“We are all the experts in our own lives.”

This simple statement feels intuitive and self-evident. Who understands my needs and wants better than I do myself? Not some government body, that’s for sure.

But when it’s extended to the rights of people with disability, this simple statement can have big implications.

The concept that people with disability are the experts in their own lives just like everyone else isn’t new. It was included in UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Australia signed in 2008.

Unfortunately, it’s a concept that’s not always translated into reality.

Hundreds of younger Victorians with disability are living in aged care homes. People like Molly, who was told that because of her complex disability needs her only housing option was a nursing home. She was 18.

People with disability are regularly denied other things most of us take for granted

People with disability are regularly denied other things most of us take for granted, like decent employment, access to public spaces and the right to parent.

Change might be on the horizon, with the release of a new State Disability Plan for Victoria. The goal is to improve the way people with disabilities are empowered to make choices about their own lives.

There’s a lot to like about the new Victorian Government plan. For instance, it:

• RECOGNISES the human rights model of disability. For someone with complex disabilities, being able to run their own life the way they want might require supports to participate in the community, as well as the removal of physical, social and cultural barriers. The human rights model emphasises the need to provide this support.
• EMBEDS co-design as an important principle, so that people with disability – including Aboriginal people, women, LGBTIQ+ people, multicultural people, older people, and young people – can be the voice of their own lived experience and needs.
• ACKNOWLEDGES the importance of making new buildings and infrastructure accessible, including public places like parks as well as new homes. (As the late, great Stella Young said: “My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn’t accessible.”)
• SUPPORTS the importance of so-called “disability-confident and inclusive workforces”, and of improving community attitudes to disability.
• FOCUSES on family and sexual violence, and on what needs to change to keep both adults and children with disability safe. This includes reforming and strengthening the family violence and sexual assault sectors and building a stronger workforce.
• UNDERSTANDS that children and families need to be connected with the right supports at the right time – long before a situation reaches crisis point. Pleasingly, the plan proposes “whole of family” support to improve the health, safety and development of both kids and parents with a disability.

But the plan isn’t perfect.

There are some parts that need greater detail and depth (for example, in the employment) or rigour (in relation to tools to support reporting).

The plan is also hazy on implementation. While it identifies the parts of government that are responsible for discrete actions, the description of the Office for Disability’s oversight role is light-on.

The plan also doesn’t commit to the establishment of an Interdepartmental Committee (or any other piece of reform architecture) to drive whole-of-government action.

It is also silent on implementation funding. (Not an insignificant matter.) So while the Plan is big and ambitious, it will only create real, effective positive change if it’s backed by funded rolling action plans with clear indicators, targets and measures for success.

Read our full State Disability Plan Briefing Document, for people with disabilities, their families and the organisations that support them.

i Mould.

Is there any single word more geared to make your skin prickle with disgust? In human evolutionary terms it’s a rational skin-prickling reaction: mould – especially ‘black mould’ – can cause a range of health problems from sniffles to acute asthma, vomiting and even depression.

Mouldy food and mouldy socks are bad enough (sorry), but a mould problem in your home can be the real nightmare.

Especially, it turns out, if you’re a renter.

Just ask Ebony Rehannon, who got debilitating health problems from chronic mould in her Melbourne rental home (see below) but couldn’t convince her landlord to do anything about it, and was threatened with a financial penalty equivalent to six-weeks’ rent when she tried to move out.

Ebony’s story is from the bad old days of 2018, before Victoria’s new rental rules took effect in March 2021.

According to the new rules, mould and damp issues are now classified as urgent repairs that must be fixed immediately. Renters can make expedited applications to VCAT for urgent repairs, with the matter to be heard in a mandated two-day period.

ii Happy birthday.

March 29 was the one-year anniversary of the amended Residential Tenancies Act which, along with the provisions for urgent repairs, provides a broad sweep of protections for Victorian renters. These include:

• minimum standards like cooking facilities, lockable external doors and a toilet in working order
• the right to make simple changes to rental homes without permission
• security of tenure so renters can’t be evicted without due process and cause.

So, a year after these protections were introduced, how are they playing out in the real lives of Victorian renters?

VCOSS has consulted with community service workers who provide emergency relief, financial counselling, family violence response, homelessness prevention, disability advocacy, tenancy advocacy, legal assistance and many other forms of social assistance, to get a sense of how renters are faring.

These workers are often in a ‘first to know’ position – the first to get wind of emerging issues and challenges, especially among the most vulnerable renters.

Their insights reveal a mixed bag.

Some of the new rental provisions appear to be working well. For instance:

• new modification rights are allowing victim-survivors of family violence to install safety infrastructure like cameras and security systems, and lease breaking provisions provide an easier process for victim-survivors to escape unsafe situations
• new eviction protections mean rental providers can’t evict tenants for no reason, and renters facing eviction for late payment have a 14-day grace period to pay rental arrears
• urgent repair matters that are heard by VCAT in the mandated two-day period are commonly being resolved in renters’ favour.

But despite the potential to improve the security, safety and livability of renters’ homes, in many cases there’s a gap between intent and operation of the new rules.

And often it’s the people most in need of support who are falling through the gap.

• While the new modification rights are working well for family violence victim-survivors, workers report that renters with disability face a range of barriers if they want to make reasonable modifications to their home. These barriers include the prohibitive costs of providing the evidence that they need to make the modification, installing the modification, and restoring the property to its original condition when they leave.
• The provision to make sure that an eviction is reasonable and proportionate is not always applied consistently by VCAT, and it’s limited when it comes to evictions for COVID-related late payments, which might involve large sums of money accrued over weeks or months of illness or unemployment.

• The new laws include lease-breaking provisions that are intended to strengthen protections for victim-survivors of family violence. However, workers tell us the promise of these provisions isn’t being fully realised because, when the new rules are tested in the real world, they don’t provide sufficient clarity about who’s liable for rental arrears and any other debts and liabilities.

• Renters with complex needs including mental illness are given scant protection, with no specific requirements in the new rules that would make the private rental market more accessible and sustainable for them.

• Even those urgent repair rules that are supposed to protect people from the scourge of mould are not always operating as they should. Renters who don’t use the urgent repairs process at VCAT are often burdened with the stress of raising a mould issue to the property manager and providing enough evidence for the issue to be acknowledged. When it is acknowledged, the problem is not always dealt with in a timely or adequate manner, with landlords dragging their feet and/or getting shoddy repairs.

More broadly, while the new rules have a clear focus on addressing power imbalances between renters and landlords, workers have identified that some groups of renters continue to face specific barriers to actualising their rights and realising their power in the market. This includes:

• large families
• newly arrived migrants and people with English as a second language
• young people
• people with disability
• people with pets
• people on low incomes or who receive income support
• people who are supported by a worker.

Many are unaware of the new rules and unfamiliar with their rights.

One factor is that the introduction of these new rights coincided with a period when there were many pandemic-related distractions and stresses. Another factor is that there is a significant gap in rights education in our community and this translates to low levels of rights awareness amongst some groups of Victorian renters.

Another factor is the over-heated rental market. Many people in these groups are struggling to access a suitable home, with additional pressures caused by Melburnian ‘tree-changers’ entering and reducing the affordability of the regional market.

In this environment, even renters who are well-informed about their rights and well-equipped to access those rights struggle to assert them. In a situation where dozens of hopeful applicants are turning up for each rental inspection, who’s going to stick their hand up to demand that the property meets minimum rental standards or needs modifications for renters’ safety or security?

iii The future.

Part of what needs to happen to change this situation is to continue to educate renters – and people who support them – about their new rights and where to go for help. Information about renting rights needs to be targeted to different audiences, in a range of formats that empower renters to take steps to assert their rights. Consumer Affairs Victoria has an important role to play here.

However, community sector organisations, who have a direct connection to and trusted relationship with renters, can deliver the greatest impact. It’s vital that the Victorian Government continues to support the sector to do this important work.

It’s what’s needed to bridge gaps between the intent and operation of the new rules.

Community sector organisations, who have a direct connection to and trusted relationship with renters, can deliver the greatest impact. It’s vital that the Victorian Government continues to support the sector to do this important work.

Landlords should also continue to be educated, and there’s a need to improve the standard of conduct for their agents, particularly property managers. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, who can hear disputes that arise in tenancies, is facing a massive backlog that needs to be addressed for renters to be able to access this important protection.

There’s also an opportunity for the Victorian Government to strengthen mechanisms for compliance. For example, Consumer Affairs Victoria could play a stronger, more active role in monitoring and enforcing compliance with the rules in the rental market – so that it’s not up to individual renters to identify problems and assert their rights.

There are also whole groups of renters who are just not covered by the new rules and need more targeted support. This includes people living in rooming houses – some of the most vulnerable renters, facing some of the worst living conditions in Victoria.

They’re nominally covered by a separate set of minimum standards established in 2012, but community workers tell us that rooming house standards are often not complied with and rarely enforced.

People renting public housing also largely miss out on the benefits of the reforms, as the vast majority are on long-term rental agreements from before the new rules kicked in.

There are also whole groups of renters who are just not covered by the new rules and need more targeted support.

The new rental rules were an incredibly welcome reform that promise to improve the lives of the one-in-three Victorians who rent their homes. But all renters – including private, public and community housing tenants, those with complex needs, and those without the capacity to demand their rights – need the benefit of rental protections.

Our message, one year on, is that the Victorian Government has introduced nation-leading, best-in-class rental fairness laws, but there is more work to do to make the promise of safe, secure and livable homes a reality for all Victorian renters.

About 200,000 Victorians will be plunged into poverty, as they’re shunted from the Federal Government’s COVID Disaster Payment to the grossly inadequate JobSeeker scheme.

