'Stronger Together'

June 2 / 2006 by Kevin Marron

On Friday May 26 the Premier, Morris Iemma, and the Minister for Disability Services, John Della Bosca, released the NSW government’s 10 year plan for disability services, titled Stronger Together.

This ambitious plan comes with a welcome increase in service support to people with disabilities and their families in NSW, improving entry & exit points for clients, developing new types of services to meet people’s needs, and building a more skilled and competitive workforce. There is a focus on a more flexible system and increased capacity and places in many program areas. However, Kevin Marron, Executive Officer of Interchange NSW comments that "we will all have to wait and see how this is actually rolled out and delivered to measure its effect and impact on the needs of people with disabilities and their families".

Special attention should be paid to the budgetary implications of this plan and whether the promised increases will be drawn from any other current welfare sector funding through processes of rationalisation. It should also be noted that some components of the plan are from previous announcements and allocations.

Stronger Together places significant emphasis on improving the system’s capacity and accountability, its cost effectiveness and efficiency, and a shift to purchasing services based on results the Department requires and the outcomes of clients need. The plan also refers to tendering to develop purchasing arrangements for all funded services and replacing the current system of grants with purchasing contracts based on benchmarked prices. The plan seeks a rationalisation of the service industry aiming for service delivery with minimum administration costs, with the government wanting, as a purchaser of services, more value for their money.

This rationalisation could mean funding primarily for service delivery and less for management and support, periodic tendering for all current funds (and not just new monies), and ‘grants’ purely being based on unit cost prices.

A final point is in how this plan relates to the changes taking place with Service Description Schedules and HACC funds. Section 3 of the NSW Government's disability plan seeks to "Streamline service contracts to offer greater flexibility to providers while delivering and reporting on clear outputs". Ironically, HACC funds are heading towards more prescriptive in their definitions of "respite", meaning a more restrictive service delivery.

For more information on Stronger Together, please visit The Department of Ageing Disability and Home Care website:

www.dadhc.nsw.gov.au/dadhc/Publications+and+policies/stronger_together.htm