Improving program management
- Consistent approach to the purpose and level of, FaCS staff contact with funded projects
- Ensuring knowledge of the program at the national level
- Supporting ongoing innovation and knowledge base for the program
- Selection and funding criteria for the redeveloped program
- Conclusions and recommendations: re-developing EIP/GBP
Developing a clear program logic will assist in improved consistency in program management. Common approaches to overall objectives and performance measures can assist in developing streamlined program reporting mechanisms. The review identified the following areas for improved reporting and management:
Consistent approach to the purpose and level of, FaCS staff contact with funded projects.
Contact with funded projects has a number of purposes including:
- risk management (ensuring organisations have the capacity to undertake the work contracted at the standard required)
- accountability (ensuring organisations are delivering services as planned, that plans link to the programs objectives and performance measures are being reported on accurately)
- support (assisting organisations to improve performance)
- reporting practice learnings to the national program (ensuring knowledge of processes/practices used is known in the broader program).
Clear role statements about the role of FaCS staff overseeing management of projects need to be developed that set out expectations of how frequently and for what purpose contact is made with service providers.
Good practice program management indicates that program management staff need to have a regular level of contact with providers so as to develop sufficient trust with and knowledge of, services being delivered to enable risk management, ensure accountability, provide support and understand practice approaches. This probably entails one to two visits per year linked to a planning and review cycle for organisations that are operating well and more frequent contact with organisations that are new or in difficulty.
Ensuring knowledge of the program at the national level
A difficulty faced by FaCS in reviewing the current EIP/GBP program has been the lack of documentation, data and knowledge at the national level of the scope, reach and outcomes of the program. This situation has resulted from a lack of clear expectations of reporting relevant program information to the national level from either service providers or from state FaCS staff.
The national program’s role could include the provision of national infrastructure to support the program (for instance data collection and analysis; sharing of good practice learnings across the program); linking the program to relevant policy objectives and program developments by ensuring information emerging from the program is known and refining the program where new policy approaches are required; demonstrating effectiveness of the program. This role requires the national program staff to have a good knowledge and overview of the projects funded under the program and to have mechanisms to gain this knowledge.
The redeveloped program’s reporting framework should ensure that the national FaCS office has base level information about each project including services offered, target group served, intervention approaches, performance measure results and good practice learnings. The state FaCS staff play a key role in ensuring this information is available and timely so that ongoing policy and program developments can occur. Mechanisms for regular communication and discussion between the state and national level FaCS staff needs to be formally developed along with clear role statements about the division of program management responsibilities.
Supporting ongoing innovation and knowledge base for the program
For the program to increasingly positively impact on parenting capacity, it will need to have approaches that build on an evidence base and encourage innovation and learning. There are some useful approaches that have already been trialed across FaCS programs that could be embedded within the redeveloped program:
- the use of a clear program logic that has good performance measures can help to build a focus on outcomes and inquiry. Many of the service providers within EIP/GBP, while wanting to demonstrate outcomes, did not have the tools and time to measure performance. Developing some simple performance measures for the range of intervention strategies used in the program and some accompanying tools for service providers to use will not only provide FaCS with useful data but has the potential for refining practice at the service level. Feeding back cross program data and evaluation findings can be very useful in developing practice, as the experience of Reconnect and the Family Homelessness Pilot Program have found.
- providing training in action research as a tool for service providers to reflect on and refine practice, has proved useful across a range of FaCS programs. For example, as a result of action research practice approaches in Reconnect were able to find new ways of improving engagement by young people and parents. However it has proved more difficult to use the findings of action research at the service level to feed into national level performance findings. Action research is most useful as a service development tool rather than a performance measurement tool at a program level.
