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Our Approach
The sector has identified ten System-Level Change Initiatives as the most current critical priorities for driving meaningful change.
Our Priorities
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Aboriginal Leadership and Inclusion
Embed and amplify Aboriginal leadership, ensuring the creation of a transparent, accountable system where power and responsibility is genuinely shared between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders. This approach respects cultural authority and enables sustainable, community-driven solutions.
Innovative Funding Models
Develop new funding models that provide clear incentives for cross-sector collaboration and prioritise achieving agreed outcomes. These models will embed long-term investment, ensuring resources are allocated to initiatives that drive lasting, systemic change.
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Commissioning and Contracting
Establish an outcome-focused approach to commissioning and contracting that leverages cross-sector knowledge and expertise, and ensures resources are efficiently directed towards improving outcomes for children, families and communities.
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Shared Outcomes Framework
Design and implement an integrated outcomes framework for children, young people, families, and communities, aligning the contributions of all relevant sectors. This framework will enable the measurement of ecosystem-level performance, ensuring all efforts are working towards common goals.
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Cross-Sector Practice Gains and Gaps
Identify and analyse gaps and gains in practices to guide consistent and high-quality practice across the government and non-government child, family, and community services sector. Strong engagement will ensure we reach a common language and agreement on best practice approaches, shared outcomes, measurement, and monitoring, uniting clinical, social, and community-focused professions in an integrated approach to practice and clinical governance.​
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​Coordinated Sector-Wide Investments for Impact
Create a transparent, system-wide investment strategy that enables evidence-based decision-making. This will ensure that investments are aligned, effective, and targeted, reducing duplication and addressing gaps in service provision to improve outcomes.
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Collaboration and Authentic Partnerships
Establish structural systems that support genuine collaboration across sectors to address shared challenges. This approach will ensure that partners work together to deliver a cohesive response that provides families with the holistic support they need.
A Learning System to Drive Innovation
Create a dynamic learning environment that fosters continuous improvement through rapid feedback cycles. This will generate actionable data, refine practice, and produce high-quality evidence on what works to meet client needs and scale successful approaches.
Future Governance Model for Thriving Families
Create a distributed governance model that empowers local communities and sectors while maintaining the crucial role of government. This model will increase community and sector ownership and drive locally tailored, sustainable solutions.
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A Public-Facing Narrative to Propel Transformational Change
Deliver a compelling public-facing narrative that communicates the transformative goals of Thriving Families. This narrative will be grounded in truth-telling, lived experience, and research evidence, motivating community-wide engagement and action for systemic change.
Our Engines of Transformation
We combine the backbone of evidence and research excellence with practice wisdom and ground-up innovation, ensuring system change is informed by what works in reality – not just in theory.
The Thrive Lab, Accelerator, Learning Platform, and Capacity Building are foundational assets to help drive system change through innovative system design, implementation support, rapid cycle learning of what is working sustainably and what can be scaled to build capacity. ​​
​​​​​TRY: Thrive Lab is a collaborative innovation space, bringing together cross-sector partners, tech innovators, and lived experience to co-create and refine new solutions. It is a space for ideation, creative problem-solving, and collaborative experimentation.
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TEST: Thrive Accelerator is our implementation test-bed, translating ideas into action by supporting cross-sector coordination, piloting solutions and scaling what works on the ground.​
​​​​​LEARN: Thrive Learning Platform provides the tools, resources and training for rapid feedback, reflective practice and continuous improvement - capturing learning gaps and the small operational barriers that quietly limit progress.
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SUSTAIN: Thrive Capacity Building strengthens leadership, workforce capability and sector resilience so change endures beyond individual projects.​
​Together, these assets form a living ecosystem for change: one that blends world-class evidence with practical, community-led action to support better outcomes for children, young people and families across South Australia.
Our Projects
More Time to Thrive: Preschool Plus Research and Evaluation Program​​
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Thriving Families are collaborating with Professor Sally Brinkman of Education Futures to undertake a five-year evaluation of the Preschool Plus program, the offering of 30 hours of preschool a week for 3- and 4- years olds, to examine its implementation and impacts on parents, children, and service providers.
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Surviving to Thriving: Working with Centacare Country in Whyalla​​
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Thriving Families is partnering with DHS and Centacare Catholic Country SA to work with the Whyalla community to co-design supports that meet local needs. The project will help workers, small businesses, and families access the right support at the right time — from mental health and financial help to community connection and early support so families can thrive.
Discovery Process to Improve Commissioning and Contracting​​
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Thriving Families is leading a focused discovery process to examine how commissioning, contracting and funding arrangements between government and the non-government sector can better support children, young people and families.
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