COVID-specific payments are ending in Victoria today  with the state having reached its 80% vaccination target.

“The Federal Government is washing its hands of these people,” VCOSS CEO Emma King said.

“The jobs market hasn’t yet bounced back. On average, there are about six unemployed or underemployed people applying for every job vacancy in Australia.”

“Knowingly pushing 200,000 Victorians into poverty is a terrible start to our post-COVID recovery.”

Ms King said while the COVID Disaster Payment was being withdrawal early, it was designed as temporary payment.

“The real scandal here is the ludicrously low rate of JobSeeker,” she said.

“JobSeeker is set below the poverty line.  $45 a day is simply not enough to buy fresh food or pay the rent.”

“JobSeeker is meant to be a safety net that protects people from poverty. Instead, it’s a net that traps people in poverty,” Ms King said.

The Federal Government was lauded by economists, mental health experts and social welfare advocates for bolstering the rate of JobSeeker during the height of the pandemic.

VCOSS is calling on the Federal Government and Labor Opposition to pledge to permanently raise the rate of JobSeeker ahead of next year’s federal election.

“Helping people out of poverty should be an issue we can all agree on. It should be above politics,” Ms King said.

“If the Commonwealth fails to boost JobSeeker to a suitable level, it will once again fall to other tiers of government and under-funded frontline social service bodies to pick up the pieces.”

In the media

Future is pretty bleak’: Unemployment up as COVID-19 payments end
The Age, 11 November 2021

COVID payments to end in Victoria
Mornings with Rafael Epstein (ABC Radio Melbourne), 18 November 2021

We are so deeply saddened at the passing of Kim Sykes.

Kim lived her life in service to others. She was a powerful advocate for what was right, and always generous with her time, wisdom and affection.

Professionally, Kim held roles across the public, private and social sectors. She served as the longtime CEO of the Bendigo Community Health Services (2010-18) and as a VCOSS board member (2012-20).

Kim’s contribution to VCOSS leaves a true lasting legacy. We are so very grateful for her leadership and stewardship, for her insight and dedication to the organisation.

She always worked to achieve what was in the best interests of VCOSS and those we serve, whilst showing absolute generosity and a wonderful sense of humour.

She was truly dedicated to advocating for improved health and wellbeing outcomes for all in the community, and particularly for those who were disadvantaged.

She was a loving mum, a dedicated community member and somebody always able to make you laugh, especially when spirits needed lifting.

Kim will be missed by those who loved her, which is to say all those who knew her well.

On behalf of Victoria’s social and community sector, VCOSS pays tribute to Kim and offers deep sympathies to her family and friends.

Vale Kim Sykes.

VCOSS welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Inquiry into economic equity for Victorian women.

Since November 2014, the Victorian Government has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing gender equality. This is reflected in Safe and Strong: A Victorian gender equality strategy, the Gender Equality Act 2020 and the establishment of the Gender Equality Commission, alongside broader reforms and significant investment in tackling family violence.

These are landmark reforms that will effect generational change. The Victorian Government’s Inquiry into economic equity for women can build on these strong foundations by identifying – and recommending to government – solutions to problems such as unequal pay and workplace barriers to women’s success.

There has never been a more important time to address these issues. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing social and economic fault lines and given rise to new forms of disadvantage. 

It has had a regressive effect on gender equality.  

In Victoria (and, indeed, globally), women have been over-represented in the sectors hardest hit by COVID-19. Gender Equity Victoria’s analysis found that, in the first year of the pandemic, the payroll impact on women was greater than men across many industries.  Gender Equity Victoria also reported that the majority of casual workers unable to access Jobkeeper were women, and that women depleted their superannuation at a higher rate than men when withdrawing emergency COVID-19 funds.[1] 

Additionally, COVID-19 has increased the burden of unpaid care. Across six lockdowns in Victoria, responsibility for childcare and supervising children’s home learning has disproportionately fallen on women.

Victorian women have also disproportionately carried care responsibility for other family members, such as aged, disabled or sick parents who are not able to draw on formal supports because of health risks, fear or access barriers. 

Many Victorian women are juggling paid work commitments around these unpaid care responsibilities.

Given the short consultation timeframes for this inquiry, VCOSS has primarily focused this submission on addressing economic equity in the community services industry.

The community services industry is the state’s largest industry based on employment and third-largest based on contribution to GSP.[2]  It is highly feminised industry.  Women account for 83.5% of the sector’s workforce. 

Workers in the sector experience lower pay and conditions in comparison to other industries. Improving pay and conditions for this workforce is essential if we are to reduce economic inequity for women in Victoria, redress systemic undervaluation of the sector, and attract and retain workers to meet growing demand for services.

The Victorian Government has a number of levers at its disposal to effect transformational change for workers in this sector.  Government funding accounts for over 52% of community service organisations’ incomes, and has a direct impact on wages, conditions and the length of employment contracts.  Making changes to the way this funding is indexed – for example, introducing a fair, transparent formula that accounts for changes to key cost drivers – will have a positive flow-on effect for the economic security of workers in this highly-feminised sector.  It is just one example of how the Victorian Government can improve equity for Victorian women in work. 

This submission identifies a range of other opportunities for government to promote greater job security, create more pathways into work, support access to promotional opportunities for women, leverage our kindergartens, education and training sector, and strategically use the social procurement framework to advance gender equity.

The Victorian Government can also actively advocate to the Commonwealth Government to improve the childcare subsidy and reform parental leave – these two drivers would significantly boost women’s workforce participation and deliver significant economic gains. 

VCOSS notes the strong leadership of the Victorian Government at National Cabinet.  There is an opportunity for Victoria to work with the Commonwealth Government to effect progressive policy reform for women. 

VCOSS has included as appendices to this submission, two flagship reports that focus on workforce challenges and opportunity in the sector.  These are:

• The 10-year Community Services Industry Plan, launched in 2018
• Stories into Evidence: COVID-19 adaptations in the Victorian community services sector, a VCOSS-Future Social Service Institute report produced in 2020.

Additionally, VCOSS has recently produced a Working for Victoria Insights Paper for the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions (DJPR), documenting worker and employer perspectives on community sector employment, including secure work, fair pay and related matters. This paper is not yet published, however, VCOSS would be pleased to share it with the Inquiry upon request and with the permission of DJPR. 

Summary of Recommendations

Promote job security in the community services sector        

Progress shared, strategic industry and workforce development priorities identified in the 10-Year Community Services Industry Plan           

Continue to fund job creation in the community services sector

Better support for younger workers

Build a diverse community services workforce         

Strengthen Victoria’s early childhood education and care, education and training systems

Support access to promotional opportunities in the community services sector

Improve access to affordable education and care to support women’s workforce participation

Advocate for reforms to Australia’s industrial relations system        

Advocate to the Commonwealth Government to:

Leverage social procurement

An insecure, low paid, female-dominated workforce

The Victorian community services sector,[3] a component of the broader Health Care and Social Assistance industry, employs approximately 185,454 people.

Employment in the Victorian community services sector is highly gendered, with women accounting for 83.5% of this sector’s workforce. In comparison, women account for 49.6% of the Victorian workforce.

The Victorian community service sector predominantly employs part time workers, accounting for 42% of the workforce. It is also highly casualised, with casuals accounting for 25% of the sector’s workforce. In comparison, casuals account for 18.8% of the Victorian workforce.

Of the 46,000 casual employees in the Victorian community services sector, around 70% are women.

Further data is provided on pages 11 – 13 of this submission.  Case studies on pages 14 and 15 bring to life the impacts of insecure, low paid work on workers in family violence and early childhood education and care, and the broader workforce implications.  These case studies are illustrative of the experience of workers across the community services sector.

Case study: Family violence workforce insights

The 2019 Victorian Census of Workforces that Intersect with Family Violence (the 2019 Census)^[4] was committed to in the Building from Strength: 10-year Industry Plan for Family Violence Prevention and Response (Building from Strength).

Family violence staff love their work; they just have too much of it

Results from the 2019 Census show that family violence staff, particularly those from the specialist family violence and primary prevention workforces, are highly motivated and committed to working in a family violence response or primary prevention of family violence role. Overwhelmingly, workers love the work they do, have high confidence levels in terms of training and experience, and are satisfied in their current role. They are also buoyed by a strong belief that their work is making a difference.

However, the actual amount of work they are being asked to do is negatively impacting their health and wellbeing, and a significant portion of the workforce plan to leave their role within the next 12 months.

Reasons include:

When asked about changes that could be made respondents indicated:

It is crucial to consider and address these workforce challenges in coming years to ensure that services can meet ongoing demand, maintain sustainability and ensure staff health and wellbeing.  

Case study: Early childhood education and care workforce insights

The early childhood education and care workforce is overwhelmingly female.[5] It is experiencing significant strain and exhaustion from a culmination of pre-existing issues that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like other parts of the community sector, the early childhood education and care workforce has long-experienced issues associated with poor mental health, exhaustion and burnout. 

Long-standing issues that need to be addressed include:

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified these issues.  Recent surveys indicate significant parts of the workforce plan on leaving the sector within the next three to five years[6], mirroring workforce data from the Family Violence Census.

Community-based early childhood education and care workforce survey

Early Learning Association Australia, Community Child Care Association and Community Early Learning Australia recently surveyed 360 members to better understand the drivers of staff shortages.

Respondents were kindergarten providers and long day care centres offering kindergarten programs. The survey found staff turnover had increased or greatly increased for 50 per cent of respondents since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

More than half of all respondents indicated the following factors in contributing to staff turnover and shortages:

Over half of survey respondents use above award pay to attract or retain staff.

