Anonymous

Question 1 – How have you adapted service delivery in response to the bushfires, floods and Coronavirus pandemic? When has it worked and when hasn’t it worked? How will this affect how you deliver services in the future? Have your service adaptations included better integration with other initiatives?

Actions in response to COVId-19; move activities to online platform, engage client through both privet and open forums (face book groups), distributed supportive information and material in a number of formats, one on one consultations delivered electronically and face to face in open spaces, easily accessible YouTube sessions and newsletters.
result: medium engagement, challenging for more vulnerable families where face to face engagement and encouragement was necessary. Funding was access for families engaged with other services to increase access to virtual communities (eg: computers, sim cards, credit for phones and internet).

Question 3 – What tools or training would support you to effectively measure and report outcomes through the Data Exchange Partnership Approach?

the DEX system is challenging to use, and at time difficult to access or retrieve information or past assessments. limited capacity to reflective or measure progression.

Question 4 – Do you already have a program logic or theory of change outlined for your program? Did you find the process useful? If you do not have one, what has stopped you from developing one? What capacity building support would assist service providers to develop program logics and theories of change?

yes

Question 5 – If longer-term agreements are implemented, how can the department work with you to develop criteria to measure and demonstrate performance? How can the Data Exchange better support this?

the Data Exchange system needs to be more adaptive and agile to provide a wider range of data and have the capacity for reflection (assess past activities outcomes against new)

Question 6 – What does success look like for your service, and how do you assess the overall success of your service?

participation and parents reporting children graduating into early learning, parental supports built through natural relationships (other group members), evidence of parents understanding of healthy early development.

Question 7 – Do you currently service cohorts experiencing vulnerability, including those at risk of engaging with the child protection system? If not, how does service delivery need to adapt to provide support to these cohorts?

Yes our service works well with this cohort and is connected to IFS programs. Further a review of funding boundaries is needed. Funding catchments are not in line or are in conflict with other catchments funding streams. Please align State and Fed catchments. This is particularly challenging in rural and remote areas where services are only funded to delivered to parts of a community because of funding catchments.

Question 9 – For all providers, are there other ways to improve collaboration and coordination across services and systems?

link them in with similar stated funded services

Question 12 – Is there anything else you would like to share about the ideas and proposals in the Discussion Paper?

If some services are specifically funded to target vulnerable client groups whilst others early intervention. Is DSS moving towards defining vulnerability more clearly? If the expectation in the future is for all CaPs programs to target vulnerable clients we need to see how this might be applied differently in regional areas. Currently service access for some programs is open to all who fits the target group (parents with children o-5 years) within our regional communities, with priority being given to more vulnerable clients. If a client needs to be assessed or demonstrate how they are vulnerable many clients currently accessing this parenting and attachment program may not be able to access the service.