project, which was aimed at training practitioners rather than delivering services, statutory child protection workers were found to be hard to involve. Similarly, in a project targeting fathers, in part through free legal advice, a subgroup of fathers was found to be hard-to-reach: high socioeconomic status men, who are likely to have access to commercial legal representation and are therefore less likely to access the sorts of services provided by Communities for Children community partners.

‘There’s no doubt that the dads who are a little better off are missing out, those higher socioeconomic status groups. They experience the same emotional trauma but for whatever reason they may not be getting the emotional support they need. They may be getting the legal advice but they’re difficult [for this service] to access. That’s partly to do with PR and partly the nature of the men.’
Participant 5

Finally, a few participants across the sites expressed reluctance to label any groups as hard-to-reach, preferring to place the onus on services to engage them. A project manager in a Communities for Children funded service articulated this perspective.

‘I don’t like to think any group is difficult to engage with. In community development you have to go out to the people, you can’t expect them to come to you.’
Site 5

Overall, the interviews suggest there are two broad categories of hard-to-reach clients. The first category consists of groups who are often underrepresented in service provision such as Indigenous Australians, members of culturally and linguistically diverse communities, young parents and fathers.

The second category is strongly related to community characteristics and the context of service delivery, in particular the targeting strategy adopted. For example, whereas more universally targeted services report challenges in reaching underrepresented groups such as Indigenous families, young parents and fathers, more tightly targeted services still found subgroups to be hard-to-reach. Targeted services may also find that specialising to meet the needs of one marginalised group could risk marginalising others. Thus, hard-to-reach groups may variously refer to groups underrepresented in a universal setting, target groups themselves, subgroups of target groups or groups other than those specifically targeted, who may be overlooked or invisible to service providers. These interviews therefore confirm that there is no accepted definition of hard-to-reach, and reinforce that the concept depends on the context in which the project is being delivered.

Table 1: Summary project characteristics—Local Answers and Invest to Grow
Identifier		Project type	Target group	Which groups are reportedly hard-to-reach
1	LA	Early intervention	Parents of young children who are at-risk (includes postnatal depression)	Indigenous Young mothers Fathers
2	LA	Mentoring	At-risk youth	Those not using other services
3	LA	Parenting program	Young Indigenous parents	Non-Indigenous Those not using other services Young fathers
4	LA	Pregnancy education and support	Younger women at risk	People who do not access mainstream services
5	LA	Peer support	Fathers experiencing family breakdown	Fathers with high socioeconomic status
6	LA	Parenting	Vulnerable parents with young children in rural fringe and growth corridor areas	Socially isolated parents Some language groups
7	LA	Nutrition	Children at school and their families in remote areas	Not sure Possibly immigrant families
8	LA	Parenting education	Non-metropolitan families	All families
9	LA	Parenting education and resources	Parents of young children	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities Families with transport difficulties
10	LA	Parenting education	Young parents	Young parents
11	LA	Alternative education	Teenagers who are mothers or pregnant	People who do not participate in education
12	LA	Parenting education and support	Non–English speaking background sole parents	Some groups of refugee women
13	LA	Playgroup	Parents with young children in rural areas	Isolated parents Immigrant families
14	ltG	Parenting support	Culturally and linguistically diverse communities	Families uncomfortable with service use
15	ltG	Staff development	Early childhood practitioners	Not sure
16	ltG	Early intervention	Children with disabilities and their families in non-metropolitan settings	Low socioeconomic status Families with transport difficulties Indigenous families
17	ltG	Staff development	Practitioners working with parents with disabilities	Statutory child protection workers
18	ltG	Early intervention	Children educationally at risk	Families unstable due to domestic violence or moving house Families wary of professionals Indigenous
19	ltG	Early intervention	Indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, young parents, low socioeconomic status fathers	Indigenous in some areas Young parents
20	ltG	Early intervention	Children with disabilities and their families in non-metropolitan settings	Very remote families, including Indigenous
Note: LA=Local Answers; ItG=Invest to Grow.

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