The Stronger Familes and Communities Strategy has entered a second phase
Stronger Families Learning Exchange Bulletin No.6 Spring/Summer 2004 pp.3-5
On 7 April 2004, the Prime Minister announced the renewal of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy
Building on the success of the Strategy since 2000, the Australian Government has allocated a further $365.8 million over the next four years for local initiatives that intervene early to help families, children and communities at risk.
The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy is an Australian Government initiative giving families, their children and communities the opportunity to build a better future.
Helping children in their very earliest stages sets the scene for the rest of their lives - as young people, as students, as workers and as future parents. With this in mind, the Australian Government has made early childhood a priority and has undertaken an extensive consultation process to develop a National Agenda for Early Childhood.
Going forward for the next four years, the Strategy will have particular emphasis on early childhood initiatives and resources that can be used to achieve better outcomes for children and their families.Strong families with healthy, well-adjusted children require strong, stable communities in which to grow. To this end, the Strategy also continues to support communities and initiatives building capacity, leadership and mentoring.
Achievements - the first four years
Since the original Strategy was first announced on 16 April 2000, funding of more than $226 million was allocated.
The Strategy has always been about empowering communities to develop local solutions to local problems. More than 660 local projects were funded under the former Strategy, including: 142 Early Childhood programs; 99 Parenting Skills programs; 51 Relationship Skills Programs; 188 Mentoring and Leadership programs; and 97 Community Building programs.
Almost a quarter of the projects were delivered in Indigenous communities and more than a half in rural and remote communities.The former Strategy also worked to encourage volunteering in Australia with more than 6,400 small grants provided to volunteering organisations. This has gone a long way in making volunteers' valuable work easier, safer and more enjoyable. Another important part of the Strategy has been the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. This study will help the Government develop policy in the areas of early childhood intervention and prevention affecting health, education, child care and family support.In the area of child care, the former Strategy engaged 79 service providers offering 4,400 in-home care places and approved 19 providers offering 743 long day care places in rural and regional areas. The Quality Assurance System was also extended to family day care and outside school hours care.
New approaches - the next four years
The new Stronger Families and Communities Strategy will continue the principles of the original Strategy. It will work from a fundamental recognition that the Government's social policy needs to be responsive to community needs and provide access to those most in need.
There is a real need to focus on the health, wellbeing and the capacity of the next generation of Australians. The increasing trend in substantiated cases of child abuse, the poor outcomes for children in foster care, the rising level of childhood obesity, and the incidences of chronic illness among Australian children all show that more work needs to be done in this area.
The focus on early childhood development in the new Strategy has been guided by the latest research and the consultation feedback from the National Agenda for Early Childhood.
The new Strategy is comprised of four streams.
Communities for Children
The first stream, Communities for Children, will support 35 communities with funding of up to $4 million per community for local early childhood development initiatives.
A community organisation will be engaged to drive and facilitate a community development approach to improving outcomes for young children. This approach is recognition that local organisations are best placed to understand the local needs and facilitate partnerships and collaboration.
Effort will focus on the four key areas identified under the National Agenda for Early Childhood: healthy young families; early learning and development; creating child-friendly communities; and supporting families and parenting.
Children are at the centre of this approach and these initiatives will focus on supporting the health and early development needs of young children up to five years, supporting parents and building and supporting child-friendly communities.
Examples of programs include: home visiting; early learning and literacy; playgroups; early development of social skills and communication skills; parenting programs and counselling services; child nutrition; boosting social inclusion and peer support for parents of young children; and organising community events to celebrate the importance of the early years.
A community organisation will be the Facilitating Partner, promoting collaboration among key stakeholders. This includes developing partnerships with leading early childhood experts to ensure the ideas for change are both evidence based and meet local needs.
Much of the funding available in each community will be distributed by the community organisation to local service providers for early childhood initiatives identified in a Community Action Plan.
Local committees will be established, chaired by the facilitating partner, with community leaders, local service providers, local business leaders, service providers, all levels of government and local families.
The local committee will oversee the development of a four-year community action plan for children and participate in the generation of innovative ideas and make key decisions along the way. Solutions will need to be evidence based.
Progress to date
The first seven communities and facilitating partners were announced by the Prime Minister on 7 April 2004. Funding agreements have now been signed and Community Action Plans and Service Delivery Plans are currently being prepared.
A further 28 communities have been identified and an open selection process was conducted in July and August 2004 to select facilitating partners for these communities. An announcement was made on the outcome of the selection process on 25 November 2004 by Minister Patterson. Details on this initiative, the sites and the selected Facilitating Partners are on the Stronger Families and Communities website: www.facs.gov.au/sfcs.
An election promise for an additional $30 million in funding for a further ten Communities for Children sites was made on 23 September 2004.
Early Childhood - Invest to Grow
The second stream, Early Childhood - Invest to Grow, will provide funding for national early childhood programs and resources. It will ensure that Australia continues to be one of the world leaders in best practice in the early childhood development arena.
Early Childhood - Invest to Grow will support and expand a number of successful prevention and early intervention programs with a proven track record. Funding will also be made available to help develop innovative models for prevention and early intervention during the early years, and build the evidence around the success of these new models.
The initiative will also fund the development of resources and tools for national use by families, professionals and communities, supporting families and young children. For example, the development of a website will be funded, designed to give parents and professionals quality assured information on early childhood development, health and wellbeing, positive parenting and information on locally available services.
