Jessica Smart
Research Fellow
Defence & Veteran Family Research
Jessica Smart is a qualitative researcher and evaluator at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. With a background in community development and health promotion, Jessica's research focuses on the provision of social and human services. Jess has been at AIFS since 2016, working on research and evaluation in the areas of child care, out-of-home care, collaborative service delivery and defence and veteran families.
Jess has qualifications in social science and humanities, public health, and community development and is particularly interested in participatory and engaged research approaches and capability building.
Qualifications
BA (University of Melbourne), Dip. Community Development (Swinburne), MPH (University of Melbourne)
Recent publications by the author

Identifying strategies to better support foster, kinship…
This is a summary report about carer's needs by AIFS and Murawin, funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services. The government wanted to know…
Read more
ldentifying strategies to better support foster, kinship…
This is the final report from the research project Identifying Strategies to Better Support Foster, Kinship and Permanent Carers.
Read more
Providing care and support to individuals with a forced…
This resource gives an overview of forced adoption, describing how the experience may affect an individual and the way in which they use your service.
Read more