Executive Summary 4

1 Introduction 12

1.1 ICFCs, Social Ventures Australia and the Centre for Community Child Health 12

1.2 The policy landscape for ICFCs 12

1.3 This report 13

1.4 Approach to the analysis 14

2 ICFCs in Australia 16

2.1 Disadvantage among children and families in Australia 16

2.2 Definition of ICFCs 16

2.3 Current state of ICFC delivery in Australia 17

3 Modelling the need for ICFCs 20

3.1 Defining the need for ICFCs 20

3.2 Prioritising areas of highest need 26

3.3 Quantifying the level of priority need for ICFCs 32

3.4 Quantifying the level of unmet priority need for ICFCs 38

4 Conceptualising the future funding of ICFCs 45

4.2 The defining design features of the model 46

4.3 The model’s core components 46

4.4 Current funding of ICFCs 49

4.5 Key challenges to current ICFC funding arrangements 51

4.6 Implications for future funding 52

5 Features of future funding of ICFCs 55

5.1 Assessment of funding mechanisms for ICFC components 55

5.2 Costing of the funding model 58

6 Funding strategy 65

6.1 Funding options 65

6.2 Assessment of funding options 68

6.3 Implementation considerations 74

7 Towards a new national model 77

7.1 Scaling considerations 77

7.2 Policy considerations for better funding ICFCs 78

7.3 Growing the evidence base 80

Limitation of our work 109

General use restriction 109