Members
Our Work
Times of Change • Changes in MSD – Community Investment Strategy – Expert Advisory Group Child Youth and Family • Vulnerable Children’s Act – Children’s Teams • Social Investment – Welfare Reform – Big Data – Return on Investment – based on the individual • Better Public Service Targets
Our Members’ Experience • Post GFC a big shift in experience of working with government – Use Of GETS – Philosophical shift to smaller number of providers of services – Fear of being seen as a trouble maker – MSD funding freeze
The Impacts • Downsizing in overheads capacity and rationalisation – less ability to use capability/capacity for innovative responses • Loss of surplus being invested in additional services • A more competitive approach – less collaboration and mutual support • Incursion into a closed funding system of ‘for profits’ extracting value for profit rather than contributing for community
Outcomes Plus The Added Value from Community Social Services Brent Neilson with Charles Sedgwick and Sandra Gray Te K ā hui Atawhai o te Motu National Collective Iwi M ā ori Social Services
Who did we talk to? • The data comes from nine community social services organisations. • These organisations are involved in offering social services within communities from Balclutha to Auckland. • Individual interviews and focus groups took place in Dunedin, Wellington, Porirua, Whanganui and Auckland. • 70 participants: nine managers, 37 staff, 10 volunteers, 11 clients, and three external stakeholders/community representatives.
What did we find? Organisational Specific Capital Community Value
Organisational Specific Capital • organisational mission or kaupapa • accessibility for clients • embedded in the community • knowledge of community and government agencies • networks and on going collaboration • flexibility with regard to time • ability to respond innovatively • manaakitanga
Organisational Mission or Kaupapa [Our organisation] is So if we get people coming through based heavily on tautoko the door that don’t have those obvious of wh ā nau, aroha, mana issues, and because of our overall and empowerment. It’s a ethic, we don’t say ‘go away because journey, and it begins you don’t have kids and you don’t have here with family violence’ … [Our organisation] stretches the definitions broadly to whakawh ā naungatanga. help those people. In this manner, community and voluntary organisations are able to provide What’s really wonderful about the services, stipulated in government organisation is the values, principles and contracts, to targeted groups, but also to individuals seeking services that mission … It’s genuine. The staff all have may fall outside of the increasingly the same idea … That’s what I like about limited criteria set by government. our values. What we’re able to do is look at our strengths and look at our wh ā nau assets and work to develop that base.
Accessibility For Clients When we started it was literally door knocking. We People come to the city centre for all would walk around the streets of [Auckland] and sorts of things; to shop, or go to just sit with mums on the back steps, to see if they WINZ, or go to an appointment, and would like to do a course. And they’d be ‘oh no, then [our organisation] becomes I’ve got young children’ and we’d say we would their home away from home. They look after them. Or ‘I’ve got no transport’, and we come, have a coffee, meet friends or said we’d provide that. We said we’d provide have a meeting. They have to come childcare and transport to get them to a course, into town for these things, and we’re right here, and have been for 40 and we did. years … We get [clients] pretty much at rock bottom. There are a lot of ladies who have lost their children or about to lose their children through CYF. And when we do get them coming to courses, when they have to come we get them in the angry stage because they don’t want to be here. But the benefit, I think, and why I’ve stayed here so long, is the outcome. I was actually one of those mothers; I was a referral, so I know exactly what they are going through …
Embedded in the Community I often see the staff in the There are huge benefits in community, down the main having a local organisation, who street, or at school events. know their local community. The Some don’t even have staff are local, they’re children, or their children are embedded in that community all grown up, but they still and have that local knowledge come down to support us. and all that extra value. If you They’re a part of the contract out to the big community too, and I don’t providers, particularly off shore, feel weird coming up to then those groups know nothing them when I see them out, about the local community, and telling them how I’m doing, you lose that localism. just like I’ve learnt to do with the other mothers.
Knowledge of Community and Government Agencies We have the local knowledge of being a longstanding organisation. We may know these people; we may have dealt with them before and built up that relationship, so we can often put something in place in the interim to hold them over until we can deal with it properly … We have local knowledge, we know the family names, and we have a good working history of what’s gone on with that family. That makes a huge difference. Instead they have to come in and explain to a different person and that keeps happening, and then we go back to the case manager and they never reply to the emails … And then [the clients] are too scared to go in. They’re intimidated by the whole process … And the thing is, it’s frustrating for us and we know the system, but they expect clients to get all these forms and know all the processes.
Networks and On going Collaboration It’s about generating knowledge; who’s doing what in the community. Also identification of common issues. It can also lead to further professional development. There might be training that needs to be identified, or we get to know what other organisations are doing. So, it’s about better service for clients …
Flexibility With Regard to Time A recent example is a I don’t think they felt they had worker who worked until to rush away, even though they 9pm at night with a had other people to go to. It family in hospital, under was the structured way in very complex which they felt they could spend circumstances; there are extra time, or contact for some actually three parts of our extra support. agency working with that family. There’s huge pressure. Often we get … our home based contract is for helping people for a workers taking clients to three month period, but we seldom stick to that three EPS [Emergency months because the clients’ needs are such that they Psychiatric Services] and won’t be addressed in that period of time. So, because sitting with them until we’re not profit driven, we don’t have a formula as whenever someone else such we stick to. If the client’s need is greater than can come to be with that what we’re funded to do, we stick with that individual. family.
Ability to Respond Innovatively If you look at some of the research that has been done as the forerunner to this work, we’ve been talking about helping the vulnerable, targeting Maori and Pacific peoples, lower socio economic, reducing poverty, reducing debt. So what we’ve done is completely reframed that, because as a community we want to achieve health and wellbeing in a different way. So instead of ‘reducing poverty’, we’re talking about ‘growing financial independence’, instead of how we can reduce debt, we’re thinking about how we can increase disposable income. We choose not to focus on the negatives. There are people already in this space telling our people that, and it’s not working … I decided to frame these rules differently by using words like mana, awhi, tautoko, and manaaki. Again they responded well to this concept of mana enhancing, rather than authoritative rule. With Mana they too were also respected.
Manaakitanga They took responsibility for themselves and often talked about it the following week. They were given respect and understanding by me, and in turn they were able to be honest and trusted … Throughout the whole year these w ā hine became caring towards each other and were delighted to return every week with changes in I came here after I had my youngest. I was in the their lives. They were more worst state I’ve ever been in; the lowest point in confident to identify what went my life. I had nowhere else to go. [The wrong and how they changed organisation] helped me find myself, and through new ways and coming here, I felt like I belonged somewhere … I approaches. met heaps of people and found somewhere where I didn’t feel alienated, and like an outcast, with everything I was going through.
Community Value • Social and Cultural Capital • Social Cohesion and Inclusion • Community Development • Empowerment of Communities
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