One of the major challenges for Australia today is to make the change from traditional models of ‘siloed’ service delivery, which no longer serves the needs of children and families, to a stronger, more integrated system of support services for families. At the Centre for Community Child Health, we use our system and service design expertise to support initiatives in local communities that are seeking to improve child and family outcomes and are looking for planning support. Our expertise includes the following:

• Using evidence to inform planning. We work with stakeholders to articulate their focus, then identify, gather, appraise and summarise the evidence.
• Co-design: how to engage and learn about the needs and preferences of families, children and other service users to inform planning. We support and facilitate participatory program planning involving collaboration between service users, services and authorising agencies.
• Outcomes-based frameworks and logic models: unpacking theories of change to aid planning. Our outcome-based models start with the end in mind and include vision planning and action planning.  
• Learning systems: building capacity in the use of quality improvement methods to activate change. Quality improvement methods trial small tests of change at a rapid pace to accelerate and spread improvement throughout the initiative. 

We offer a variety of methods to support community initiatives. These include:

• facilitating meetings
• delivering tailored presentations
• delivering training and workshops
• developing frameworks to guide and/or measure the initiative
• evidence scans
• advice, mentoring and coaching
• report writing.

We also offer services in data, measurement and evaluation for initiatives seeking to improve outcomes for children and families.

For more information on our system and service design expertise, please contact:

Lauren Heery, Manager, Service System Innovation