Developing a Family Support Program

Program Principles

In announcing the Family Support Program to improve child development, safety and family functioning, the Minister expressed her commitment to supporting the most vulnerable in the community and to building stronger, more resilient families with earlier interventions for children at risk of abuse or neglect.

The Minister is resolute in her expectation that services in any or all of the core service streams will continue to:

strengthen family relationships
foster more resilience within families and communities
work in the best interests of children to create supportive family environments where children can grow - safe, well and happy.

The Minister expects that services delivered under the FSP will build on the existing strengths of individuals, families and communities to develop positive and sustainable change.

Governing Principles

The FSP is underpinned by the following three principles. These principles provide the foundation on which an overarching outcome framework will be developed for the program. The principles are of equal importance and capture the purpose of the core service streams (singularly and as a whole) and are expressed as:

Building the capability and resilience of Australian families and children in their communities.

Ensure relevant services are available to the broad population to assist children and adults to strengthen their abilities as families to support themselves – whether they remain as a single family unit, separate or whether the parents/carers of children are in different locations.
Offer services that focus on equipping people to better manage life transitions
Provide services that facilitate greater social engagement of families and children.
Support the role of communities in working with families and children to help build family resilience.

Working in the best interests of children.

Enhance family capacity to improve the well-being and safety of children.
Enhance children’s development and skills in a way that facilitates and builds on the role of parents and carers.
Provide child focussed and/or child inclusive services that enable children’s voices to be heard.
Deliver well targeted services to reduce intergenerational disadvantage.
Improve outcomes for children by working with families to build supportive home environments.
Ensure that all families take account of the best interests of their children in making parenting arrangements.

Responding to the vulnerabilities of families and children in their communities.

Provide intensive early intervention and prevention services and activities for vulnerable children and families at risk of harm, neglect and/or social exclusion.
Improve targeting of services to overcome long term disadvantage/s in identified locations.
Work with families and children with complex needs and/or multiple disadvantages to improve their outcomes.
Enhance the connectivity between services provided by state/territory and local government services that provide interventions to children and families at risk.

Operational Framework

The Minister is also clear in her intention that the Family Support Program should deliver accessible and coordinated support services without unnecessary red-tape. By working with the not-for profit sector and by cutting red-tape, the Government is seeking to reform and improve the business environment for service providers. It is expected this will provide the opportunity to redirect resources to the delivery of services, while retaining a rigorous performance and evaluative framework to ensure the most appropriate and effective service interventions are delivered to families and children.

The Minister also recognises that while not replicating existing state, territory or local services, there is scope to implement a consistent approach, particularly in early intervention services - to work more effectively together to achieve a common goal of improving outcomes for children and families.

The Department has identified six Key Program Requirements that are critical to achieving an effective operating environment for the program. Feedback and discussion is invited on the program’s proposed operating framework.

Key Program Requirements

The FSP will operate in an environment where outcomes for families and children are enhanced by:

Strengthening collaboration between and amongst providers, and Government and community.
- Foster an environment of collaboration and co-operation between the Government, FSP providers, families and communities and other relevant stakeholders.
- Provide service providers with greater capacity to participate in and influence the ongoing evolution of the FSP.
- Enable service providers and communities to participate in determining the specific services that need to be delivered in individual locations.
- Recognise shared responsibility and accountability.
- Through appropriate mechanisms, improve the Commonwealth’s capacity to work collaboratively with state and territory governments in recognition that FSP services are part of a wider community service network.
Improving access to relevant services.
- Offer services and activities that meet the identified needs of the local population.
- Deliver services from suitable sites that are accessible to identified client group/s.
- Actively work to reach those clients who typically don’t access services and/or who experience barriers to participation.
- Provide people with relevant information so they can make informed choices about services to use in their region.
- Ensure providers have access to relevant information and data to deliver services that meet local needs and to refer clients to relevant services.
Ensuring services link families and children with other relevant community support services.
- Move towards a ‘no wrong door’ seamless approach so clients requiring FSP services can enter through any FSP service.
- Improve service pathways with:
  - Australian Government services
  - state and territory government services
  - local government services
  - other community services.
- Enhance referral and linking systems between relevant FSP services and other related activities.
- Develop processes that enable sharing of client information without compromising the privacy and confidentiality of clients, consistent with legal obligations.
Offering more flexible and responsive service delivery approaches.
- Enable FSP services to work together flexibly to meet the different needs of families and children.
- Encourage innovation that can respond to the diversity of families and communities needs.
- Enable flexibility to work across diverse policy agendas that impact on families and children such as family law, child protection, homelessness etc.
- Provide services and activities in a way that maximises outcomes for the diverse range of target groups that may access FSP services.
- Ensure providers have access to relevant information and data to deliver appropriate services.
Operating within an outcome based accountability framework.
- Establish an outcome based accountability framework for the FSP with measurable performance indicators.
- Ensure quality services are delivered that maximise outcomes for clients.
- Facilitate sharing of data and evidence to achieve common program goals.
Improving the business environment for providers.

The Department will:

Reduce red-tape requirements to enable providers to achieve service delivery outcomes without being burdened by unnecessary red-tape:

streamline financial management practices, including funding acquittal requirements

streamline data requirements based on the collect once/use many times principle and

standardise reporting tools.

Support providers through the provision of consistent procedures and policies that are supported by a common program language.

Work with providers consistent with the Australian Government’s National Compact.

[ top ]