Services report that staff are also leaving the sector or retiring early due to:

In the kindergarten space, the recently approved Victorian Early Childhood Teachers and Educators Agreement (VECTEA) brings significantly improved pay and conditions for early childhood staff in Victorian kindergartens. The benefits are yet to be felt as implementation is just beginning, but improved conditions will likely improve wellbeing outcomes as a result. The VECTEA is a significant win for the sector, however, there is still work to be done, and it does not cover all staff who work in Commonwealth funded services.

COVID-19 impact on the community services sector

The community sector, like many other industries, continues to face new challenges and ongoing disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand is high, and services have been required to adapt established service models at pace. The sector has successfully maintained continuity of support to Victorians requiring social assistance and support through adoption of telehealth and other innovative forms of remote delivery, alongside extensive changes to on-site provision (for example, services such as crisis accommodation). 

Research conducted by VCOSS and the Future Social Services Institute into the community sector’s response to the first six months of the pandemic highlighted the agility of the sector.  The Stories into Evidence[7] project found services were often running ahead of government in terms of anticipating issues and enacting change, for example, the identification of high-risk workplaces and creation of worker ‘bubbles’/COVID-safe rostering where services could only be delivered face-to-face.  

However, 18 months into the pandemic, the cracks are showing. The costs of implementing public health measures continue to be significant and largely unsupported.  They coincide with a decimation of fundraising and donation income, and are compounded by other cost pressures, such as increases in the minimum wage, the superannuation guarantee payment and new costs associated with the introduction of the Portable Long Service Leave Scheme. 

Services face major sustainability challenges.

Through the Stories into Evidence research, VCOSS heard that many community sector organisations were barely coping with demand pressures prior to the pandemic. During the first six months of COVID-19, services were simultaneously working to maintain continuity of support to existing clients, deal with pent-up demand, and respond to new and emerging needs, including increased demand for family violence, mental health and alcohol and other drug services and an influx of clients who have not traditionally needed to access social support. 

Whilst COVID-19’s trajectory remains unknown, it is clear that a sustainable community services sector will be the cornerstone of social and economic recovery.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Victorian Government established the $500 million Working for Victoria Fund to create employment opportunities for people who had lost work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This important initiative created over 10,000 jobs across essential industries, including more than 1,100 in the community services sector across 54 organisations.

The Working for Victoria Fund helped meet the immediate needs of organisations to respond to a surge in demand for critical services in areas such as family violence, alcohol and other drugs and mental health.[8] The projects funded enabled organisations to build their capacity, reach new cohorts of the community, and created opportunities to help build a pipeline of new workers into the sector.

VCOSS was commissioned by the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions to produce an Insights Paper on the Working for Victoria Fund, for the purpose of informing the Victorian Government’s future job creation initiatives.

The Insights Paper is noted here as the findings are highly relevant to the Inquiry’s deliberations, as are the recommendations, which identify ways to:

• harness the community sector’s job creation potential (with specific recommendations on the future design and implementation of programs that succeed Working for Victoria).
• Address job insecurity, low wages and high workloads (issues that were raised in workshops with young workers and workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as barriers to building careers in the sector).

Many contracts in the community services sector are short-term and not permanent and, in the Insights Paper, workers noted that this was impacting their decisions regarding building a career in the sector.

“People said they have been working in the sector for 10 years but never had a permanent contract. This makes me question if this is a sector I would like to continue working if that is the case.”

“I could be working in a government job and have more job security and better pay. I have a conflict between job security or doing a job I am more passionate about.”

Short-term contracts constrain socio-economic mobility – for example, without a stable income, people are prevented from getting a home loan. The types of contracts in the community sector were of particular concern to staff in client-facing roles.

“More permanent contracts would be great – we need to reward our works to reflect the amount of effort [that] is going in. People cannot get home loans on six months contracts. Social workers, community workers, youth workers are not respected as highly as other workers. There is a need to include job security to keep really good workers in that line of work.”

Workers also noted that short-term funding in the sector impacts service delivery and the ability to meet the needs of the community.

Systemic undervaluation of the community services sector

The undervaluation of the community services sector is well documented.[9] For many years, Victoria’s community services sector has experienced underfunding through low rates of indexation and short-term funding contracts.[10]

The community services sector is highly feminised, with 83.5% of the workforce female. Around 42% work part-time and 25% work in casual employment. While some workers value the flexibility of casual work, for others it is a ‘forced choice’ because it is the only form of employment on offer to them.  COVID-19 rendered more visible the challenging working conditions for those casuals who need to work across multiple organisations, sites or jobs in order to make ends meet.

The broader sector also experiences relatively lower pay than other industries. Average weekly earnings for the health care and social assistance sector is around $1108, below other industries at around $1207.[11] A community services sector worker earns, on average, $876 per week. This is significantly lower than other industries, for example the construction sector, where a worker earns, on average, $1,466 per week.

RMIT University’s Sara Charlesworth, Professor of Work, Gender and Regulation, in her work on the aged care workforce, has noted:

“One of the key factors that has contributed to the current wages and conditions for the aged care workforce is the gendered nature of the work.

Gender and gender (in)equality sit at the heart of the poor wages and conditions for frontline aged care workers. The workers who undertake this work are overwhelmingly female and the nature of work they perform is highly gendered, historically viewed as quintessentially ‘women’s work’”[12]

The same could be said about other workers – for example in the childcare sector, which is overwhelmingly female and has generally experienced lower wages and conditions than other industries.

Investment in social infrastructure and the care economy creates more jobs than construction

Social infrastructure refers to “the human and social capital that is produced and maintained by caring services, health and education.”[13] Investing in social infrastructure provides similar public good benefits to investing in physical infrastructure (for example, new houses, roads and bridges).^[14]

However, as De Henau and Himmelweit note:

“Public spending on social infrastructure is usually seen as a cost rather than an investment, and not considered for investment-led Keynesian stimulus policies, despite having long-term economic and social benefits.”

Significantly, De Henau and Himmelweit’s research across seven OECD countries (including Australia) shows that:

“[i]nvestment in care generates more total employment, including indirect and induced employment, than investment in construction, especially for women, and almost as much employment for men.”

Investing in social infrastructure not only supports job creation, but also has benefits for gender equality.^[15]

For every additional 1% of GDP spent on care industries, this would result in twice the number of jobs being created than equivalent investment in construction in Australia.^[16]

This research highlights the important role that Victorian Government investment in the community services sector can have in driving job creation for the State’s economy, and the gender equality effects of such investment.

Grow the pipeline of community service workers

In Victoria, the number of people employed in health care and social assistance almost tripled between the mid-1990s and 2021. Ongoing demand generated by the NDIS, increased demand for childcare and Australia’s ageing population, as well as the industry’s relative resilience to the impacts of COVID-19, suggest strong continued employment growth is likely.

In the next four years to 2025 it is estimated that Victoria will add around 58,000 jobs in the health care and social assistance industry – a 12.3 per cent increase compared to state-wide employment growth of 8.3 per cent.  Employment growth rates in the distinctive community service (non-medical) subsectors of the health care and social assistance industry match those of the broader industry. 

Employers require targeted government support, for example, through funding more community services industry traineeships and exploring opportunities to earn and learn.  However, for these to be successful they need to be co-designed with the sector to ensure they are responsive to employers’ needs. To build employer confidence and buy-in, and maximise impact, they should also apply insights from past projects.  Furthermore, they should be complemented by targeted policy measures that address key sustainability challenges that constrain the sector’s ability to create secure jobs.

To support the Victorian Government’s Jobs Plan target to create 200,000 jobs by 2022 (and a total of 400,000 jobs by 2025), the Victorian Government needs to:

• Institute policy and funding reforms that give community sector employers the confidence and capacity to create new jobs.
  • Enable the community sector to provide secure jobs, in line with the Victorian Government’s policy objectives.
    • Progress strategic industry and workforce development priorities in the Community Services Industry Plan that will enable government to fully leverage the sector’s potential as an engine room for job creation.

Promote job security in the community services sector     

The urgent need for fairer indexation

Government funding for community service organisations has been indexed at about two per cent per annum over the past nine years. This rate of indexation has never been sufficient.  However, the funding gap has now become a chasm as services face a raft of significant new costs. This year, the Fair Work Commission raised the minimum wage by 2.5 per cent and the superannuation guarantee increased by 0.5% as of 1 July 2021. Since 1 July 2019, a majority of community service organisations have also had to fund the 1.65% portable long service leave levy.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations have also faced increasing cost pressures with lower levels of income coming in from fundraising, increased demand for services, ongoing COVID-19 outlays such as additional cleaning and personal protective equipment, and loss of the volunteer workforce.

With the cumulative impact of both under-funding and short-term funding arrangements, set against a backdrop of exponential growth in community demand for social assistance, community service organisations are under increasing levels of strain.

Underfunding organisations leads to reduced support for vulnerable community members. This ends up costing government more, as the window for early intervention diminishes and the system is oriented to expensive crisis responses.

Unless there is fair indexation that enables the community services sector to meet the true costs of delivering essential services, organisations across the state will be forced to stand down workers and slash services. These job losses will disproportionately affect Victorian women, as the community services workforce is female dominated. It will also impact the sector’s capacity to operate COVID safely.

Over the past 18 months, community service organisations have stepped-up to support Victoria’s response to COVID-19; providing material aid to those doing it tough as well as community health services, family violence response and other critical programs to keep Victorians safe at home and work.

To continue this vital work and ensure that Victorian’s receive the services they need, funding must increase with the true cost of delivering services. A permanent indexation formula, that is fair and transparent, is needed to ensure community service organisations are sustainable and effective into the future.

VCOSS welcomes the Victorian Government’s recent establishment of a working group to progress the development of an indexation formula.

