Early Years Impact Measurement Framework and Report

A staff member from The Benevolent Society with a mother and her young daughter

The Benevolent Society’s Early Years Places

Our Early Years Places provide families with community support across multiple services and programs. Families can access services from one central location that caters to multiple needs. This helps strengthen a family’s social, emotional and economic circumstances.

To find out more how our Early Years Places operate, click on the infographic below:

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A mum and her two children. They are both in her arms.

Current Evidence for Early Childhood Support Services

Through our Early Years Places, we have been delivering early childhood and family support services to some of Queensland’s most vulnerable families for more than 13 years.

They service approximately 4,400 young children and their families per year. More than 9% are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and 33% are from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds.*

We know that there is a gap in robust, quality data that evidences the impact of these kinds of integrated early years systems in Australia. Measuring these services is complex but vital to informing better service design for vulnerable children and families.

The Benevolent Society Takes Action

We have commissioned Social Outcomes to develop the Early Years Impact Measurement Framework, which will help ensure that investment decisions are informed by an evidence-base focussed on the real impact of services.

The Benevolent Society has already collected data under the new framework to demonstrate how it can be applied on a larger scale. This first run of the framework provides early indications of the social and economic impact of the charity’s Early Years Places (EYPs) in Queensland.

The results of this preliminary research have been released in The Benevolent Society’s 2022 Early Years Place Impact Report.

A Framework to Support Vulnerable Australian Families

The Early Years Impact Measurement Framework assesses the effectiveness of integrated early childhood systems by measuring early childhood development, health, child safety and family outcomes in vulnerable Australian families compared to conventional standalone supports.

Developing this framework within the complex environment of child health and development has proved to be a challenge, but The Benevolent Society and Social Outcomes have approached this holistically and sourced data through comprehensive assessment of client-focussed and systems-focussed outcomes.

The ground-breaking research and development of this framework are The Benevolent Society’s first steps towards creating a robust standard of measuring the outcomes and impacts of integrated early childhood support in Australia.

But to do this properly, we need others to get involved.

A Benevolent staff member reading a picture book to a group of children

Second Phase

We are working with partners to develop a ground-breaking and deep evidence base informing service design, investment decisions and, most importantly, how to improve the outcomes experienced by the most vulnerable children and families throughout Australia.