Cultivating a Culture of Trust and Demonstrating Family Well-Being

The Story Behind the Case

The Family Services Sector supports families under stress. Family services organizations provide support to families in three primary ways:

1. Prevention – This includes encouraging and giving information to parents to help them fulfil their parenting role to the best of their abilities.
2. Early intervention –Working with families who are showing signs of distress can help to prevent problems from escalating.
3. In a crisis – Highly vulnerable families can face long-term difficulties.  While family services aim to prevent such problems in the first place, they can help in a crisis or refer families to other services that can give crisis help.

At New South Wales Family Services Inc. (FamS), our motto is ‘Strengthening Families: Strengthening NSW’. Our aim is to achieve a society that includes:

• Safe children;
• Strong families; and
• Supportive communities.

We support family services that are working to achieve this aim.

One avenue of support includes helping member agencies to implement and use Results Based Accountability and the Clear Impact Scorecard.   All members have similar goals, and as a result, largely share Population Results. Through the use of the Clear Impact Scorecard, FamS is able to demonstrate its collective impact across the state. The Clear Impact Scorecard is an invaluable and effective tool that enables the network to see and demonstrate to partners, funders and the community as a whole its impact on children and families across NSW.

In addition, FamS has supported the Brighter Futures program to create a collective Scorecard. Brighter Futures is an Early Intervention Program funded by the NSW state government. It provides targeted support to vulnerable families to prevent them from entering or escalating into the child protection system. The Scorecard is enabling Brighter Futures to collectively demonstrate its impact on children and families across NSW. It also enables them to share data, what is working in their region, and their action plans to further enhance the quality of their service delivery.

Using the Clear Impact Scorecard has enabled these non-government organizations to demonstrate that the families and children they work with are better off as a result of the work they do. This has empowered family services organizations and given them a stronger voice around the work they do.

In addition, using RBA and the Clear Impact Scorecard has helped to further cultivate a culture of trust, transparency and good will amongst those who are using it. It keeps them focused on Results (why they are doing the work they are doing) and ensures continuous quality improvement for the communities they serve.

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