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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-02 Daily Xml
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HOMELESS2HOME

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:12): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Social Housing a question about the homeless2Home (H2H) database system.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: Reported in InDaily on 17 April 2012, this newly computerised database, called homeless2Home (H2H), which is used to keep track of the homeless in South Australia, has been nicknamed by caseworkers 'Highway 2 Hell'. The system was introduced last July by the state government and has been reported as inefficient by homelessness agencies due to technical issues and as unable to produce standardised reporting and statistics required by the federal government.

Shelter SA Executive Director Dr Alice Clark stated 'it's very frustrating for caseworkers to use'. She continues to say that 'it's actually quite time-consuming to record people's details properly on the system; caseworkers find it's taking them away from their direct client work'. Dr Clark also stated that she has been told 'the database's running costs were into the millions'. My questions are:

1. What research and consultation did the government undertake before introducing the Homeless 2 Home database system?

2. How much has the government spent to date in running costs, maintenance and training costs in using this inefficient homeless2Home database?

3. If the users and agencies believe that the database is producing poor results, what action will the government take to resolve these problems?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Disabilities, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:14): I would like to thank the honourable member for her most important question, which gives me an opportunity to set the record straight in this case. The homeless2Home case management system provides a single statewide case management and information management system to the South Australian specialist homeless services sector.

I encourage the Hon. Ms Lee to continue using InDaily as a source for her questions—even though it is against standing orders—because it gives me an opportunity to correct the woeful record of that journal in terms of its accuracy in investigative journalism. They really just do not get it right, time and time again.

The homeless2Home case management system is used by all agencies in the homelessness sector in South Australia. It is designed to support the pathway of clients through the sector, enabling clients to access the service system at any point and ensuring clients only need to tell their story once. They do not need to front up to different service agencies and retell their story to a new person over and over again. That is one of the constant themes we hear in our feedback from our clients—that they are sick and tired of having to go to different agencies and give their story over and over again.

The homeless2Home case management system is designed to help people give their story just once. The system promotes consistent service provision and integration across the service sector. Significant and robust consultation was undertaken across government and non-government stakeholders throughout the planning and development of the homeless2Home system. The general uptake across the sector has been successful, with a high number of user logins. Users in general have been positive about the increased capacity for cross-agency integrated service responses that homeless2Home provides.

The system is designed to improve client outcomes and efficiencies within the sector by enabling clients to enter the homelessness service system through any homelessness service—any—ensuring there is no wrong door, improving information sharing and referrals between agencies, reducing the reporting burden for agencies and supporting consistent service responses for clients by providing a standardised case management tool set.

The homelessness strategy has a robust system to support the uptake and ongoing use of homeless2Home across the homelessness sector, including regular and ongoing training to existing and new users of H2H, a freecall helpdesk for H2H users, available from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday; an H2H online support page; and information and consultation sessions to individual agencies to assist with troubleshooting dilemmas and barriers to uptake.

Whilst the feedback from users to date has been largely positive, there are currently technical and functional issues that have been identified. You would expect that when you are rolling out a new system, wouldn't you? Do you think any system that you integrate into a new service would be trouble free? No, you actually go out there to shoot the bugs that are popping up. These are understandably frustrating for users but are to be expected with the implementation of any new system of this size. It is expected.

The issues are being addressed with regular system upgrades, and planning for a second release of H2H is underway. The second release is expected to overcome many of the current issues that users have with the system. On 17 April 2012, InDaily, that journal of great repute, published an article criticising the H2H system. In particular, the article stated that the system is plagued with technical issues, according to a homelessness agency. It also criticised the system's inability to produce all mandatory homelessness statistics required by the commonwealth government, but on 26 April a further article appeared in InDaily which reiterated the criticisms of the homelessness database.

H2H has been accepted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare as complying with their national data collection requirements. South Australia's data was included in the AIHW specialist homelessness service collection's first round of results. I might take the opportunity here also to speak of the new homelessness national data collection, which was implemented in June 2011.

The data collected for 2010-11 was based on manually collated and summary level information provided by the homelessness agencies, while the 2011-12 first quarter data of the new homelessness data collection is based on client level data from the South Australian homeless2Home electronic case management system, as reported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

H2H is an integrated system used across all statewide specialist homelessness services. As I said before, clients presenting to multiple agencies will only be counted once. This lowers the chances of duplicate accounts and duplicate accounting occurring. Reported client numbers from H2H are therefore likely to be lower than the numbers obtained through the manual reporting system used prior to that date.

I might go on and talk a little bit about what we are doing about homelessness services in regional South Australia, whilst the honourable member has raised this issue. I could go for another 25 minutes, but I shan't. I am sure you want to get a few more questions in. There is a range of statewide agencies and services that are accessible to regional locations, including legal services, child-focused support, brokerage for young people and ex-custodial support services. Homeless people can access homelessness services from anywhere in this state via the Homelessness Gateway Services, either youth, generic, Aboriginal or domestic violence service gateways. The gateways provide initial entrance to the system and will undertake assessment prior to referral to the appropriate service response.

Having the H2H database spread across the state enables the state government to be responsive to the needs of people with homelessness concerns. It means that we only need to talk to them once, and they do not have to repeat their story time and time again to different agency providers. It should be a service the Hon. Ms Lee supports strongly.

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