State of the community service sector in NSW 2015

Based on survey data collected from leaders of 513 organisations, the report provides rich information about sector capacity, sustainability, and engagement with government. It shows the sector\u27s strengths as a collaborative, diverse and feminised industry. It also shows leaders\u27 perspectives on the challenges facing the sector. These include adapting to policy change and meeting social need at a time that many organisations are affected by funding loss, funding inadequacy, and funding insecurity. &nbsp

Challenging the 'new accountability'? Service users' perspectives on performance measurement in family support

After two decades of public management reform, the ‘new accountability’ of performance measurement is a routine feature in the relationships between Australian government agencies and the non-profit organisations they fund to provide child and family services. While performance measurement offers to resolve tensions about how governments manage the quality and productivity of contracted services, the indicators they commonly adopt raise well-documented practical, political and epistemological challenges in social services. Left unresolved, these challenges risk biasing representations of service performance, by emphasising the most tangible dimensions of service activities (such as measures of client throughput) over relationship building and care. Capturing only part of service activity compromises the usefulness of performance data for managing quality and outcomes, and denies policy makers critical information about the value and meaning of care in users’ lives. This thesis identifies and critically explores one set of challenges for performance measurement: the role of service users. Uniquely, I explore how user involvement in social service evaluation can make visible how these services enhance the quality of family and personal life. Using a case study of family support services in New South Wales, the research makes a series of empirical and theoretical contributions to problems of user involvement in social service evaluation. Firstly, the research examines the performance indicators currently used by government to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of family support services in NSW. This shows that performance indicators in family support capture output more thoroughly than outcome, and confirms the minimal role that service users play in assessing service quality and outcomes. But while service users are largely excluded from participation in performance measurement, theoretical perspectives as diverse as managerialism and feminism treat service users as well placed to capture and report otherwise elusive information about care quality and outcomes. Further, participation in evaluation facilitates the exercise of users’ rights to self-expression and self-determination in the social service delivery and policy process. After identifying the widespread exclusion of service users’ perspectives from performance measurement in NSW family support, the thesis makes its more substantial contribution, in documenting findings from a detailed study involving adult family support service users (parents) and their workers (the ‘Burnside Study’). This qualitative study was conducted in four socio-economically disadvantaged service delivery sites located around New South Wales. Using focus group, interview and observational methods and a modified grounded theory approach, the study contributes exploratory evidence of what these service users think of, and how they think about service quality, outcomes, and evaluation in family support. The parents’ accounts of using family support capture their unfulfilled social ideals and the broader visions of the justice they hoped these social services would help them achieve. Their criteria for measuring service outcomes and service quality, and their views on evaluation methods embody core themes that social theorists have struggled to analyse, about the purpose of social services and the nature of ‘a good life’. The theoretical framework I develop highlights the role of family support in the context of service users’ struggles for social justice, and in particular, their struggles for self-realisation, recognition and respect (Honneth, 1995). The research extends theories of recognition beyond publicly articulated social movements to those struggles in social life and social politics that exist in what Axel Honneth terms the ‘shadows’ of the political-public sphere (2003a: 122). After establishing a conceptual framework that facilitates deeper interpretation of users’ perspectives, I present the findings in three categories: users’ perspectives on service outcomes; users’ perspectives on service quality; and users’ perspectives on evaluation methods. The findings show how service users define ‘service outcomes’ in the context of their struggles for recognition and respect, highlighting the contribution welfare services and welfare professionals make beyond the managerial ‘Three E’s’ of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Further, the findings confirm the importance of ‘helping relationships’ to the quality of service delivery in family support, despite the invisibility of service relationships in existing performance indicators. The complexity of worker-client bonds highlights the difficulty of evaluating social services using simple numerical counts of client or service episodes, and plays into broader debates about strategies for revaluing care work, and the role of care recipients. Finally, the findings show the role performance measurement processes and methods might play in facilitating users’ struggles for recognition. Users identified a role for evaluation in making visible the contribution of family support in pursuing their social justice goals, and saw evaluation as an opportunity in itself to facilitate recognition and respect. Overall, the thesis offers concrete evidence about how family support service users experience and define service quality and outcomes, and how they see their own role in evaluating the services they use. The research shows how users’ perspectives both contest and confirm the ‘new accountability’ of performance measurement, pointing to new directions, and further challenges, for conceptualising – and evaluating – social services

