1. Introduction

1.1 The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy: CfC
1.2 Description of the National Evaluation Framework
1.3 This report

A National Evaluation Consortium, comprising the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), UNSW, Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and research advisers, was contracted by the Australian Government Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) to develop the evaluation framework for the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS) 2004-2008.

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

The national evaluation (NE) was designed to evaluate both the SFCS as a whole and each of three strands (CfC, ItG and LA) with the main focus on CfC. The NE is both formative - contributing to the development and refinement of policy and practice in relation to the Strategy - and summative - addressing the effectiveness of the Strategy and its implementation. This report contains a summary of the baseline data for the process evaluation for CfC. It provides an indication on the demographic and service delivery contexts in which CfC has been implemented in its 45 sites, and also reports on some of the issues relating to the early implementation of the CfC initiative. The various strands of data collection will be repeated in 2008, giving an indication of how these issues have changed as a result of the implementation of CfC.

1.1 The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy: CfC

Under the CfC initiative, non-government organisations are funded as 'Facilitating Partners' 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 implementing their local initiative, Facilitating Partners establish a CCC with broad representation from stakeholders in the community. The Facilitating Partner oversees the development of a four year Community Strategic Plan and annual Service Delivery Plans with the Committee and manages the overall funding allocation for the community. Most of the funding has been allocated to other local service providers to deliver the activities identified in the Community Strategic and Service Delivery Plans.

Examples of activities that have been implemented in the sites are:

home visiting programs
early learning and literacy programs
early development of social and communication skills
parenting and family support programs
child nutrition programs
community events to celebrate the importance of children, families and the early years. ¹

According to the logic model of the Initiative, service effectiveness is dependent not only on the nature and number of services, but also on how seamless the service delivery is. Thus much of the CfC effort has been devoted not only to providing new services, but to 'joining up' existing services by increasing service coordination and cooperation.

1.2 Description of the National Evaluation Framework

The national evaluation framework is designed to evaluate the SFCS in relation to the Outcomes Framework developed by FaCSIA². The Outcomes Framework aligns with the four priority areas of the National Agenda for Early Childhood: healthy young families; supporting families and parents; early learning and care; and child-friendly communities. A fifth priority area specifically relates to the CfC initiative; family and children's services work effectively as a system.

The key questions for the NE are:

Have outcomes for children and families in relation to the four key action areas improved as a result of the Strategy?
Which lessons have been learnt on how to achieve and sustain better outcomes for children 0-5 and their families /communities?
Is early investment effective in terms of cost and outcomes for children?
For which children, families or communities is it effective?
What aspects of the model are effective?
How effectively have resources been used?
Has the SFCS achieved its objectives?

To answer these questions, the national evaluation framework consists of the interlocking components presented in Table 1³.

Table 1 National evaluation components
	Process evaluation	Outcome evaluation	Process & outcome
Communities for Children	Comprehensive Community Profile: - demographic profile - service mapping Service coordination study Partnership model study	Longitudinal survey of families in 10 CFC sites (3 waves) Monitoring of secondary data	Cost effectiveness study
Invest to Grow			Analysis of local evaluation reports
Cross-strategy			Themed studies Promising practice profiles Progress reports analysis

The bulk of the National Evaluation is focused on evaluating CfC. The overall evaluation questions for CfC are:

Have outcomes for children and families in CfC sites improved as a result of the Initiative?
Do services in CfC sites work more effectively as a system?
Are CfC communities more child-friendly?
How successful has the Facilitating Partner model been in bringing about these changes?

The evaluation of CfC comprises an outcomes, process and a cost effectiveness evaluation. This report is concerned with the process evaluation. The logic model of CfC asserts that the Facilitating Partner model will improve services in CfC communities and strengthen communities, ultimately improving outcomes for children and families. The aim of the CfC process evaluation is to determine whether and how services in the communities have improved. The process evaluation includes a comprehensive community profile of each of the CfC communities, an assessment of how well services for young children in the community work together, and a study of the effectiveness of the SFCS partnership model.

1.3 This report

This report contains information on baseline data for the process evaluation in CFC sites (the shaded cell in Table 1). That is:

Demographic profiles
Service mapping
Service coordination survey
Field work relating to partnership model and service coordination.

1. Further details of the SFCS and CfC are available from www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/aboutfacs/programs/sfsc-sfcs.htm

2. The SFCS national evaluation outcomes framework is available from www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/vIA/sfcs_evaluation/$File/sfcs_%20evaluation_program.pdf

3. The national evaluation framework is available from www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/vIA/sfcs_evaluation/$File/sfcs_evaluation.pdf

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