Page 1353 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
MINISTER FOR HOUSING AND COMMUNITY SERVICES
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY QUESTION
QUESTION NO 328
Supported Accommodation Assistance Program Client Statistics
Ms Follett asked the minister for Housing and Community
Services -
(1) Is it true that the guidelines under which the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) is administered provide that the client statistics collected and supplied by individual SAAP services will not be used in any way which publicly identifies details for individual services?
(2) Is it true that officers of his Department provided a reporter from The Canberra Times with the client statistics for several individual SAAP services which were published in an article on 14 January 1991?
(3) Did the Minister know about this action in advance?
(4) Does the Minister agree that this is a serious breach of the SAAP guidelines and of the trust placed in the Department by service providers?
(5) What action will he take in relation to the release of the statistics?
Mr Collaery - the answer to the Members question is as follows:
(1) There are no specific national or ACT guidelines relating to the release of data on services funded under the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program. There is an understanding that data collected by the States for the Commonwealth through the One-Night Client Characteristics Census will be published in aggregate form only, with no individual service identification. This understanding stems from client confidentiality concerns relating to the one-night census aspects of the collection. The ACT independently collects monthly on-going occupancy and turnaway rates. No client characteristics are involved in this collection. It is simply numbers in and out over the month and represents the barest minimum required for the public accountability of government funds. There are no agreed protocols on the use of this data.
(2) At my request, a background briefing on the range of community service programs was provided to a journalist from The Canberra Times. As part of that briefing, the monthly ongoing occupancy and turnaway rates collected by my Department and referred to in (1) were provided in relation to youth refuges.
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