Building an industry of choice: service quality, workforce capacity and consumer-centred funding in disability care

Disability services in Australia are undergoing large-scale, systemic reform.  In recent years, to improve outcomes for people with disabilities and the efficiency of services, Commonwealth, State and Territory agencies have developed and trialled a range of market-based funding models within which ‘choice’ and ‘control’ are key principles.  This report is concerned with the impact of these funding models on disability services workers, with particular focus on their capacity to provide high quality services.  The findings suggest service quality and workforce capacity may be best safeguarded where: direct employment and contracting models are carefully managed or avoided; overall levels of government funding and payments to consumers and service provider organisations are sufficient to support decent pay and safe working conditions; workers are supported to upgrade and develop their skills; and there is a properly resourced strategy to build workforce capacity and sustainability.  The findings provide food for thought in the context of the design and launch of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This report was prepared for United Voice, Australian Services Union, and Health and Community Services Union. Authors: Natasha Cortis, Gabrielle Meagher, Sharni Chan, Bob Davidson & Toby Fattor

The political economy of for-profit paid care: theory and evidence

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At the precipice: Australia’s community sector through the cost-of-living crisis, findings from the Australian Community Sector Survey.

This report outlines how Australia's community sector was experiencing challenges during late 2022. Data comes from the Australian Community Sector Survey (ACSS), conducted by the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW Sydney, in collaboration with the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and the State and Territory Councils of Social Service of Australia. The information comes from 1,476 community sector staff, including 318 CEOs and senior managers. Findings offer insight into the operational challenges confronting the sector, including funding, contracting and workforce issues. Service providers have faced unprecedented pressure to help growing numbers of people in need, yet resource levels remain inadequate. As a result, community organisations struggle not only to help as many people as possible, but also to plan, optimise and manage all aspects of delivering complex and essential services in a context of rising costs

Working Time in Public, Private, and Nonprofit Organizations: What Influences Prospects for Employee Control?

Employee control over work-time arrangements promotes work-family reconciliation and buffers against stress. But which human service context provides employees with the best opportunities to control their work schedules? Analysis of Australian survey data shows that after accounting for the low levels of work-time control in human service occupations like teaching and nursing, nonprofit organizations offer superior prospects for work-time control. However, whether this is true is strongly influenced by other occupational, employment and personal characteristics, such that for personal-care workers, work-time control is lowest in nonprofit organizations

Helping people in need during a cost-of-living crisis: findings from the Australian Community Sector Survey

This report examines changes in community need, and the ways community sector organisations and staff have responded. Data comes from the Australian Community Sector Survey, which was conducted in September 2022 by the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW Sydney, in collaboration with the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and the network of Councils of Social Service of Australia (COSS Network), supported by Bendigo Bank. The survey was completed by 1,476 community sector staff from a range of roles. Overall, the report’s findings show rising levels of community need and shortages of capacity to meet demand for community services during 2022 - the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and a time of intensifying financial, housing, and other pressures affecting communities

Shifting towards sustainability: Education for climate change adaptation

The document reports on a scoping study which investigated the professional training and development needs of architects, landscape architects, planners and engineers in climate change adaptation through engaging relevant accrediting institutions in an action inquiry process. The project sought to go further than a normal scoping study would, as it aimed to also assist the professional institutions involved to begin to think about, and take action on, professional development in climate change adaptation. This document highlights: • the need for education in climate change adaptation for built environment professionals • the current status of education for climate change adaptation in Australian tertiary institutions and in continuing professional development programs • how the project led to organisational change and initiatives that promoted education about and for climate change • the outcomes of the project both for the individual professional institutions and collectively • project findings and recommendations for promoting education in climate change adaptation

Participation in sport and recreation by culturally and linguistically diverse women: Stakeholder consultation report

In June 2006, the Australian Government Office for Women in the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) engaged the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) at the University of New South Wales to research how culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women participate in sport and recreation, and the factors that may limit their full involvement. The project is designed to inform the development of policies and programs to effectively support the inclusion of CALD women in sport and recreation activities, as players and in non-playing roles. The project is being conducted in three stages: a data review and analysis (completed in August 2006); consultations with key stakeholders (the subject of this report); and focus groups with CALD women about their experiences and perceptions of sport and recreation activities (to be conducted in early 2007)