First established in 1997, Strengthening Families is a structured interagency case conferencing system for the coordination of services to families/whānau. It currently operates in 32 areas with one or more part or full-time Strengthening Families Coordinators in each. Oranga Tamariki is responsible for delivering the Strengthening Families initiative and the
Partnering for Outcomes function contracts with NGOs to provide all but two of these Coordinators. Most areas also have a Strengthening Families Local Management Group with
management representation from both government and community agencies. The focus has been on ‘early intervention’ for most of the programme’s history.

The primary purpose of this exploratory research is to help Oranga Tamariki better understand how Strengthening Families operates across the country, and to inform the future
development of this and other early intervention and interagency initiatives. Using mixed methods research, data collection involved a literature scan, document analysis,
administrative data, and both telephone interviews and a survey with Coordinators and Local Management Group chairs or proxies. The study addresses the following research questions:
- 1. Why was Strengthening Families established, and how has its purpose and context changed over time? - 2. Who delivers Strengthening Families locally and how?- 3. What is the role of Strengthening Families Coordinators? - 4. How do Local Management Groups operate? - 5. What Strengthening Families support is available nationally? - 6. Who does Strengthening Families serve?
- 7. Outside of an outcomes evaluation, is there promising evidence of effectiveness? - 8. What is the current national operating model? (From the Executive summary). Follow the links to the associated literature review and the appendices on the website. Record #6622