The Families and Children (FaC) Expert Panel Project provides support, tools and resources aimed at building the capacity of FaC service providers to use evidence in practice.

The Expert Panel Project was established in 2014. This work is undertaken by a team at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and funded by the Department of Social Services (DSS).

Our ultimate aim is to help service providers to deliver more evidence-informed programs for parents and children, to achieve better outcomes for those parents and children who use their services. We do this by supporting service providers to build their capacity to:

• articulate the evidence underpinning their programs
• use evidence to guide the development and delivery of their programs
• build program monitoring and evaluation into their day-to-day practice.

Service providers can access four types of support via the project:

• We publish resources on our website to help with program planning, implementation, evaluation and outcomes measurement.
• We deliver workshops and other activities on different topics related to program planning and evaluation.
• We offer one-on-one support to FaC Activity providers and can help with different tasks related to program planning and evaluation planning. We also support Communities for Children providers to meet the evidence-based requirements.
• We can help FaC Activity providers to access tailored planning and evaluation support via the Industry List.

A summary of the evaluation of Phase 1 of the Expert Panel Project is now available. An evaluation of Phase 2 is currently being conducted. 

AIFS shares information about the Expert Panel and the Industry List through the Child Family Community Australia (CFCA) information exchange.

Subscribe to Expert Panel Project News and CFCA news to stay up to date with the Expert Panel and other CFCA projects. Information is also available on the DSS website.