FACSIAR overview

Family and Community Services Insights Analysis and Research (FACSIAR) is a centre of excellence in human services insights, analysis and research that operates within DCJ. FACSIAR supports the NSW Government to achieve outcomes for children, families and communities through driving evidence-based decision making.

Our work helps us to understand the areas of child protection, domestic and family violence, out-of-home care, social housing, homelessness, disability, ageing and the human services sector’s resourcing and business operations.

We provide data and evidence to better identify:

• Who do we need to help?
• What do their lives looks like?
• What works for communities and clients?
• How can we deliver real and lasting outcomes for as many people as possible?
• Which areas should we prioritise?
• Are we being as effective and efficient as possible?

FACSIAR regularly partners with other government agencies, universities, national reporting bodies, industry peak bodies, not for profit organisations, service providers, and research organisations. We lead specific projects, data linkage, research and evaluation activities, and deliver seminars and evidence to action podcasts and events.  We regularly share findings and insights to drive the use of evidence and data in policy and practice.

Vision

FACSIAR’s vision is to drive evidence-based decision making to achieve the best outcomes for children, families and vulnerable communities.

Strategic Goals

To work towards and achieve our vision, we focus on four goals:

• Goal One: Provide operations and policy with data, analysis and insights for decision making
• Goal Two:  Be the independent and trusted authority for reporting on organisational performance
• Goal Three: Deliver evidence on what works through evaluation, research, data linkage and evidence translation so DCJ meets State Outcomes
• Goal Four: Demonstrate returns on human services investment for NSW Government by leading  the investment approach.

Principles

The following four principles direct the way we work and deliver our projects:

• Excellence: Being leaders in our fields of expertise, ensuring high quality products and services built around best-practice data products, analytics, evaluation and research techniques.
• Client voice: Incorporate the voice of DCJ clients in developing the evidence base to support policy development and service implementation.
• Easy to understand analysis and insights: Providing timely, reliable and insightful information that focuses on answering key operational and policy questions.
• Innovation and creativity: Work across DCJ to support innovation and creativity in service design and delivery.