Families Empowered to Act Together

Angela Lawless, Catherine Hurley, Kate Biedrzycki

Families Empowered to Act Together (FEAT) is a collaborative early intervention program supporting families in Salisbury North with children between the ages of 5-13 years at risk of disengaging from learning. FEAT was established in response to agencies and four schools in the region identifying the need for additional support for children and families to engage positively with schools and learning. Referrals are made to the program through the primary schools in Salisbury North.

The program has been functioning for some 18 months and the FEAT Program Advisory Group is seeking an evaluation in order to assess the implementation of the program to date, explore outcomes for participating families and contribute to service improvement. It is important that services can be confident that their programs are beneficial to participants and the wider community, that practitioners have a good understanding of what interventions are effective and why and what may cause harm. This type of evaluation evidence is important to convince decision-makers to fund or extend programmes and to contribute to a knowledge base regarding interventions that work to promote school engagement.

The evaluation tracked the progress of families through the FEAT program and captured the experiences and perspectives of stakeholders. In particular the evaluation sought to allow the ‘voices' of children and their parents regarding their experience of the FEAT program to be heard. The evaluation found that the intervention was successful in addressing some of the issues associated with engaging with school and learning.