Progress to date
On 25 November 2004, the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator the Hon Kay Paterson, announced a total of $21 million in funding for 21 successful programs under the Australian Government Early Childhood - Invest to Grow initiative. $16 million will be provided over four years for 10 established programs. A further $5 million over four years will be provided to support 11 developing programs that will test innovative approaches to early childhood investment.
A full list of successful applicants and details about the programs are provided on the FaCS web site at www.facs.gov.au/sfcs.
Applications for the development and delivery of the Parenting Information Website were called in July and closed on 10 September 2004. An application assessment and selection process is currently underway.
Local Answers
The third stream, the Local Answers initiative, will continue to provide funding for projects that help families and communities help themselves. Diverse areas including mentoring and leadership, volunteering and community building are included in this initiative.Building on the success of the first four years of the Strategy, the Local Answers initiative provides funding for smallscale projects developed by local communities in response to local issues.
Developing solutions to complex social problems requires all stakeholders to work together. The new Strategy continues to engage stakeholders in the decision making process.
Funding under Local Answers supports projects that: build effective parenting and relationship skills; build opportunities and skills for economic selfreliance in families and communities; build partnerships between local services strengthening support to families and communities, so they deliver better services and meet unmet needs; assist young parents in particular to further their education or access to training and other services where they are seeking to make the transition to employment; and assist members of the community to get involved in community life through local volunteering, mentoring of young people, and training to build community leadership and initiative.
This approach is recognition that government alone cannot solve community issues and that communities themselves know what their local issues are, how these issues can best be addressed and who they need to work with to implement solutions.
The initiative aims to: strengthen communities to give children a better start in life; build community capacity; work together in partnerships; encourage a preventative and early intervention approach; support people through life transitions; develop better integrated and coordinated services; use the evidence and look to the future; and make the investment count.
Progress to date
The first round of Local Answers funding has been completed. Great interest was received and 94 projects were funded, totalling around $17 million over four years. This takes the total of new projects funded since April 2004 to 108. These projects cover a very wide range of communities in Australia, with the vast majority targeting disadvantaged communities or locations.
Future funding rounds will be advertised in national and local newspapers and on the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy website. The website also lists questions and answers about the funding round.
Choice and Flexibility in Child Care
The fourth stream, Choice and Flexibility in Child Care, continues the important work of the first Strategy in providing Australian parents with flexible and innovative child care solutions.
Funding provides for: the continuation of the in-home care program to provide places for families without other formal child care options; financial incentives for child care providers to set up in areas of high unmet demand; and the continuation of the quality assurance systems for family day care and outside school hours care and the investigation of the viability of quality assurance systems for other care types including Indigenous child care and in-home care.
In-home care: This initiative continues the in-home care program for families with no other formal child care options. In-home care is a flexible form of child care, which is provided in the child's home by an approved carer, and is only available to families that have no other child care options, which includes: families in rural and remote Australia; families working non-standard hours such as police, firefighters, nurses, doctors, musicians and security personnel; families with multiple children under school age; and families where either the parent or child has a chronic or terminal illness, or disability.Long Day Care Incentive Scheme: The long day care incentive scheme will create more long day care centres in rural and urban fringe areas of identified high unmet demand, each with places for young children under two years of age. The scheme will provide short-term incentives to encourage the establishment of 25 new long day care centres offering at least 1,000 places in areas of high unmet demand. This funding ensures the viability of the service while they build their client base and utilisation rates to sustainable levels.
Quality Assurance System: Australia is recognised as the world leader in providing high standards of child care. The Australian Government established a world leading Quality Assurance system that links the approval of Child Care Benefit with the requirement to participate satisfactorily in quality assurance. Over the last four years, funding from the Strategy has extended the quality assurance system from centre based long day care to include family day care and outside school hours care services and the sector has responded positively to this process. The Choice and Flexibility in Child Care initiative will continue this process and examine extending the quality assurance system to other forms of care, such as Indigenous services and in-home care.
Progress to date
A new round of in-home care place allocations has been completed with nine services receiving 523 new places. The first round of the long day care incentive scheme is underway.
All family day care providers have registered for quality assurance with a high majority progressing through the Validation process. As of 1 October 2004, 311 of 320 (representing 97 per cent) family day care schemes had achieved accreditation.
Outside school hours care services are completing the registration process and validation visits will be scheduled for early 2005. As at 1 October 2004, 2,836 outside school hours services had registered to participate in quality assurance.
Formal consultation with stakeholders on an Indigenous quality assurance system is scheduled to occur across Australia between January and June 2005.
Building the Social Coalition: The Stronger Families and Communities Partnership
The Government believes social policy is best developed and delivered in partnership with communities, business and individuals. The "social coalition" is a name that has come to be used for this partnership. The social coalition is critical to developing new opportunities for families and communities beyond those generated by economic growth. Community, business and government all have a part to play in generating opportunities.
Shortly after the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy was first announced in 2000 the Government appointed the Stronger Families and Communities Partnership, comprising of leaders from the community, welfare organisations, researchers and business, to advise on the overall direction of the Strategy and on key funding proposals. The Government is committed to a continuation of the advisory role of community, researchers, welfare and business leaders with this new Strategy.
Further information: If you would like more information on the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy, including any of the initiatives, visit the Strategy's website at: www.facs.gov.au/sfcs.