Insecure work driven by short-term funding agreements

Across the community services sector, workers are often employed in insecure work arrangements including casual or fixed term employment contracts.[17] This is due in part to government funding agreements and short-term project funding.

Short-term funding contracts undermine the community sector’s ability to deliver the best possible outcomes for clients.

As the Productivity Commission recognised in its Human Services report, standard contract lengths in the family and community services sector (typically three years or less) are “too short”.[18]

“Three‑year contracts do not give service providers adequate funding stability. Short‑term contracts can also be detrimental to service users because service providers spend too much time seeking short‑term funding, which is a costly distraction from delivering and improving services.

Short contracts can be an impediment to service providers developing stable relationships with service users, hindering service provision and the achievement of outcomes for users. The lack of certainty inhibits planning, collaboration between service providers, innovation and staff retention.”[19]

The Productivity Commission also recognised the challenges of attracting and retaining staff where there was uncertainty about whether contracts would be renewed.[20]

The Productivity Commission recommended that default contract terms should be increased “to seven years, with enhanced safeguards, to achieve a better balance between funding continuity for service providers and periodic contestability”.[21]

Similarly, a recent June 2021 report prepared by the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW Sydney recommended to “[i]ncrease standard contract lengths for community sector grants to at least five and preferably seven years for most contracts; and 10 years for service delivery in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.”[22]

Increasing default contract terms to at least five and preferably seven years would promote job security in the sector, enabling organisations to reduce the reliance on fixed term and casual employment.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Develop and apply a permanent indexation formula, that is fair and transparent, to ensure community service organisations are sustainable and effective into the future.
• Increase standard contract periods in family and community services to at least five years, and preferably seven years, to create more secure work opportunities in the sector, in line with advice from the Productivity Commission.

Progress shared, strategic industry and workforce development priorities identified in the 10-Year Community Services Industry Plan

The 10-Year Community Services Industry Plan articulates a vision and set of actions to help grow the Victorian community services sector.

It focuses on ensuring that the sector has a diverse workforce that can meeting growing demand, reflecting the diversity of the communities it serves and delivering services in the places where they are needed.

The workforce must have the knowledge, skills and capabilities to ensure that services are person-centred and high quality, with a focus on safety and accessibility.

The Victorian Government should prioritise key workforce priorities under the Community Services Industry Plan so that the sector can attract more people into the workforce, improve workforce retention and meet growing demand for services.

An industry-wide dataset on the community workforce

To make a real impact on people’s lives, it is vital that we shift from just measuring what is delivered – such as the number of hours of service provided to individuals and families – to a greater focus on what is achieved; for example, in relation to health, safety or education outcomes at an individual, service or population level.[23]

Although a lot of data is already being collected, much of this measures outputs, not outcomes, and is not comparable across time or funding streams as reporting requirements differ for each program. Governments and funding bodies request a lot of data, but often do not provide adequate data back to organisations.[24]

The United Kingdom’s Adult Social Care (ASC) Workforce Data Set is a leading example of an online workforce data collection service, providing important information that helps support workforce planning for the adult social care sector in England.[25] It includes information on over 20,000 care providing locations and 750,000 workers, replacing the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC) in August 2019.[26]

Modelled on the United Kingdom’s Adult Social Care (ASC) Workforce Data Set, the Victorian Government needs to develop a robust, accessible industry-wide dataset on the community workforce, comparable across sub-sectors and tracked over time to support the growth of the sector.

Investing in a regional workforce development strategy

Prior to COVID-19, the community services sector was experiencing significant levels of demand for services and workforce shortages, particularly in regional areas.

A number of organisations commented on the challenges they experienced in recruiting local workers to regional positions. They noted that, despite these roles having a high number of applicants, the people applying did not have the requisite skills or experience.

The Victorian Government needs to invest in the development of a regional workforce strategy for the community services sector, to help increase the pipeline of workers and ensure that services can be delivered to people locally.

Supporting people with lived experience to become community services industry employees

The CSIP notes the important role played by peer workforce and peer support.[27] People with lived experience can bring greater empathy and understanding to services, and service users often reflect on the benefits of having this additional support.[28] This is also a key finding of the recent Royal Commission into Mental Health. 

VCOSS members have reflected on the important role that people with lived experience can play as community services industry employees, particularly in hiring people from culturally and linguistically and diverse communities, or with lived experience of volunteering. These workers play an important role in connecting with community members, and their lived experience enables them to better fulfil their role.

Developing a peer workforce should be prioritised, and people with lived experience engaged as both employees and volunteers in community service organisations across all levels, including reception staff, in personal support, as case managers and board members.[29] Strategies are needed to encourage people with lived experience to become community services industry employees and to support them in their roles.

Streamline and support paid internships and placements of students into the industry

Supporting student placements in the community services sector helps create a pipeline of new workers into the sector by providing students with practical on-the-job training.

There is immense value for organisations in hosting and employing university students as they can shape their development, leverage off their university studies and support a pipeline of workers into their organisation.

For example, in VCOSS’s Working for Victoria consultations, young workers expressed their desire to ‘get a foot in the door’ and commented that student placements focusing on developing key skills like casework would help support their career progression.

Many community organisations would like to take on students and/or interns but do not have the resources for placement administration, student supervision or training.

Programs such as ‘Enhanced Pathways to Family Violence Work’, funded by Family Safety Victoria, help participating organisations to build that capability. Investment in these types of programs should be sustained, scaled and adapted to other parts of the sector.

The Victorian Government could address unique challenges faced by small and mid-size employers by examining the feasibility of a centralised support and supervision model with VCOSS and dual sector TAFE/university partners.

The Victorian Government could also help support the uptake of paid student internships in the sector, which would provide a greater number of opportunities for students and new graduates to develop skills, gain experience, and improve their knowledge of the sector.

These short-term opportunities (three to six months) would enable people to upskill and build their professional networks.

Ensuring they are paid positions reflects good practice and helps reduce barriers for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to participate in these opportunities and gain valuable experience.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Develop a robust, accessible industry-wide dataset on the community workforce, comparable across sub-sectors and tracked over time.
• Develop and implement a regional workforce development strategy.
• Develop strategies to encourage people with lived experience to become community services industry employees and to support them in their roles.
• Streamline and support paid internships and student placements into the industry.

Continue to fund job creation in the community services sector

Make the community services sector a priority industry

The Victorian Government plays a central role in funding job creation in the community services sector. This is reflected not only through the 1,100 roles created through the Working for Victoria Fund, but also in the fact that it provides more than 50% of community sector funding, supporting the delivery of essential social assistance and support to Victorians.

In order to give substance to ‘community services as a priority industry’, the Victorian Government’s DJPR should consider quarantining a proportion of the funds for the community sector in relevant industry programs. For example, government quarantined a proportion of funds ($50 million) for agricultural and food production industries in regional Victoria as part of Working for Victoria. A similar commitment made to the community sector would recognise the sector’s significant economic contribution and capacity for job creation.

Increase the rates of subsidy under the Jobs Victoria Fund

The Victorian Government is providing $250 million in wage subsidies to assist Victorian businesses and organisations to employ at least 10,000 people who are looking for work through its Jobs Victoria Fund.[30] The Jobs Victoria Fund is the successor to the Working for Victoria Fund. 

Organisations were very supportive of the Working for Victoria Fund and were keen to see government continue to invest in job creation, particularly in the community services sector.

Whilst the new Jobs Victoria Fund has been welcomed by organisations, many noted that the current subsidy levels of $10,000 or $20,000 are insufficient to support the sector to take on new employees or continue employing Working for Victoria staff. Higher level of subsidies are needed to support job creation and meet increased demand for community services.

While organisations would like to see a 100 per cent wage subsidy, they recognise that government is unlikely to provide this level of subsidy in the future. However, increasing the Jobs Victoria Fund wage subsidy levels from up to $20,000 to up to $50,000 would engage more community sector employers. At this level of increased subsidy, more community service organisations are likely access the Fund to take on new workers and help grow the pipeline of workers into the sector.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Formally recognise the community services sector as a priority industry, in terms of economic contribution and job creation capacity, and quarantine a proportion of funds for the community sector in relevant DJPR programs and projects.
• Make refinements to the current Jobs Victoria Fund to drive greater community sector take-up including increasing current wage subsidy levels from up to $20,000 to up to $50,000.

Better support for younger workers

Ensuring that young workers can access employment opportunities and get their ‘foot in the door’ is essential to building economic security and providing the foundations of a good life.

Youth unemployment and underemployment have been persistent policy challenges, even in good economic times.  This has intensified during COVID-19, with almost 80,000 more young people out of work.[31]

The Brotherhood of St Laurence Youth Unemployment Monitor found “Young women suffered higher initial job losses, with the sudden closures in largely female-dominated industries such as hospitality, accommodation and retail.”[32]  While some jobs have been recovered, the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria has observed that “History shows that youth employment will be the last to recover from this economic crisis.”[33]

In the community services industry, which was relatively more resilient to job losses than other female-dominated industries, impacts for young women workers included disrupted pathways to first jobs (for example, because it was more difficult to complete student placement hours) and reduced participation because of unpaid care responsibilities (for example, supporting young siblings with home learning). 

Another dimension of the unpaid care issue (unrelated to COVID-19) is that young women who choose to have children will often take time out of the paid workforce for parental leave, and often return to work part-time in order to balance competing responsibilities.

Evidence shows that women on average have lower superannuation balances as a result of taking time out of the workforce and working part-time following parental leave. Women often are the secondary income earners due to the need to care for children and other family members.

Later sections of this submission identify opportunities to strengthen Australia’s federal parental scheme.

