January–June 2007

RPR News

In February, RPR said a sad farewell to our Officer Manager extraordinaire, Candy Huang. Candy had been with RPR for seven years and during this time had overseen the development of our office systems in the Sydney, Mosman and Canberra offices. Candy's warmth and friendly manner will be sorely missed by all. We wish her great success in her new position of Administration Manager at the Fred Hollows Foundation.

We are also sorry to have to bid farewell to Rosangela Merlo, who has been based in our Sydney office for the past 18 months. Prior to this, Rosangela worked for us a sub-contractor on numerous projects for over five years. Her brilliant skills in data design and analysis will be very difficult to replace. Fortunately, Ian Watson (see Our Associates) has agreed to work with us to fill the gap. But nobody will ever replace Rosangela for sheer personal style.

Assessing SAAP agencies responses to the NSW Ombudsman's 2004 report on access issues for homeless people

Inner City Homelessness Action Plan (ICHAP)

A draft plan has been circulated to community stakeholders for consultation, before being presented to the interdepartmental Partnerships Against Homelessness (PAH) Committee for final approval.

Review of Galilee Day Program

RPR was engaged by the ACT Office of Children, Youth and Family Support (OCYFS) to review the operations of the Galilee Day Program, which provides an alternative education based program for young people aged 12–16 years who are OCYFS clients and currently not attending school.

Planning Ahead in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities

This project for the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care has explored the issues of planning ahead to deal with ageing and incapacity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The project has included development of culturally appropriate resources to inform and educate Aboriginal people about wills, funeral funds, power of attorney and enduring guardianship: a booklet for service providers, a booklet for the Aboriginal community, and a DVD. A communication strategy to promote planning ahead and guide the distribution of resources has also been developed.

Development of Aboriginal Family Health

RPR and Julie McDonald & Associates are working with NSW Health to develop the Aboriginal Family Health Strategy (2007–2010) and operational guidelines, which have a particular focus on the supervision, support and education of the Aboriginal Family Health workers. RPR and Julie MacDonald were previously contracted in 2005 to evaluate the effectiveness of the Strategy.

SAAP and Education Linkages Scoping Study

The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs contracted RPR Consulting to undertake a research project into existing and potential linkages between SAAP and the education system. The aims of the project were to document the extent of existing collaborative work, best practice approaches to working collaboratively with schools and early childhood services, and systemic issues hindering collaboration across the sectors. A report detailing the study findings and proposing areas for further research has been produced, and the major findings of the research have also been summarised in a forthcoming journal article.

The Youth Performance Framework

RPR's work on the common performance framework for the Reconnect and YouthLinx programs has been completed. The data collection tools for both programs were revised in response to feedback received. The revised tools are available for download and use from RPR's blog. The Department of Families, Communities and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) is now building a database to implement the new system.

Developing an Integrated Performance Management Framework for the FRSP

RPR has continued working towards an integrated performance framework for the Family Relationships Services Program, in partnership with the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Attorney General's Department and the sector.

After a year of consultation and development, the project is now moving to the stage of piloting the data collection tools.

Published reports

Some of RPR's many reports and publications are available on the Internet and elsewhere.

Save the Children Fund UK: In June 2006, Lyla Rogan spent three weeks in Afghanistan working for Save the Children UK. During this time she prepared a report on the impact of their Child Rights and Protection Program, operational in four locations in Afghanistan — Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-e-sharif and Shebergahan. Strict security rules prevented her from travelling beyond Kabul, which meant that staff from the other sites had to travel to Kabul to meet with her. Lyla and the staff found using 'Most Significant Change' case studies provided by the team gave the report substance despite the limitations of the overall methodology. Lyla also took the opportunity to provide some team development, which was warmly welcomed by staff who normally work in isolation and under great stress. Lyla's report is available here.

DADHC CALD Strategy (2005–2008): During 2005, RPR assisted the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care in developing a strategy to improve service provision for people from culturally diverse backgrounds. The Strategy can be found at : http://www.dadhc.nsw.gov.au/dadhc/Publications+and+policies/Other/.

Preventing Family Homelessness: During 2005 RPR completed the evaluation of the Family Homelessness Prevention Pilot 2004 (now the HOME program). Available for download are RPR's paper delivered to the AIFS conference in February 2005 and the report published by FaCS.

