Albany’s Vital Signs: Difficult to find contemporary local data key reason behind community snapshot project

Albany Community Foundation’s first Vital Signs report shines a light on the challenge of finding localised data on key community issues such as housing. The need to draw out, collate and collect figures to accurately represent social challenges facing Albany was further entrenched throughout the project with the final report often relying on data from more than two years ago — the 2021 ABS census. Some of the report’s most up-to-date data was sourced from the community sector-driven Connection Point event held in March. Advance Housing chief executive John Lysaught said his and other organisations had previously had to present their cases for funding using baseline data that was often too old. “A lot of that baseline data was pre-COVID and we know that that has had a big shift even here,” he said. ACF’s James Leiper said the organisation had considered applying for funding to collect data themselves to ultimately produce an in-depth report over two years. “But then we considered it more important to use what we’ve got and get something out there and show people what we can do and what it is,” he said. “Then we can look at what’s next, and at that point, we also know where to target the next report as well. “We might notice one section wasn’t of interest or use, and we might go harder by splitting up another section.” Albany Youth Support Association’s Ian Clarke said regardless of where and when the data came from for the first Vital Signs report, it provided a benchmark to assess progress into the future. “If you are starting with a benchmark and you work from there then you can recognise if something is not working,” he said. “Then if it needs to be reviewed and fixed you can’t just be hard and fast saying ’that’s our strategy’.” “I just think it’s been a great initiative and I look forward to seeing what we can all do with it together,” Mr Lysaught said.