The analysis provided over the page focuses on how to best support younger workers into employment, and is drawn from the insights VCOSS obtained through the Working for Victoria project and other projects such as the VCOSS Community Traineeship Pilot Program (CTPP).  

VCOSS’s experience is that young people may need extra support to navigate barriers and retain their employment, as new employees in the community services sector.

Barriers to employment (and training) may include those directly related to work (such as developing a resume, preparing for interviewing, developing work-readiness skills, purchasing appropriate clothing, paying for a computer, or accessing transport), as well as other life challenges such as mental ill-health, homelessness and parenting.

Supported traineeship programs like VCOSS Community Traineeship Pilot Program (CTPP) (funded by Jobs Victoria – through the Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions (DJPR)) have shown the value and importance of young people who are newly employed in the community services sector having access to a support worker for the first 12 months of employment. This is in addition to access to financial resources, which may be used for things like the purchase of computers, paying for transport or paying for counselling services.

Support workers in the CTPP have been able to:

• provide direct support to young people
• be a sounding board
• advocate
• refer
• support conversations with employers to enable changes to employment.

Without this assistance some young people may resign or disengage from work, training and the program.

It is particularly important that young people can connect to their support network within the first month of employment.

Support workers also work with host employers to ensure that young people are supported in the workplace and to address any barriers to engagement; for example, if the young person would benefit from part-time hours rather than full-time. The support worker role is crucial in that it supports and enables effective communication between all stakeholders, ensuring the young person remains at the centre.

Through these supports, young people have shown a significantly higher rate of formal training completion than those in traditional traineeship programs (average of around 70% compared to approximately 57%), and many have also gone onto further employment post-traineeship, with their host employer. Over the course of the first year of employment, the young people have generally indicated that they feel more confident as workers and more resilient to manage change, and have an enhanced identity as a community services worker.

To set new workers up for success, this also requires good orientation and supervision policies as part of structured support and the resources to deliver on that. 

Through the Family Safety Victoria workforce development program ‘Enhanced Pathways to Family Violence Work’, which was project managed by VCOSS in its pilot phase in 2018-19, VCOSS and Domestic Violence Victoria/Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria identified that – in order to set new workers up for success – they need a clear statement of their individual role, responsibilities and objectives; an understanding of internal decision making and accountability processes; an understanding of how their work contributes to attainment of organisational vision and goals; and an understanding of how their work contributes to the implementation of organisational strategic and operational plans. 

Additionally, new workers and supervisors need to have access to regular supervision sessions; understand the expectations of supervision; and have access to debriefing, as required.  New workers also need to receive regular verbal and written feedback on their progress in meeting their individual objectives; be included in team meetings; feel welcomed and a part of the team/organisation; and have any special needs attended to in the workplace. This is resource contingent. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Ensure that all DJPR wage subsidy programs have a dedicated youth employment stream, with funding quarantined to support youth roles.
• Fund a coaching or mentor program specifically for young people and others who have experienced disadvantage, or barriers to employment, to support them throughout their first year of employment.

Building a diverse community services workforce

Through the Working for Victoria project, VCOSS partnered with the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria (ECCV) to deliver a workshop involving women over 45 years who shared their experiences of being employed with community service organisations through the Working for Victoria Fund.

Most of the participants reported significant difficulties in obtaining secure employment in Australia. Many had worked in short-term, casual or gig roles and had been unable to secure permanent employment (particularly in the industries they were qualified for or had significant international work experience).

Many of the women over 45 years reflected on the difficulties balancing their career and family responsibilities and discussed the challenges of caring for young children and finding family-friendly employment.

Some of the common barriers identified by participants to finding employment in Australia included:

• Overseas qualifications, skills and experience not being recognised
  • Employer demands for local experience
  • Lack of networks
  • Discrimination in hiring and unconscious bias
  • Lack of English language skills

Some workers also experienced additional intersectional challenges based on their sex, age and disability. Many of the women over 45 years reflected on the difficulties balancing their career and family responsibilities and discussed the challenges of caring for young children and finding family-friendly employment.

The majority of workshop participants had tertiary qualifications. Many participants had overseas qualifications but found they were not recognised by Australian employers. This was particularly challenging for women over 45, who told us that at their life stage it was unrealistic to begin studying again.

The Victorian Government’s Recruit Smarter report found that jobseekers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds experience a range of barriers to finding work, including unconscious bias.^[34]

As a result, many jobseekers from diverse backgrounds experience higher levels of underemployment and unemployment.^[35]

Unconscious bias and discrimination in hiring practices was noted as a barrier by a number of Working for Victoria employees.[36] Other barriers also discussed include overseas qualifications, skills and experience not being recognised, employer demands for local experience, lack of networks and lack of English language skills.

Identifying ways in which these barriers can be overcome is crucial to helping support more people from diverse backgrounds into employment. Not only is diversity important for the workforce, it is also good for the economy and the community. Research shows that diverse workplaces are “more efficient, better at problem solving, more creative and more resilient in economic and financial downturns.”[37]

The Victorian Government should revisit its Recruit Smarter report to identify ways in which it can help reduce unconscious bias. This should include, for example, promoting its guidelines on best practice for inclusive recruitment to Victorian businesses and organisations.

Victoria’s Overseas Qualifications Unit (OQU) offers free and confidential assessment services to have people’s qualifications recognised in Australia. Ensuring that people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities are aware of the OQU and that organisations have good linkages into different communities will help promote the service and support more people to have their overseas qualifications recognised.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Strengthening Victoria’s early childhood education and care, education and training systems

Leveraging Victoria’s kindergarten infrastructure to support women’s workforce participation

The Victorian Government’s $169.6 million dollar investment in free kindergarten for 2021 as part of the government’s response to COVID-19 was intended to:

• Support access to high-quality early childhood education to support children to thrive.
• Boost workforce participation for families, especially for women, who are primary carers.[38]

For many working families, the number of hours and days currently provided by kindergartens in Victoria makes it difficult to utilise this service and meet work commitments.

Whilst each service is different, kindergarten programs often run across three days a week for 5 hours a day, or across 2 days a week at 7.5 hours. In some cases, services may provide 2 x 5.5 hour sessions and 1 x 4 hour session.

Whilst many Long Day Care services provide embedded kindergarten programs, the Victorian Government could consider undertaking a scoping exercise to examine ways of utilising existing infrastructure, the trust early learning providers already hold within their communities, and explore ways of extending care for children before and after care to boost workforce participation.

For example, small, stand-alone kindergartens who offer high-quality early learning but may be facing sustainability constraints could facilitate the delivery of occasional care before and after a kindergarten program. This would make better use of existing infrastructure, support provider viability, and give greater options for female workforce participation in areas of need.

RECOMMENDATION

• Undertake a scoping exercise to examine ways of utlising existing kindergarten infrastructure to boost workforce participation.

Maintain commitment to Free TAFE to boost women’s economic participation

The Free TAFE initiative has removed the major cost barrier to training in priority industries – many of which are in the community services with female-dominated workforces.

The Victorian Government can increase access to Free TAFE for women and boost completion rates by:

• Offering scholarships to cover peripheral expense that can otherwise create barriers to engaging in learning.
• Boosting investment in TAFEs to increase access to wrap-around supports.

Peripheral costs to education such as the cost of textbooks, a digital device or other course materials and equipment, pay for childcare or transport, or pay for a Working with Children Check can create barriers to engaging in education.

Government can extend existing scholarships available to parts of female-dominated industries for Bachelor level students[39] by investing in an equivalent scholarship program to remove cost barriers and support women to access Free TAFE.

In addition, low VET completion rates[40] indicate more could be done to support retention and completion. TAFEs already provide a range of student supports but some students have complex needs that exceed what is currently provided. With additional funding, TAFEs could increase access to personalised supports to boost student completion – such as mentoring, counselling, literacy and numeracy support, assessment adjustments and warm referrals to specialist supports (such as family violence or housing and homelessness agencies).[41]

RECOMMENDATION

• Boost access to Free TAFE by providing scholarships to help students cover peripheral expenses.
• Boost funding to TAFEs to better support learners experiencing barriers to engagement and participation.

Remove the ‘two-course’ rule to support greater access to affordable training

The Victorian Government can increase access to affordable training for women by removing ‘two-course’ rule restrictions and ‘upskilling’ rule restrictions.

The government-commissioned Macklin Report identified these rules were complex and hard to navigate for learners and providers alike, and, “are not fit for a future in which all Victorians need to engage in lifelong learning”, don’t support career changes and are not responsive to economic shifts.[42]

These rules create specific barriers for women. For example, there are many reasons why a student may not complete a course, including experiences of homelessness, mental ill health, family violence, or changed caring responsibilities. These can disproportionately impact women because women are more likely to:

• experience family violence;
• take on caring responsibilities, and;
• while men are more likely to experience homelessness, women are more likely to present for homelessness service assistance,[43] and older women are the fastest growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness in Australia.[44]

These rules also create barriers for women in re-skilling, upskilling or changing careers after returning to work after having children.

While government has invested in funding and initiatives to increase access to training for women and others disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,[45] the Victorian Government should implement the full suite of recommendations made in the Macklin Report to ease eligibility restrictions. [46]

RECOMMENDATION

• Fully implement the Macklin Report recommendations on Shared investment: Supporting lifelong learning for all Victorians.

Support access to promotional opportunities in the community services sector

In the female-dominated community services sector, women are under-represented in senior leadership. Around 87% of the community services workforce identifies as female (compared to 47% of the total workforce). The sector is also strongly characterised by part time employment (64% are employed PT, compared to 32% of the total workforce).[47] However, only 60% of senior leadership positions are occupied by women [48], and a review of job ads found only 25% are offered as part time.

