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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 803 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Deputy Speaker, in response to the issues raised today by Mr Stanhope concerning accommodation issues for women escaping domestic violence, I would first like to draw your attention to the government's women's action plan. This plan contains specific actions about just those concerns. The plan includes actions that address issues of improved access to affordable and safe accommodation for women with or without children, those requiring safety from violence in public housing, and reviewing levels of support for women leaving violent situations at home. The government is committed to addressing these issues, which are articulated in government policy.

Part (1) of the motion refers to emergency accommodation for women. I would like to inform the Assembly that over the last few years the government has introduced reforms to public housing to allocate assistance to those most in need in our community. A principal element of these reforms has been change to allocation policies in order to write clearer guidelines on priority access to public housing. I have to say that one of the frustrations for me is that this policy has been resisted by Labor and the Greens in the Assembly.

Under the government's new allocation criteria, women escaping domestic violence will fall into the new priority one category, directed to applicants in urgent need of housing. The new priority one category includes applicants who are homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless, as well as other people in extreme housing crises, including applicants at risk of domestic violence. The new priority allocation system, which is also sometimes known as a segmented waiting list, has been operative since 2 January 2001. I am very pleased to say that, together with other government reforms, this was recently endorsed by this Assembly.

Mr Deputy Speaker, in relation to part (2) of the motion, the government is committed to ensuring that community services are both adequately resourced and appropriately targeted to deliver effective services. The government is actively pursuing ways to ensure that this happens in a sustainable manner in the delivery of our human services.

Crisis accommodation services for women, including those escaping domestic violence, are funded in the ACT under the Commonwealth/ACT supported accommodation assistance program, which we usually refer to as SAAP. The Department of Education and Community Services is undertaking a number of strategies to more effectively target and resource services funded under SAAP, and a range of other funding programs managed by the department. These strategies include projects relating to costing of services, needs analysis and quality standards.

The Department of Education and Community Services is currently developing a methodology to determine a range of standard price formulas for application across community services purchased by the department. The aims of the project include the achievement of better value from government funding for the community to provide a framework to fund services in accordance with the cost of service delivery, and to purchase services using a consistent formula so that like services are purchased at similar purchasing prices.

The project will also take into account the costs associated with delivery of quality services and differences in the complexity of client needs. This costings approach will relate the cost of services to the clients' needs, recognising that the needs of all clients

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