Background
The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is pleased to announce the Father Inclusive Practice (FIP) pilot.
The pilot will assist eight Family Relationship Services Program (FRSP) Early Intervention Services (EIS) and eight Early Childhood Program (ECP) services to better meet the needs of fathers.
The pilot also includes an independent evaluation that will further develop the FIP evidence base.
There are two parts to the pilot:
- Part one involves the development of FIP good practice guides by a panel of innovative FIP practitioners; and
- Part two involves the FRSP EIS and ECP organisations testing the good practice guides.
The Department if seeking expressions of interest from FRSP EIS for part two.
Aims
The pilot aims to:
- assist eight FRSP EIS and eight ECP services across a range of service types and locations to better meet the needs of fathers. The services will be included in the following activities:
- a two day workshop where the good practice guides will be tested
- mentoring to support the implementation of FIP.
- further develop the existing FIP evidence base and develop good practice guides. It is anticipated that the good practice guides and mentoring packages will focus on different aspects of father inclusive practice, including assisting organisations to:
- become father inclusive
- engage with particular group of fathers based on their life stage. For example, new fathers, fathers with young families, step-fathers, separated fathers, fathers with high school children, and fathers of children with a disability
- develop an understanding of the resources required to assist all FRSP and ECP services to implement FIP
- develop an understanding of the changes to FaCSIA program management practices required to support FIP.
Measures of success
The four measures of success are:
Measure 1 – There is an increase in the number of fathers accessing the eight FRSP EIS and eight ECP services and these fathers report a high level of satisfaction with the service.
Measure 2 – Each of the FRSP early intervention services and the ECP services receive mentoring to improve FIP. Improvement in FIP will be measured using appropriate evaluative questions.
Measure 3 – Effective evidence based, innovative good practice guides for FIP are developed.
Measure 4 – The evaluation of the pilot provides FaCSIA with:
- an understanding of the resources required to assist all FRSP and ECP services with the implementation of FIP
- an understanding of the changes to program management practices required to support FIP; and
- information to incorporate into the service delivery framework that will assist funded services to strengthen their father inclusive practices as part of their core service delivery outcomes.
Activities
| Activity | Sub-activity | Expected completion date |
|---|---|---|
| Activity one – Developing an understanding of FIP in a variety of family relationships and early childhood service types and service delivery models. | Part A: FaCSIA to select and engage FRSP EIS and ECP services. | 13 April 2007 |
| Part B: FaCSIA to bring together the key, innovative FIP practitioners to discuss the good practice guides and mentoring packages for the eight FRSP EIS and eight ECP services. | Early May 2007 | |
| Activity two – will focus on FRSP EIS and ECP services testing FIP. | Part A. The good practice guides will be developed by the FIP practitioners and undergo peer review. | 20-21 May 2007 |
| Part B. FaCSIA to bring together FRSP EIS and ECP services to test the good practice guides in a two day workshop. The FIP practitioners will conduct follow up mentoring via phone or face to face meetings. | The workshop will take place in late May/early June 2007. | |
| Part C. The project will be presented to the wider FRSP community at the August 2007 FRSP conference and October 2007 Men and Family Relationships forum. | August/October 2007 | |
| Activity three – is a 10 month period where FRSP EIS and ECP services implement FIP and the effects of implementation are collated by the evaluator and reported to FaCSIA. | The evaluation may include:
|
31 March 2008 |
| Activity four – collation of learning. | Part A: The good practice guides will be finalised; Part B. The evaluation will be completed; and Part C. The good practice guides may be published and distributed depending on any remaining slippage of funds. |
15 June 2008 |
Support for participants
Participating organisations will receive the following FaCSIA support:
- FIP good practice guides for engaging with fathers including new fathers, fathers with young families, step-fathers, separated fathers, fathers with high school children, fathers of children with a disability
- Up to eight days consultancy and mentoring services (via phone or face to face meetings) from an innovative FIP practitioner
- Up to $5,700 (GST exclusive) to support participation in the pilot; and
- Reasonable travel and accommodation expenses to attend a two day workshop to road test the FIP good practice guides.
Participant obligations
Participating organisations will be expected to:
- Make staff available to attend a workshop in May/June 2007;
- To implement the FIP; and
- To take part in the pilot evaluation.
Selection criteria
- Describe the nature and extent of community demand for your services to be more father inclusive and how this relates to your service aims
- Describe the nature and extent of the approaches your organisation has developed or is developing to working with fathers, for instance referral pathways/relationships that would support FIP
- Indicate which area of FIP your organisations has an interest in:
- Becoming father inclusive as an entire organisation;
and/or - Focusing on engaging with particular group of fathers based on their life stage. The life stages for this pilot are new fathers, fathers with young families, step-fathers, separated fathers, fathers with high school children, fathers of children with a disability.
- What is your organisation’s capacity to be involved in a pilot project, including the evaluation that will begin in April 2007 and be completed by June 2008. For instance, what resources (such as staff availability to attend workshops) can the organisation provide to support the pilot?
Please keep your responses to no more than 500 words per criterion.
To take part in the pilot, please email your response to the selection criteria to Neal Ollett at neal.ollett@facsia.gov.au.