Part time or co leadership can expand the participation of women in the community services sector. However, there are gaps in knowledge about this form of leadership; no resources to build organisational or individual capacity; and no models of good practice for the sector.

A further constraint is persistent negative stereotypes about part time work.  Across all industries, women are seeking greater flexibility in working arrangements, including part time work.[49] However, there is a perception that uptake of flexible work demonstrates a lack of commitment to the job.  Some research suggests that women who access flexible arrangements are more likely to be viewed as unsuitable for management roles and less likely to be promoted.[50]   There is evidence that colleagues of those who work part time or flexibly view this negatively.[51]

These entrenched cultural issues in the Australian labour market serve as a handbrake on women’s labour market and leadership participation. 

In the community services industry, these factors limit women’s ability to take on leadership roles and means the sector is failing to leverage available talent.

This is concerning given:

• Organisational productivity and profitability is increased when more women occupy senior leadership positions [52]
• Individual and organisational level performance increases with access to flexible work arrangements, including increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover and absenteeism.[53]

This area of women’s leadership and development – part-time and co leadership – is largely unexplored in Australia. The Victorian Government can help advance this space by supporting VCOSS and Gender Equity Victoria to elicit insights and design and test a model to support more part-time and co leadership positions in the sector. 

This project would contribute to improvements in the economic security of Victorian women by:

• Supporting community service career progression opportunities and leadership roles for women of all ages (and therefore access to greater remuneration).
• Enabling more women with care responsibilities to sustain employment at senior levels in the community services sector.

RECOMMENDATION

• Fund VCOSS and Gender Equity Victoria to undertake a project to document insights and design and test a model that has potential to unlock and leverage women’s leadership capabilities in the Victorian community services sector.

Improve access to affordable education and care to support women’s workforce participation

Whilst early childhood education and care is an essential service that supports families’ workforce participation, the Commonwealth Government’s current childcare subsidy levels remain unaffordable for around 40% of families^[54] and 48% of low-income families.^[55]

Whilst the Commonwealth Government has proposed reforms to the childcare subsidy (due to take effect in July 2022), these do not go far enough in addressing concerns around affordability and the effective marginal tax rates that many women experience if they increase their hours at work.

Evidence suggests “that high effective marginal tax rates deter women, especially those with young children, from working more.”[56]

In some cases, women can face:

“high effective marginal tax rates – as much as 95% for those in low-income households – on income from extra days worked. This is because the extra earnings interact with policies including income tax rates, the Medicare levy and losing family benefits, combined with the net cost of child care.”[57]

Analysis by the Grattan Institute regarding the impact of the new childcare policy on workforce participation rates notes that the new policy will lower these “workforce disincentive rates”.

They modelled the current and proposed impacts of the new childcare subsidy scheme:[58]

The Grattan Institute notes that the:

“The mother will now lose 75% on the fourth day and 90% on the fifth day.”

When education and care is unaffordable, children are more likely to miss out on high-quality early learning that sets them up for success in the years before school and women’s employment is constrained.

The Commonwealth should develop a new funding model that recognises the rise in dual income working families and delivers a childcare system that is accessible, affordable and supports family and community needs and choice. A new design should be responsive to:

• High effective marginal tax rates and the financial choices many women (and families) face when choosing whether to increase their paid working hours;  
• Improves affordability;
• Supports access to high-quality early learning for all children, regardless of parental workforce participation or meeting activity tests, and;
• Reflects a valued and well remunerated early childhood education and care workforce.

Delivering a new funding model would provide greater economic stimulus by increasing female workforce participation and have the twin benefit of driving up participation in early childhood education and care. It would also provide government with greater opportunity to support pay and conditions and look at funding levers to improve service quality. 

The Victorian Government can help advance this issue through advocacy to the Commonwealth Government.  

RECOMMENDATION

• Advocate to the Commonwealth to design a new childcare subsidy that is more affordable, accessible and boosts women’s workforce participation.

Advocate for reforms to Australia’s industrial relations system

Australia’s industrial relations laws have not kept pace with modern society and changing labour market conditions. The industrial relations system assumes a traditional, full-time employer-employee relationship however only approximately 50% of workers fall in this category.

Paid parental leave

Australia’s national parental leave scheme comprises:

• 12 months’ unpaid parental leave per parent under the National Employment Standards;
• Commonwealth government-funded Parental Leave Pay scheme – 18 weeks’ pay at the minimum wage to the primary carer (available if, among other things, they earn less than $150,000 per year); and
• 2 weeks Dad and Partner Pay.

Many workers are also able to access additional leave provided by employers through their enterprise agreements, with a number of leading Australian businesses providing up to 26 weeks of flexible paid parental leave.[59]

The Victoria Public Service has also recently negotiated a new agreement with staff for 16 weeks for primary carers and 4 weeks for secondary carers (and additional 12 weeks if they take over the primary responsibility for the care of the Child within first 78 weeks).[60] 

While many organisations, government and businesses are removing the distinction between primary and secondary carers from their enterprise bargaining agreements, Australia’s federal parental scheme has not been significantly revised since it was first introduced in 2011.

Take up of Dad and Partner Pay also remains very low.

In line with the Productivity Commission recommendations that parents need 6-12 months in order to support the best outcomes for their children,[61] VCOSS recommends that the Victorian Government advocate to the Commonwealth to introduce at least 26 weeks of paid parental leave under the National Employment Standards.

The Victorian Government can also leverage its Social Procurement Framework to encourage businesses and organisations employers to adopt stronger paid parental leave policies (discussed below).

Fixed term contracts

The use of fixed term contracts not only negatively impact workers, it also undermines organisations’ ability to retain experienced workers and deliver the services that vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the community rely on.

Insecure work arrangements is a key barrier to supporting the growth of the community services sector.

To provide an additional pathway for permanency for employees, the Victorian Government should advocate to the Commonwealth Government to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 to place a cap on the number of consecutive fixed-term contracts at 24 months or two consecutive contracts – whichever comes first.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Advocate to the Commonwealth Government to:

Introduce at least 26 weeks of paid parental leave under the National Employment Standards for each parent.

Amend the Fair Work Act 2009 to place a cap on the number of consecutive fixed-term contracts at 24 months or two consecutive contracts – whichever comes first.

Leverage social procurement

As federal, state and local government departments and agencies are the largest purchaser of goods, services and construction projects in Australia, they have an important role in driving the use of public expenditure to improve social and economic outcomes.[62]

Social procurement refers to organisations using their buying power to generate social value above and beyond the value of the goods, services, or construction being procured.[63]

Victoria’s Social Procurement Framework (Framework) was released in 2018 and was the first whole-of-government commitment to social procurement in Australia.[64] It sets a clear expectation that social procurement is standard practice for the Victorian Government.

“Women’s equality and safety” is one of seven social procurement objectives included in Victoria’s Framework.[65] The two nominated social outcomes for Victorian Government suppliers are adoption of family violence leave; and gender equality suppliers.[66]

Under the model approach for government buyers, suppliers are required to complete a gender equitable business practice self-assessment checklist, and provide a current workforce profile. The key components of the checklist include:

• gender equality strategy;  
• gender-inclusive culture with relevant supportive elements such as flexible work options; 
• gender equality in leadership and management; 
• gender composition of teams; 
• equal remuneration; and 
• gender equality audits; 

Th Victorian Government should consider adding parental leave to this list, recognising the important role that paid leave plays in supporting primary carers balance their work and caring responsibilities.

While most working women can access the 18-week Commonwealth funded parental leave payment, only 50% of working parents can access employer-funded schemes.[67]

Many organisations, government and businesses are removing the distinction between primary and secondary carers. For example, the VPS has just negotiated a new agreement with staff for 16 weeks for primary carers and 4 weeks for secondary carers (and additional 12 weeks if they take over the primary responsibility for the care of the Child within first 78 weeks).[68] 

Leveraging social procurement to encourage more businesses and organisations to increase their paid parental leave payments for primary and secondary carers would help improve gender equality for all Victorian women.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Leverage Victoria’s Social Procurement Framework to encourage more businesses and organisations to increase their paid parental leave policies for primary and secondary carers.

[1] Gender Equity Victoria, Towards a Gender Equal Recovery 2021/22, Submission to the 2021-22 Victorian State Budget, p.6

[2] Based on Gross Value Added – Chain volume measures, Victoria (2019-2020). Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (November 2020), Australian National Accounts: State Accounts

[3] Includes child care services and other social support services (including aged care assistance, disabilities assistance, marriage guidance, welfare counselling and youth welfare services) as well as residential care services (including aged care and respite, hospice, crisis care, mental health, and children’s residential services.

[4] Victorian Government, 2019-20 Census of workforces that intersect with family violence: Summary findings report, https://www.vic.gov.au/summary-findings-report-2019-20-workforce-census

[5] Victorian Skills Commissioner, Sector Snapshot: Victoria’s Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Sector, December 2020.

[6] Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority, National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy: Public consultation findings May 2021, 2021; United Workers Union, Exhausted, Undervalued and Leaving: The crisis in Early Education, August 2021.

[7] VCOSS and the Future Social Service Institute were commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services in late June 2020 to gather, test, analyse and interpret critical intelligence from a diverse range of front-line service providers working across a range of service areas including disability, mental health, homelessness, Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), children and families, family violence, aged care, youth and justice.  The Stories Into Evidence report documented the Victorian community services sector’s response to the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it identified adaptations to service delivery and practice, and emergent changes in service-user demand and community need.

[8] Future Social Services Institute and Victorian Council of Social Service, 2020, Stories into Evidence:

Covid-19 adaptations in the Victorian community services sector, p. 10.