Reconnect Good Practice Guides: During 2004 RPR developed Good Practice Guides for Reconnect and YouthLinx (then the Youth Activities Services/Family Liaison Worker program). The seven Reconnect guides are a summary of current research plus case studies from the services. The four YouthLinx guides include a summary of key lessons learned from the program, case studies of successful approaches and a list of resources. All eleven guides are available in hard copy form the Youth Section of the Department of Family Community Services 02 6212 9466.

Homelessness Assistance Standards: In 2005 RPR completed a project to develop good practice standards for the homelessness service system in Victoria. The standards are available at http://chirs.infoxchange.net.au/cms/library/hs_homelessness_assistance.shtml.

Helping communities talk together: One year after the tragic ACT bushfires RPR was engaged to facilitate community conversations about the kind of memorial that would mean something to all of those involved – from rural property holders to bereaved families. The report of the project and the work towards the memorial can be found at http://www.arts.act.gov.au/.

Community Capacity Building Explained: Community capacity building has become a central objective in a wide range of public policies and programs in Australia and overseas. This article published in the Australian Institute of Family Studies' Stronger Families Learning Exchange Bulletin (No. 1 Autumn) was written by RPR to help service providers come to grips with the concepts.

Current and recent projects

Following is a list of a few of the diverse projects RPR is currently working on or has recently completed:

Community Services

• Assisting in the documentation of the Service Model of Orana Family Services (2006–2007, current). This organisation sees that its community capacity building approach is having significant positive outcomes for clients, and wants to articulate what it is doing so that its practices can be applied more broadly.
• facilitation of a Children's Summit which brought together the range of state and local government and non-government agencies that have identified a range of issues of concern for children aged 8–11 years in the Fairfield LGA. The Summit heard from a range of experts in the field and identified themes for further collaborative work (2007)
• assistance to Newcastle Family Support Service to consider their options for future development of their services in the light of the changed service environment in the area (2006)
• Complaints-handling workshop for Children's Contact Services (2006). Contact Children's Services are funded under the FRSP to assist parents to have supervised contact with their children. RPR provided a one-day workshop to help improve complaints-handling processes. A resource booklet was developed.
• Facilitation of a community panel on customer service to Department of Housing clients (2006). This three-day panel, organised by the South West Regional Tenants Association, included: listening to presentations; deliberating and making recommendations for practical steps to improve customer service; and writing a report on the process.
• Facilitation of the Forgotten Australians Conference (June 2006), a two-day conference discussing future directions from the Senate Inquiry into Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children. The conference brought together care leavers and their advocates with representatives of the Australian government, state and territory governments, and churches and charities which had run these institutions. Subsequently, on a pro bono basis, RRP has facilitated meetings and teleconferences, and helped with preparation of discussion papers for the newly formed Alliance of Forgotten Australians.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs

• Facilitation of forums for the NSW Collaborative Centre for Health Promotion as part of development of an Aboriginal Health Promotion Strategy
• Development of the Aboriginal Family Health Strategy (2007–2010) (funded by NSW Health) and Operational Guidelines, which have a particular focus on the supervision, support and education of Aboriginal Family Health workers (with Julie MacDonald and Associates)
• The Planning Ahead in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities project, which has explored issues of planning ahead for ageing and incapacity and developed culturally appropriate resources.

Youth

• Designing and facilitating a forum on youth issues and needs for Bankstown City Council as part of their social planning process
• review of the operations of Galilee Day Program, which provides an alternative-education based program for young people
• development of a common Performance Management framework for three youth programs funded by FaCSIA (Reconnect, YouthLinx and Mentor Marketplace)

Organisational Development and Governance

• assisting the Victorian Department of Human Services to develop an Integrated Service Model for the delivery of care and treatment services to people with HIV and AIDS (current)
• assisting the NSW Writer's Centre to review its governance and financial management and administrative systems (2007)
• assisting four community-housing providers to explore the feasibility of amalgamation. The study involved consultation with each organisation to identify issues, benefits and costs; research on effective models of amalgamation; and financial modelling to determine viability of amalgamation models proposed (2006)
• comprehensive review of the Independent Community Living Association (ICLA), commissioned by the ICLA board to ensure that the organisation is delivering the best service possible to its residents. The review looked at the model of service delivery as well as governance and organisational issues (2006).

Other Areas

• Assisting The Fred Hollows Foundation in the process of expanding to a tenable international structure.
• Advice on the service delivery structure of the Community Justice Centres for the NSW Attorney General's Department.

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