5. Why would we want to measure outcomes in family support?

There are many issues and dilemmas in measuring outcomes in family support. These are discussed in Section 7 below. However it is useful to reflect on why we would measure outcomes in family support if we could.

If family support outcomes could be measured:

Clients

Clients will have a more accurate and reliable picture of what has been achieved by a particular service. This is likely to allow them to make better judgements about the value of the service and also make better choices about services.

Practitioners

Family workers will be better able to monitor and reflect on their work because they will have measures of what has been achieved.

Services

Services that want to continuously improve the quality of their services will have information about the effectiveness of the services provided. This information can be used to monitor the effects of improvements to service processes.

Services that want to reflect on the different kinds of services will be able to see the relative effectiveness of the different kinds of programs they are offering. For example is family work in home more or less effective than group work? Under what circumstances?

Peak organisations such as NSW Family Services

Peak organisations such as NSW Family Services will have the evidence necessary to:

• develop standards of practice based on what standards actually get better results for clients
• develop suggested tools and databases for services
• participate in policy discussions and debates with evidence about the costs and benefits of family support services.

Government

Government will be able to determine the costs and benefits of family support and make better policy decisions about prevention services. For example if family support can be shown to achieve outcomes and those outcomes lead to less child abuse it may be far more cost effective to pay for prevention services than for services that have to work with problems after they have arisen.