Building capacity in family support services: provision of evaluative support services to FaC service providers

Investigators:

Dr Justin Barker, Prof Morag McArthur, Lorraine Thomson

Funding Source:

Department of Social Services, Australian Government

Aim:

As a member of the Department of Social Services (DSS) Expert Panel, ICPS has been commissioned to assist and support service providers as part of the Outcomes Measurement Project. This project aims to provide assistance to Families and Children (FaC) service providers to strengthen their capacity to develop and deliver outcomes measurements and reporting.

Selected services may receive a range of supports depending on their specific needs. Assistance may include:

• identifying suitable performance indicators for FaC activities;
• identifying service level outcomes that fit within the FaC Performance Framework for programmes;
• identifying and selecting appropriate tools/instruments to measure outcomes;
• developing suitable methods to measure the achievement of outcomes within the context of the particular service within its community;
• identifying and measuring how services contribute to the immediate, intermediate and long term outcomes for clients; and
• identifying and becoming proficient in the use of suitable data collection tools where required.

Support may be provided in a variety of ways including one-on-one or group training, onsite visits or workshops to develop and implement client assessment processes.

For more information about this project, contact Justin Barker.