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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-04-07 Daily Xml
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NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (12:34): I move:

That this house urges the government to better support non-government organisations by streamlining application processes for government funding and create electronic information sharing to reduce time wasted on applications and increase service delivery.

The Adelaide electorate is the base for a large number of NGOs that provide social services to South Australia's most disadvantaged. Since being elected, I have visited a large number of organisations, both big and small, and have found recurrent issues in relation to how Families SA and Disabilities SA provide government funding to such organisations. Aside from an overall lack of funding, essentially the problems raised with me are as follows.

First, I see a need to standardise the application processes across the departments. Applications made by NGOs are very complex, and each is different in the organisational information required, with copies of relevant certificates and documentation also required. This makes completing applications an incredibly onerous and timely exercise and makes applying for grants too hard for many of the smaller NGOs who do not have the financial resources to allocate to such administrative duties. At present, this wastes time and money that could provide more services to individuals.

One example I was given by a small NGO was that it would take up to two staff several weeks just to complete an application, and then it takes a long time to find out if you have been successful. The staff who spent all the time filling in the applications could be better used helping people and providing services.

Another area that I can see needs work is that funding approval should be granted within a minimum of three months' notice. At present, funding approval is often granted at the eleventh hour, so NGO staff need greater job security. If a staff member is unaware of the funding for a project they are working on or if they are aware that it runs out in, say, two months and have not heard from the department regarding continuing funding, they understandably find employment elsewhere, often in government departments where there is job security and higher rates. It is already very difficult for NGOs to source staff and then to keep them with no job security.

If the NGOs are successful in their applications, they are often only given a short time to be operational, so circumstances exist where new staff need to be sourced and trained and, in some cases, work space provided in order to implement a new or continuing project. This current funding practice particularly disadvantages smaller NGOs, and a pattern is developing where larger organisations such as Anglicare or Centrecare are growing and smaller organisations, many of which create innovative programs, are dropping out of the market or being taken over. Many of them, for example, operate from funding grant to funding grant and their staff are often waiting to find out whether the next grant will go through; so, obviously, if they are offered a secure job, again, they will take it.

I also see a need for a master database of service delivery to clients so that respective NGOs are able to better communicate and coordinate services for clients that access the services from multiple organisations. Currently, a person could go to up to 10 or 20 different organisations for help but none of them would know the past history, what help they have had before, or how better to help them in the future, rather than perhaps duplicating the same services that the client has already received. An electronic database of all the services provided to the community would also be of great benefit. At present, services are spread by word of mouth and a booklet that becomes out of date very quickly. This is a piecemeal arrangement that is time-consuming to follow. An electronic database where an NGO could easily look up how many beds are available or the number of vacancies for drug rehabilitation, etc. would be advantageous to the client and to the organisation.

An example of this is in my own electorate, where I have been trying to work out what NGOs exist and what services they provide so that when constituents come into my office I know immediately where accommodation is available or where they can get help for drug rehabilitation, or where other different areas and services are provided. However, it is always changing because they have to apply for funding each time, and the same providers do not provide the same courses or financial counselling, or what have you. If this was online and accessible, you could easily do a search for what you were looking for and find out when the next courses in financial awareness were coming up, for example, and which NGOs were providing it and when they could apply, which I think would save a lot of time and energy.

Another example given to me by Lutheran Community Care, I think it was, was when a homeless family came in and they had funding available for three days' accommodation. They contacted Families SA and were told it would take a week to get an appointment. They asked, 'After this three days of funding dries up, where can we send this family?' They were given a double-sided A4 leaflet of places for emergency help that they could ring. They brought it into my office, and at least one-third of it was crossed out because the numbers do not now exist or the funding is not at that particular place. It is very difficult for the NGOs to help people when it is changing all the time and there is no central database for them to follow this up.

Whilst I believe many of these issues can be remedied by the sheer will of the government, the present arrangement is wasteful of time and money and change needs to occur as our population is getting older and the growth of our population needing such social services is increasing exponentially.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:41): I rise to support the motion moved by the member for Adelaide:

That this house urges the government to better support non-government organisations by streamlining application processes for government funding and create electronic information sharing to reduce time wasted on applications, and increase service delivery.

Is it not interesting that time and again we hear that the business of the world gets buried in bureaucracy. Here we have a critical human element where people involved in making applications, with decisions made at the eleventh hour, rightly look for other employment because they think they will not get their business off the ground, they have no funding and believe that they will not be viable, so why should they hang around.

People in the Public Service need to understand that not everyone has the surety of full-time employment or lifetime tenure. People need to realise that they are dealing with people who want to supply services in the disability sector and services supporting our families throughout this state. Many needs are satisfied by non-government organisations, and they provide a great support to people across the state, but they need support at the top end, especially if the government is not supplying the service and these non-government organisations are supplying that support.

It is interesting to note a lot of the information is kept on what is barely a database—it is word of mouth, it might be a note, a booking—and in this day and age of electronics, IT, the computer age, there has not been an electronic database set up so that the NGOs and government offices can communicate more efficiently with each other to pass information between each other and streamline the whole process.

Ms Sanderson interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Exactly. As the member for Adelaide indicated, you could have an iPhone application. As the member for Adelaide indicated, an electronic database, where a non-government organisation could easily look up how many beds are available or vacancies for drug rehabilitation, would be advantageous to the client or the organisation. I fully support the motion and commend the member for Adelaide for bringing it to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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