- The funding of the National Alliance for Children and Youth has the potential to be a key plank in developing applied research approaches focused on assisting service providers to understand and use research findings to improve outcomes. Its network model, development of data and training, setting of clear research strategies and having a knowledge transfer strategy is a model that could help all services working with families. Funding a specific component of the Alliance’s work to focus on building a knowledge base on supporting parenting capacity would be a key extension of this model. The Harvard Family Research Project has demonstrated how useful this model is to effect change in supporting families, with national networks of projects informed by and contributing to, research findings on family involvement strategies. It may also be useful to review the functions of the National Clearinghouse for Child Protection to ensure a similar focus and linkages to the Alliance’s broader remit.
- conducting a program of forums that bring together practitioners working on building parenting capacity. This could be done at a state level and/or bring together at national forums practitioners working with specific population groups or on specific issues (for example Indigenous parenting programs, programs that are addressing family conflict and violence issues).
Selection and funding criteria for the redeveloped program
The review found that across FaCS programs there has been a tendency to fund projects in isolation, within each program silo. Having a clear program logic for the program that encompasses projects funded directly from the newly developed program, as well as those projects funded as sub-components under other programs, may help to increase knowledge of all projects (and auspice organisations) across the Department. This sharing of information is important to preventing small amounts of funding being spread thinly across the service system, instead of the department being able to look for opportunities to build capacity onto already successful programs.
In addition to this issue, the review identified four other issues in the selection process and funding of projects.
- State FaCS staff and state/territory program managers were not able to contribute their knowledge about the local service system, gaps and strengths to the selection process. Including these perspectives in selecting funding would increase FaCS capacity for real partnership models and help improve coordination and collaboration across tiers of government. If FaCS takes up the recommendation from this review to work with the state/territory governments to enable joint funding of services in high priority areas, this process would help to build a model for these partnership arrangements.
- The need for funding long-term projects, rather than demonstration or pilot projects, was reinforced in the literature and by interviews with stakeholders at all levels. Again a selection process that looks for opportunities to extend and build on current practice is more useful than establishing short-term demonstration or pilot approaches. For instance, a strategy that is focused on extending support to grandparents who are parenting grandchildren might be best delivered by extending current service providers work to include this target, rather than setting up specific pilot projects per se.
- Funding of projects to highly disadvantaged communities also needs to recognise the ongoing nature of support that will be required, the need for a greater resource base to ensure multiple intervention approaches and the need for good service system infrastructure. This recognition points to the need for longer term funding commitments than many contracts are based upon. It also points to the need to allocate resources appropriate for the outcomes being sought and the populations being worked with.
- Funding criteria will need to be reviewed to incorporate assessment of proposed approaches against good practice identified in the literature. In addition, auspice organisations need to demonstrate good management and governance systems, ‘cultural competence’ and collaborative approaches. Selection processes should include someone with a good understanding of service delivery and the evidence base for different approaches so that proposals can be usefully assessed as to how realistic they are. In rural/remote areas and for projects working with Indigenous communities it may be important to help build in an establishment period of gradual growth so that expectations are not unrealistically set.
Conclusions and recommendations: re-developing EIP/GBP
The review found there is considerable scope for improvement of performance management so that the proposed Supporting Parenting Capacity program can be consistently managed, demonstrate outcomes and have an ongoing innovation and knowledge base.
R 5 In developing the program logic for the program, reporting framework guidelines and a protocol for shared management roles and responsibilities between the state and national FaCS staff be articulated. The guidelines and protocol should aim to ensure consistency in management and that appropriate reporting occurs at each level of management.
R 6 To assist the program to have ongoing innovation and a knowledge base the program should fund activities that can support this approach including the development of common measurement tools for use by service providers; action research training to aid in responsive services; a parenting component for applied research undertaken by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth; regular forums to bring together practitioners to share insights and knowledge.
R 7 The new program should ensure that selection and funding of projects is inclusive of the views of state FaCS staff and relevant program staff for state/territory governments in order to help better coordination of service delivery at the local level. Funding levels of projects need to be based on expected outcomes, the complexity of groups being worked with and the strategies being used. Funding within the new program should be directed towards longer term funding that builds on existing capacity wherever possible.