This is the final report of the 3-year evaluation of the Australian Government’s Stronger Families and Communities Strategy 2000-2004 and summarises the achievements and learnings from the Strategy. These have implications for future policy and practice in early intervention, holistic family support, integrated family and community strengthening projects, playgroups, community capacity building, community leadership, mentoring, volunteer training, and enterprise development, as well as for the next Strategy.

The Stronger Families and Communities Strategy (SFCS) 2000-2004 was designed to help build family and community capacity to deal with challenges and take advantage of opportunities, with a special focus on those at-risk of social, economic and geographic isolation. It consisted of seven community-based linked initiatives that provided funding and support for projects in the community and six broader initiatives. The evaluation has focused particularly on projects funded under the seven community-based linked initiatives of SFCS.

The evaluation was designed to investigate the overall achievements of the Strategy in strengthening families and communities (including any negative impacts and other costs incurred), the factors that contributed to these impacts, and the main learnings for future policy and practice.

The evaluation framework focused on bringing together a diverse range of quantitative and qualitative evidence about the implementation and outcomes of projects and the overall Strategy, including project progress reports, final reports, evaluation reports, standardised questionnaires from projects, project documentation and case studies of some projects using field visits and interviews.

There is much to be learned from the achievements of the SFCS 2000-2004, including validation of its principles and illustrations of how to enact them: 

• working together in partnerships
• encouraging a preventative and early intervention approach
• supporting people through life’s transitions
• developing local solutions to local problems
• building capacity
• using and creating the evidence-base, and
• making the investment count.