Government services provide vital support for Victorians, including people experiencing homelessness, children at risk of entering care, young people in the justice system and people with complex health or mental health needs. Providing services to people early can help avoid the need for more acute support later. This is known as early intervention. The Victorian Government funds departments to run early intervention initiatives through its Early Intervention Investment Framework (EIIF). It expects initiatives to improve outcomes for Victorians and save costs in the future by reducing demand for acute services.

For the EIIF to achieve its goals, the government needs reliable evidence to show that initiatives improve outcomes, reduce service demand and deliver the savings used to make budget reductions. This audit was conducted to assess if departments produce this evidence.

The audit found departments give the government useful information about EIIF initiatives’ performance. But departments are not always collecting the evidence they need to show if initiatives are reducing service demand and do not always calculate if expected savings are being achieved. To better support government decision-making about early intervention, the EIIF needs clearer requirements to measure service demand, calculation of actual savings at both initiative and whole-of-framework levels, and better communication of risks and evidence gaps in advice to the government.