|
|
Services & funding > Investment in sustainable family services
New funding for NGO sector as part of Pathway to Partnership
The Government has announced significant new funding for community organisations providing essential services to families, children and young people.
Worth $446 million over the next four years, the Pathway to Partnership
package provides full funding for essential community based social
services.
To see the Prime Minister's speech click here.
Questions and Answers
What is being announced?
The Government is implementing a new funding model for community
organisations that provide essential services for vulnerable families,
children and young people.
Announced last year, Pathway to Partnership is about a new relationship
between government and non-government organisations. We are focusing on
early intervention, the outcomes that services deliver and supporting
community groups to work together.
What will be the additional level of funding for community organisations?
- From 2008/09 there will be an extra $37.5 million of funding for
community organisations providing social services, increasing to $192.8
million in 2011/12 and beyond.
- Under the new model $446 million will be invested in community organisations over the next four years.
- The new model will provide for multi-year funding arrangements to provide funding security at the grass roots.
- NGOs that provide essential social services will be contracted
for the full cost of delivering the agreed volume of services and will
receive funding that reflects changing costs and demands.
- Other services will move from contracts to a grants-based model,
meaning a lot less bureaucracy and compliance costs for small providers.
What services will benefit?
- Parenting programmes (e.g. Barnardos, FamilyWorks)
- Women’s’ refuges and family violence prevention and crisis programmes
- Budgeting advice services
- Mentoring programmes for young people and community programmes to address youth offending
- Victim support
Why is the Government introducing a new funding system?
The Government is moving away from a market-based system where NGOs
competed against each other for funding contracts. The old system
encouraged fragmentation, duplication and too much funding was spent on
overheads instead of communities.
The new model will provide funding to deliver results for children,
young people, families and communities – it will focus on results, not
on the number of clients processed.
What will the impact be?
- The sustainable funding model will provide community providers
with more certainty. They will spend less time worrying about paying
the bills, and more time focusing on the outcomes that services deliver.
- It will give them better ability to plan ahead, attract and
retain qualified staff, improve service effectiveness and achieve good
outcomes for New Zealand families.
- These organisations will remain independent, flexible and
responsive to their communities - but they will have greater confidence
and stability on which to base their services.
- There will be more emphasis on encouraging providers work
together to ensure that families who need help are identified earlier
and get the help that they need.
- Groups will continue to raise donations, seek volunteer help and provide services beyond that contracted by government.
Will any services be worse off under this plan?
No. Essential community services will continue to receive their current
level of funding until they move towards sustainable funding, which
will occur over next four years from the 2008/09 financial year.
What are the outcomes these services deliver?
- Helping parents to raise healthy and confident children.
- Ensuring young people become productive, successful members of society.
- Providing support and assistance to people who are victims of crime.
- Preventing and responding to family violence and child abuse.
- Teaching families strategies to manage their finances and their family relationships.
What is an essential service?
Essential services are those services that are best provided by
community organisations and which the Government would have to provide
directly if the community couldn’t.
Those services that do not meet the criteria for an essential service,
but which contribute towards the greater community good (e.g. community
drop-in centres), will move to grant funding. Many of these services
have already moved to grants and we’ll continue and accelerate this
approach.
What is Pathway to Partnership?
Pathway to Partnership is a multi-year plan to build stronger,
sustainable and more effective community-based social services for
families, children and young people. It’s about working with community
groups so they can deliver high quality services and early support to
families, children and young people. We will do this by the roll-out of
a sustainable funding model for essential community services and
working in partnership with these community organisations to reform our
funding approach.
Why do we need a plan for strengthening community-based social services?
Community-based social services play a key role in supporting families,
children and young people. They are the groups that know what their
community needs, where the gaps are, and what can be done to make sure
families and children are taken care of in their community. More
often than not they are the people in the community that vulnerable
families go to for help.
Who does it affect?
The current scope is confined to essential community-based services for
families, children and young people funded by a range of government
agencies that do not currently have regular cost pressure adjustments,
or annual review of costs and volume pressures. These services are:
- all Child, Youth and Family, Family and Community Services and
the Ministry of Youth Development funded essential community services
- parenting support programmes currently funded by the Ministry of Education but to be transferred to MSD by 1 July 2008
- services for victims of crime funded by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
- non-mandated services for perpetrators of family violence funded by MSD and MoJ
When will you introduce sustainable funding?
Essential services will move towards sustainable funding over the next
four years from the 2008/09 financial year. There will be plenty of
consultation with the sector before this happens to ensure that
community organisations are involved in the decisions that affect them.
How much will our organisation get, when will we get it, and do we need to do anything?
Funding agencies, including the Ministries of Social Development,
Justice and Education will work directly with providers to work out the
increased funding they will receive under the plan. Essential community
services will move towards sustainable funding over the next four years
from the 2008/09 financial year.
How will you work out how much the annual cost adjustment will be?
We will develop a new cost adjustment mechanism to more accurately
measure cost pressures for community organisations than the previously
used Consumer Price Index. It will take account of things such as
salaries and wages as well as inflation. This mechanism will be similar
to that used in some Australian states such as Western Australia.
What is meant by demand increases?
We know that many community-based social services are experiencing an
increasing number of families, children and young people wanting to use
their services. We want to be able to provide additional funding to
enable these groups to deliver their services to these people in need.
What is meant by ‘reforming’ our funding approach?
Government and community organisations want the same things for
families, children and young people, that is, good outcomes. For
example, we want kids to be healthy and secure, and for our communities
to be safe.
The previous market-based funding model encouraged providers to be
numbers- rather than outcomes-focused. This plan will move us towards
outcome-based funding and an increased focus on collaboration between
organisations and the development of innovative approaches to community
and family issues.
How will the plan support community organisations to build their workforce and capability?
There is a shortage of skilled and qualified workers in the community
social service sector. Sustainable funding will help community
organisations to plan ahead and to attract and retain qualified and
skilled workers. Alongside this we will invest in growing the
supply of workers by expanding the successful study awards scheme and
promoting working in the sector. We’ll also further support the
professional training and development of workers.
Why are you doing this now?
Government has already invested more funding in a wide range of early
intervention and family violence programmes over the past eight years
and significantly improved the relationship between government and the
community sector. Pathway to Partnership was introduced in 2007 to
strengthen the child and family sector. We are continuing to build and
expand on this approach to improve the quality and sustainability of
community-based social services in order to make a real difference in
the lives of families, children and young people.
What about early intervention?
This new model is about supporting community organisations to do what
they do best – to help families succeed as families, parents develop
good parenting skills and children and young people get a good start in
life. It is about continuing the government’s emphasis on early
intervention and prevention services to reduce the demand for expensive
remedial services over time.
Top of page
|