FCSS INFORMATION

Family & Community Support Services values the importance of ensuring the needs of the community are being met when developing annual FCSS Programs and Community Partnerships. It’s important to hear the current needs from the Community in order to implement the proper programs and services that have the most preventative value.

The results from this FCSS survey will help guide the Community FCSS Priorities for each year as it aligns to the FCSS Mandate.

What is FCSS?

​Family & Community Support Services (FCSS) is a joint municipal-provincial funding program designed to establish, administer and operate preventive social services. FCSS emphasizes prevention, volunteerism and local autonomy. Under FCSS, communities design and deliver social programs that are preventive in nature to promote and enhance well-being among individuals, families, and communities.

Why do we need to fill out this survey?

Confederation Park 55+ Activity Centre is a FCSS-funded organization. FCSS-funded organizations must submit annual year-end reports on the Funding Information Management System (FIMS) database. Report types depend on the nature of the funded program or initiative (e.g. Increasing Social Inclusion, Policy or Systems Change, or Community Development for Strengthening Neighborhoods).

All FCSS-funded organizations that report on FSII are contractually required to collect and enter FSII data on an ongoing basis. The indicator surveys selected for a program are based on the strategies and rationale identified to achieve the program goal. Organizations that are signing a contract with FCSS for the first time will receive assistance to select indicator surveys and access to the FSII online database.​

What type of Program is Confederation Park 55+ Activity Centre?

Confederation Park 55+ Activity Centre is considered a Social Inclusion program.  All organizations funded for increasing social inclusion programs must complete a program year-end report and must also use the FCSS Social Inclusion Indicators (FSII) surveys for pre- and post-testing of program participants.

All FCSS-funded organizations that report on FSII are contractually required to collect and enter FSII data on an ongoing basis. The indicator surveys selected for a program are based on the strategies and rationale identified to achieve the program goal. Organizations that are signing a contract with FCSS for the first time will receive assistance to select indicator surveys and access to the FSII online database.​

What do you do with our completed surveys?

• Non-identifying demographic information is collected and entered into The City of Calgary’s FCSS Social Inclusion Indicators database (FSII) for the purpose of understanding basic information about the population served by preventive social support programs. Survey data are collected at the start and end of a program, or at periodic intervals for ongoing programs, for the purpose of assessing the impact of participation in programs aimed at increasing social inclusion.
• The program operator will ask for the first two letters of the participant's first and last name as well as their date of birth or age. These are collected on the intake demographics survey and for any social inclusion indicator surveys used by the program. Once this information is entered into the FSII database electronically, it is encrypted using the MK5 algorithm to generate a 35-digit identification number which cannot be accessed by data users. This cannot be reverse engineered to produce initials and a birth date or age so no individual client can ever be identified from the information entered into the FSII database. A sequential 'client number' is also generated to enable data cleaning prior to data analysis.
• The identification number generated by the encryption process cannot be accessed or viewed by any FSII data user. However, it allows basic demographic information and any initial indicator surveys to be matched to indicator surveys completed after program participation. The findings are aggregated to show the average score for responses before and after program participation and the statistical difference between those aggregate scores.

What does the City of Calgary do with FCSS (FCII) Survey Results

Results are analyzed for ‘client groups’ such as all people in Calgary who completed one survey or all participants in any given program. Individual client results are not reported.

The findings help The City of Calgary and agencies using FSII to understand the collective impact of prevention programs for all agencies in Calgary using the same indicator survey. They also help each program using FSII assess their own contribution to the collective results. By tracking the measurable results of participation in prevention programs, The City and agencies can improve their programs on an ongoing basis in order to better serve Calgarians.