Endnote 3: Connections and Links

This guide has connections with other relevant projects including:

Family Support Services Standards

The Family Support Services Association has published Standards in Family Support. These standards provide some of the building blocks for establishing evaluation frameworks within family support. For example the standards include:

• Statements of values through explicit premises and principles (eg Families exist as part of an ecological system. Enabling families to build on their own strengths and capacities, promotes the health development of all members of the family. Staff and families work together in relationships based on respect and trust. Projects are embedded in their communities and contribute to the community building process.)
• Implied evaluation strategies in indicators (eg. Is necessary record keeping about family issues done with parents present and participating? Do staff consistently ask about the well being of family members? do all staff working directly with families have knowledge of child development and parenting issues?).

Standards in Family Support is available from NSW Family Services.

Family Support Services data collection

The NSW Family Services has a Client data base. This is a collected of forms that services can modify for their use.

It is available from NSW Family Services.

Famdat

The NSW Family Services is developing a computer software package for family support services client and other service related data.

Contact NSW Family Services.

Community Services Grants Program Service Framework

Many family support services in New South Wales are funded through the Community Services Grants Program by the Department of Community Services.

The Community Services Grants Program is being reviewed. The key documents include:

The Community Services Grants Program Service framework

This framework is essential reading to understand the way DoCS is viewing the CSGP.

Families First Evaluation Framework

Many family support services receive Family First funding. The Families First program has considerable funding for evaluation.

The Families First Evaluation Framework is available from the Families First web site.

Outcome Measurement in Child Protection

In 1998 the report Outcome Measurement in Child Protection: International Literature Review and Critical analysis of child protection and alternative placement outcome measures. Final Report Commonwealth/State Service Provision. Research and written by Lyn Gain and Laurie Young.

The report includes chapters on:

International approaches to outcomes measurement
Theoretical Issues highlighted in the literature
Listing of measures described as outcome measures or indicators in the literature
Critique of listed measures and the identification of preferred measures.

There is a separate Annotated Bibliography.

Indicators of Social and Family Functioning

From 1998 to 2000 the Commonwealth Department of Family and community Services sponsored a process to look at “Indicators of Social and Family Functioning”.

The report includes chapters on:

The relationship between social and family functioning and child health and well-being
Resource domains which influence social and family functioning
A reference instrument for measuring indicators of social and family functioning

Indicators of Social and Family Functioning, Zubrick, Williams and Silburn. This report proposes a framework for indicators of social and family functioning centred on outcomes for child health and well-being. It introduces a new instrument for the measurement of indicators comprising a set of items and scales to derive indicators.

The report is available from the Department of Family and Community Services

Measuring Progress and the Quality of Life

Measuring well-being: Material progress and quality of life, Richard Ecklersley. Keynote address to the Made to Measure Conference, NCOSS, October 1999. This paper addresses the question of whether life is getting better or worse. By ‘life' I mean quality of life for most people living in Australia. More specifically it deals with the relationships between material progress and quality of life. How we answer the question has an important bearing on social welfare and policy.

Measuring social capital in NSW

There are a number of projects that have worked on measuring social capital in various communities in NSW including:

• Warnervale Community Survey
• Measuring Social Capital in Five Communities in NSW

A starting point for this work is available from on this site.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data collection standards

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare develops data collection standards for health and welfare in Australia.

These are available from the AIHW.