A FaCSIA perspective on
community indicators
Tony Carmichael
Community Strategy Branch
Department of Families, Community Services and
Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA)
FaCSIA Strategic Framework
‘Improving the lives of Australians by helping to
build the capacity and wellbeing of individuals,
families and communities’
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
FaCSIA Priority Business Results
1. Measurable improvement in program compliance, efficiency and
impact
2. Improve access to child care, especially for working parents
3. Measurable improvement in outcomes for Indigenous people
from mainstream and targeted programs
4. Implement the government’s child support reforms
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
FaCSIA Priority Business Results
5. Successfully establish strategic
interventions in a range of Indigenous
communities, in partnership with state
and territory governments
6. Measurable improvement of the
impact in communities of our
community based programs and
interventions
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
Social Changes
• Life expectancy
• Increases in the size of
• Family structure and
functioning
coastal communities
• Increases in
• Young people staying at
home far longer
• Upward trend in higher
qualifications
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
volunteering and
philanthropy
Changes to the way social programs
are developed and delivered
• Dealing with individuals in the context of their families and their
community settings
• Integrating services and programs to help people develop
capacity to make transitions over the life course
• More active social interventions focussing on participation
• Increasingly tailored assistance for individuals
• Greater local level action rather than top down approaches
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
FaCSIA’s use of indicators
1. Needs Based Planning – targeted approaches
2. Community Assessment – identifying, analysing and
responding
3. Evaluation – Measuring impact in communities
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
1. Family Relationship Service
Providers (FRSP)
• Key Australian Government initiative to support family
relationships
• Aims to improve the wellbeing of families and
children
• National network of 65 Family Relationship Centres
• Services also target specific population groups
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
FRSP Needs based planning
• Determine target populations for service types
• Select geographic base for model
• Investigate and evaluate data indicators to represent service
type target populations
• Identify broader FRSP target populations and relevant indicators
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
Locating Services - FRSP
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
2. Community Assessment
• Identify and target geographic areas of disadvantage
• Based on the identification process, produce a richer dataset of
information to examine the disadvantage and assess needs
• Respond with a combination of interventions available from
FaCSIA and other agencies
• Evaluate the progress of a community against a set of indicators
over a period of time
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
3. Evaluation – Impact in Communities
• Assess the contribution of individual programs in communities.
 Results based funding model pilot
• Develop and apply a methodology to assess impact at a ‘wholeof-community’ level
 Through a community indicators based framework
• Analyse links and causality between individual program
outcomes and ‘whole-of-community’ assessments
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
Community indicator issues for FaCSIA
• Information availability – use of proxies
• Bringing datasets together from different agencies
• Longitudinal data – increasing use
• Small area level data – neighbourhood level
• Matching Census data with other surveys to get a small area
(neighbourhood) dimension
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators
Questions
A FaCSIA Perspective on Community Indicators