[9] Valuing Australia’s community sector: better contracting for capacity, sustainability and impact, https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ACSS-2021_better-contracting-report.pdf

[10] Government funding accounts for over 52% of community service organisations’ incomes, and has a direct impact on worker’s wages, conditions and the length of their employment contracts.

[11] ABS, Survey of employee earnings and hours, 2018.

[12] Edited Statement of Professor Sara Charlesworth, RMIT University, to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality & Safety October 2019, Statement made in Response to Questions from the Royal Commission.

[13] Jerome De Henau and Susan Himmelweit, The gendered employment gains of investing in social vs. physical infrastructure: evidence from simulations across seven OECD countries, IKD Working Paper No. 84, April 2020

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] McKell Institute Queensland, Understanding Insecure Work in Australia, https://mckellinstitute.org.au/app/uploads/McKell-Institute-Queensland-Understanding-Insecure-Work-in-Australia-1-2.pdf, p.5.

[18] Productivity Commission, Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Reforms to Human Services, https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/human-services/reforms/report/human-services-reforms.pdf, p.245

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid, p.246.

[21] Ibid, p.235.

[22]  Blaxland, M and Cortis, N (2021) Valuing Australia’s community sector: Better contracting for capacity, sustainability and impact. Sydney: ACOSS.

[23] 10-year Community Services Industry Plan, September 2018, https://vcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CSIP-Sept-2018-FINAL-single-page-web-version.pdf, p. 22

[24] Ibid.

[25] Skills for Care, Adult social care workforce data, https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/adult-social-care-workforce-data.aspx

[26] Ibid.

[27] 10-year Community Services Industry Plan, September 2018, https://vcoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CSIP-Sept-2018-FINAL-single-page-web-version.pdf, p.18.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.                

[30] Victorian Government, Jobs Victoria, https://jobs.vic.gov.au/about-jobs-victoria/our-programs/jobs-victoria-fund

[31] Youth Affairs Council of Victoria and Young Workers Centre, Youth employment plan needed as 20,000 new graduates enter job market, 23 November 2020

[32] Brotherhood of St Laurence, ‘COVID the greater disrupter. Another blow to youth employment’, Youth Unemployment Monitor, December 2020

[33] Op. cit.

[34] Department of Premier and Cabinet Victoria, Recruit Smarter: Report of Findings, p.3.

[35] Ibid.

[36] See VCOSS, Working for Victoria Insights Paper, July 2021.

[37] Department of Premier and Cabinet Victoria, Recruit Smarter: Report of Findings, p.4.

[38] The Education State, Early Childhood Education Free Kinder Frequently Asked Questions, November 2020.

[39] Department of Education and training, Financial support to study and work in early childhood, <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/childhood/professionals/profdev/Pages/scholarships.aspx>, accessed 12 August 2021.

[40] Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, 2021-22 Budget Estimates – Training and Skills and Higher Education, 21 June 2021, pp. 11-12; National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Australian vocational education and training statistics: VET qualification completion rates 2018, 2020.

[41] Youth Action – Uniting – Mission Australia, Vocational Education and Training in NSW: Report into access and outcomes for young people experiencing disadvantage – Joint report, February 2018.

[42] J Macklin, Future Skills for Victoria, Driving collaboration and innovation in post-secondary education and training, Victorian Government, 2020, p.105.

[43] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Specialist homelessness services annual report, 11 December 2020, <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/homelessness-services/specialist-homelessness-services-annual-report/contents/summary>, accessed 12 August 2021.

[44] Australian Human Rights Commission, Risk of Homelessness in Older Women, 4 April 2019, <https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/age-discrimination/projects/risk-homelessness-older-women>, accessed 12 August 2021.

[45] Victorian Department of Education and Training, Public Accounts and Estimates Hearing – Budget 2021-2022. Minister Tierney presentation, 21 June 2021.

[46] J Macklin, Future Skills for Victoria, Driving collaboration and innovation in post-secondary education and training, Victorian Government, 2020, pp.103-104.

[47] ABS, Welfare workforce – Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (aihw.gov.au), 2018.

[48] ACOSS, NFP_Boards_and_Gender_Diversity_2012_final.pdf (acoss.org.au), p.18.

[49] Centre for Ethical Leadership, Ethical Leadership, 2013.

[50] Gloor et al., An inconvenient truth? Interpersonal and career consequences of “maybe baby” expectations – ScienceDirect, 2018

[51] Ibid.

[52] WGEA, Gender Equity Insights series.

[53] Centre for Ethical Leadership, Ethical Leadership, 2013.

[54] K Noble & P Hurley, Counting the cost to families: Assessing childcare affordability in Australia, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University, 2021.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Miranda Stewart, Mothers have little to show for extra days of work under new tax changes, 20 June 2018, https://theconversation.com/mothers-have-little-to-show-for-extra-days-of-work-under-new-tax-changes-98467

[57] Ibid.

[58] The Coalition’s child-care subsidy plan: how it works, and what it means for families and the economy, 3 May 2021, https://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-child-care-subsidy-plan-how-it-works-and-what-it-means-for-families-and-the-economy-160173

[59] For example, see KPMG, KPMG introduces 26 weeks of flexible paid parental leave, 2021, https://www.consultancy.com.au/news/3581/kpmg-introduces-26-weeks-of-flexible-paid-parental-leave#:~:text=Professional%20services%20firm%20KPMG%20has,of%2026%20weeks%20paid%20leave.&text=The%20firm%20has%20also%20extended,cultural%20flexibility%20around%20public%20holidays.

[60] Victorian Public Service Enterprise Agreement 2020, https://www.dtf.vic.gov.au/funds-programs-and-policies/victorian-public-service-enterprise-agreement-2020

[61] Australian Government Productivity Commision, Paid Parental Leave: Support for Parents with Newborn Children No 47, 28 February 2009.

[62] University of Melbourne, Maximising the Potential of Social Procurement, https://government.unimelb.edu.au/research/regulation-and-design/Home/Maximising-the-Potential-of-Social-Procurement

[63] The State of Victoria  Victoria’s social procurement framework 2018, accessed 11 October 2018

[64] Victoria’s social procurement framework, 2018, https://www.buyingfor.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2018-08/Victorias-Social-Procurement-Framework.PDF

[65] The Victorian Government, Detailed guidance for women’s equality and safety, https://www.buyingfor.vic.gov.au/detailed-guidance-womens-equality-and-safety

[66] Ibid.

[67] (Baird et al, 2021).

[68] Victorian Public Service Enterprise Agreement 2020, https://www.dtf.vic.gov.au/funds-programs-and-policies/victorian-public-service-enterprise-agreement-2020

VCOSS is the peak body for social and community services in Victoria. VCOSS supports the community services industry, represents the interests and highlights the voices of Victorians experiencing disadvantage and vulnerability in policy debates, and advocates for the development of a sustainable, fair and equitable society.

More than 100,000 people in Victoria live in caravan parks, rooming houses, retirement villages and apartment buildings where their electricity is supplied through some form of embedded network.

Throughout this Review, VCOSS’ primary focus has been on highlighting the implications of current and future regulatory arrangements for these Victorians. It is imperative that they can exercise their rights as energy consumers unencumbered, and have equitable access to affordable energy that meets their needs.
 

Good processes help get good outcomes

This Review was established to advise the Victorian Government on how it could implement its election commitment to ban embedded networks in new apartment buildings (with appropriate exemptions for certain shared-benefit renewable energy arrangements).

By consulting widely, including through stakeholder “solutions workshops”, informal information sessions and an Issues Paper stage, the Expert Panel has been able to develop a comprehensive perspective on how to implement the proposed ban in the most effective and equitable way.

VCOSS notes that the Expert Panel’s process has been thorough. Given the time taken, it would be reasonable to shorten some of the proposed transitional timelines, so that new protections are in place sooner. For example, allowing up to three years for legacy networks to apply for a new license from once the licensing framework is established seems overly-cautious, and
a case-by-case, 12-24 months timeframe might be a better approach.

New tools needed for emerging energy realities

Embedded networks are primarily regulated in Victoria through the General Exemption Order (GEO) to the core electricity licensing regime.

This regulatory arrangement arose alongside the legacy physical infrastructure of embedded networks, in which a “parent” meter stands between the grid and individual dwellings’ “child” meters.

The subsequent “licensed or conditionally exempt” approach may once have made sense when embedded networks were genuine exceptions to the main grid. However, it creates significant complexity and inconsistency for consumers, and is
ill-suited to the accelerating rate of change in the energy market.

Regulation-by-exemption for embedded networks is no longer fit-for-purpose.
As VCOSS argued when the GEO was reviewed in 2015, this approach should be replaced with a more modern, flexible, and scalable licensing system. This would genuinely ensure that consumer rights and interests are at the centre of the regulatory regime.

For these reasons, VCOSS supports the Expert Panel’s recommendations on the development of a new “Local Energy Service” retail energy licensing option.

At the same time, VCOSS also supports the Panel’s concerns (in Recommendation 9) that households in older, legacy networks – particularly those where the “child” meter doesn’t meet contemporary smart technology standards – are not stranded indefinitely (or forced to pay for future metering upgrades).

Building beyond this review

VCOSS recognises that the Essential Services Commission’s 2020 decision to cap electricity prices in embedded networks to the fair and independently-set Victoria Default Offer has been an important step forward on affordability in these settings.

However, as noted in VCOSS’ submission at the Issues Paper stage and explored in sub-section 6.1.1 of the Expert Panel’s Draft Recommendations Report, the accessibility and timeliness of relevant concessions is critically important for
low-income households.

On both this issue and the related need for a more robust compliance and enforcement regime for embedded networks more generally, VCOSS notes that this Review has established a solid foundation for further work by relevant Victorian agencies.

