Page 1325 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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believe that for the first time ever the community sector was called on to act as a commercial entity and to provide a best and final offer for tender applications for some services.
I do not believe that the government truly believes that providing critical support to vulnerable people should be considered a commercial venture. But this approach, which left many community services confused as to the intent of the request, makes me wonder what the current government understands about the work that happens on the ground every day.
It is also my understanding that the existing youth centres are a hard fought for, valuable and underestimated service and that they do not have a very clear future. I am deeply concerned about this issue and also deeply concerned that the system seems to have lost focus on early intervention and appears to have been refashioned to be only providing for “in-risk” young people as part of a family unit. This is, of course, important and critical work that must be undertaken and it should not be done to the exclusion or expense of programs and activities that focus on early intervention and prevention.
My understanding is that, whilst some services will still provide the same physical space for young people to come to, the young people will have limited freedom in the engagement they choose to have and some may only be offered group work or restricted episodes of support. So this is not the old model. Although there seems to be a rewriting of what “drop-in” is, this is not what we traditionally know as a drop-in service.
While welcoming the new focus on outreach to our most vulnerable, there has been little guidance to date offered to organisations as to what is expected of them in designing and delivering aspects of outreach programs. I am again deeply concerned that closing or reducing the capacity of youth centres will create gaps in service that outreach will not address.
Lastly, I would like to raise the issue of how agencies will be asked to report on the new models of service. I cannot seem to get a clear answer from anybody as to the development of the performance measures and outcomes-based reporting requirements. Agencies are telling me that one minute it is up to them to flesh it out, to basically come up with those reporting mechanisms with very little support or time allowed, and the next minute they are told that they will be using the same old outputs for the next 12 months.
It is no wonder that in the community sector many of these agencies are feeling disrespected and at risk of burn-out. That is just from the bureaucratic problems we have seen from this government over the last 12 months, not to mention them also struggling to provide support to increased client loads with increasingly complex needs.
To the best of my understanding, some contract negotiations for this brave new world of supporting our most vulnerable and disadvantaged, which began on 1 March this year, are only now being finalised. Some service models have still not been allocated.
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