VCOSS considers successful adaptation as improving the wellbeing of people experiencing disadvantage, rather than simply ensuring that they are not worse off. Victoria’s response to climate change is an opportunity to reduce entrenched inequality by addressing the factors that heighten vulnerability.

The community sector is pivotal for supporting Victorians to thrive in a changing climate, but organisations must be given adequate resources. The sector provides vital services that help clients prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies and organisations are already raising awareness about the impact of climate change on health and wellbeing.

Community service organisations are not immune to the impacts of climate change, however, and need funding and direction for how to adapt. This AAP must consider the human services aspect of the system as much as the health component and provide support for the sector in building its climate resilience.

The AAP is split into three domains, all of which require additional consideration of the community sector:

• public health;
• infrastructure resilience, and;
• sector capability.

VCOSS makes the following recommendations:

• Provide immediate and flexible funding to community service organisations after emergencies to meet increased demand.
• Collaborate with the community sector to develop localised and targeted health communications about climate change.
• Improve the climate resilience of premises used by community service organisations.
• Fund the community sector’s digital transformation to assist business continuity during emergencies.
• Build the climate resilience of community service organisations.
• Fund peak bodies to improve their members’ climate resilience.
• Support the health and wellbeing of workers in the community sector.

The community sector in a changing climate

The community sector is embedded in local communities and provides vital services to people experiencing disadvantage including financial counselling, mental health support, material aid and more. Organisations witness the impacts of climate change on households first-hand and have a deep understanding of local vulnerability.

The sector improves the resilience of their clients by addressing key drivers of climate vulnerability such as poverty, insecure housing and social isolation. The demand for services spikes after extreme weather events and 52 per cent of the organisations surveyed by VCOSS in 2019 predicted that climate change would worsen their ability to meet demand.[1]

Organisations are impacted by climate change themselves, however, with detrimental flow-on effects to the safety of staff members and the wellbeing of clients who depend on their services. 43 per cent of organisations had been affected by extreme weather in the 12 months prior to the 2019 survey and impacts included:

• interruptions to staff transport;
• disruptions to clients’ access to services;
• increased service demand;
• staff absences;
• staff’s health affected;
• destroyed or damaged premises;
• temporary closures, and;
• additional staff required.[2]

Although the sector is rarely funded to do so, organisations are well-placed to actively support Victoria’s adaptation to climate change. This includes advice to individual clients and projects undertaken throughout the broader community.

For example, many organisations prepare community members for worsening heatwaves and help people keep cool on hot days. In 2021 VCOSS surveyed organisations about extreme heat and found that 74 per cent of respondents prioritise extreme heat highly or very highly.[3]

Meanwhile 55 per cent of respondents directly help their community cope with extreme heat.[4] Activities undertaken by organisations included:

• calling vulnerable clients;
• communicating health advice;
• providing water and ice blocks;
• opening up their air-conditioned office space;
• dropping off heatwave packs with water bottles, maps of local cool places and heat health information;
• handing out taxi vouchers for clients to travel to and from appointments, and;
• picking up medication and groceries for clients unable to travel.

Public health

Recommendations

Provide immediate and flexible funding to community service organisations after emergencies to meet increased demand.

Collaborate with the community sector to develop localised and targeted health communications about climate change.

The first two actions of the AAP address the system’s responsibility to protect the health and wellbeing of Victorian households in a changing climate.

Climate change not only affects the health of Victorians, but it impacts their social wellbeing. The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events drive increases in family violence, mental ill health, alcohol and substance abuse and financial hardship. The AAP currently states that:

“Services will likely experience an overall increase in demand and more frequent demand surges due to climate related hazards and events. Adequate surge staff recruitment and services preparation is essential to ensure responses during emergencies, including relief and recovery, will meet demand.” (p21)

The AAP should include an action that provides immediate grants for community service organisations in the aftermath of extreme weather events to meet this rising demand. The funding could be used for surge staff recruitment to prevent staff shortages, take the pressure off permanent full-time workers and ensure community members are not turned away due to overcapacity.

In addition to providing core services, the sector can also contribute to the “climate and health engagement program” (p28) described in action H1. As demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, communities receive public health messages in different ways and communication must be accessible, easy to understand, translated into all necessary languages and targeted through multiple channels.

If funded, community service organisations could collaborate with the state government to develop and deliver targeted messages about “stay[ing] healthy in a changing climate” (p28). Local community service organisations would be excellent partners in this work given their trusted engagement with Victorians experiencing disadvantage and deep links with community networks. The current work being undertaken by culturally and linguistically diverse community leaders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a good example of this.

Other examples include Bendigo Community Health Services, which co-designs bushfire and heatwave information in multiple languages used in the community by engaging recent migrants and asylum seekers. As many channels as possible are then utilised to communicate the messages including social media apps popular with specific communities, a multi-language hotline, audiovisual materials and bicultural staff.

Further examples include community health organisations such as cohealth, enliven and IPC Health. They have delivered place-based programs to raise awareness of extreme heat among people most at-risk. Staff members worked with residents in inner-city Melbourne, Dandenong and Brimbank during the Hot Spots project to develop practical advice about keeping cool and disseminate it throughout community networks.

Infrastructure resilience

Recommendations

Improve the climate resilience of premises used by community service organisations.

Fund the community sector’s digital transformation to assist business continuity during emergencies.

Actions H3 to H9 concern the physical infrastructure of the system.

Although this domain considers social housing and health assets, the physical premises used by community service organisations are often neglected. 72% of surveyed organisations felt that climate change would worsen the comfort and safety of their premises during extreme weather.[5]

Upgrading climate resilience will depend on whether organisations own their own premises or rent an office from a local council, the state government or a private landlord. Organisations who rent have expressed difficulty in working with their landlord to apply for grants.

The state government should:

• continue providing grants to owner-occupier community organisations;
• immediately upgrade state government-owned infrastructure leased to the community sector, and;
• directly approach local councils with grants to improve the thermal comfort of premises leased to the community sector.

In addition to physical infrastructure, the state government should also recompense the cost of the digital transformation that organisations have undergone throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The community sector acted rapidly to pivot its services to different sets of restrictions but bore the out-of-pocket expense.

The ability for staff members to work from home or deliver services remotely allows organisations to be more flexible in future emergencies. For example, a regional Primary Care Partnership will use the recent success of telehealth to provide services during heatwaves to prevent clients from travelling to and from their offices in extreme heat.

Sector capability

Recommendation

Build the climate resilience of community service organisations.

Fund peak bodies to improve their members’ climate resilience.

Support the health and wellbeing of workers in the community sector.

The final five actions of the AAP cover sector capability.

The community sector is so focused on caring for their clients and communities that organisations’ own vulnerability to climate change can often be overlooked. Impacts include injury to staff members and disruption to service delivery, which flows on to vulnerable people who rely on the support.

Funding is a barrier for community service organisations to undertake a thorough risk assessment and build their resilience to climate change. Organisations are also reluctant to use scant resources for internal purposes when their budget for service delivery is already spread thin.

The community sector would benefit from hands-on and tailored training about the impacts of climate change and how to improve business continuity. Practical advice that can be implemented immediately is particularly useful because staff members are time poor and may not have capacity to devise strategies from scratch.

For example, Jesuit Social Services developed a series of training sessions for social workers in Brimbank and Dandenong with support from RMIT and VCOSS. Attendees learnt about the compounding impacts of climate change on their organisations and participated in scenario planning to assess the risks to their community.

Peak bodies in the community sector are well-placed to deliver training about climate resilience to members as well. Professional development is already a service that many peak organisations provide to members but funding is required to expand this offering to include fields such as emergency management and climate risk.

Peak bodies can also assist their members by developing resources and templates that staff can adapt to their own community. Organisations can share best-practice between service providers by disseminating tools developed by members, hosting an online network where staff members can connect, or running sessions where members outline activities that are working well.

The gap analysis in the AAP identifies that the state government needs to “better support the health and wellbeing of essential workforces, including the specialist family violence workforce, during times of crisis/emergencies.” (p27) There is no action to address the impact of climate change of the community sector’s workforce, however, and one should be included.

Staff can be directly impacted by extreme weather while performing their duties. For example, the 2021 survey about extreme heat showed significant concern for workers providing in-home care on hot days.[6] This was exacerbated when clients lived in homes with poor thermal comfort and no air-conditioning, putting staff members’ health at risk.

Workers are embedded in their local communities and will experience their own personal trauma about extreme weather events affecting their clients. Staff members may also suffer from vicarious trauma when helping people cope with climate risks and they need just as much mental health support to recover.

Investment in workforce wellbeing could include access to an employee assistance program and training for organisational leaders about helping staff cope with climate-related wellbeing impacts. Surge funding could reduce stress and burnout, while peak bodies are also well-placed to provide members with self-care events and resources.

[1] Victorian Council of Social Service, Resilience of community sector organisations, 2019.

[2] ibid.

[3] Victorian Council of Social Service, Survey Report: Extreme Heat, 2021.

[4] ibid.

[5] VCOSS, Resilience survey.

[6] VCOSS, Survey Report.

MEDIA RELEASE

The Victorian Council of Social Service is launching a open-access video advertisement to encourage vaccination uptake.

“As a peak body, VCOSS can’t increase vaccine supply or get ‘needles into arms'”, VCOSS CEO Emma King said.

“But we can help get people into vaccination centres.”

The campaign doesn’t offer medical advice, or rely on actors and shock tactics. Instead, it uses real people to highlight the positive benefits of getting vaccinated (“the good things”).

“The ad doesn’t tell people how to get vaccinated, it shows them why they should want to,” Ms King said.

VCOSS is waiving copyright over the 50 second advertisement, and will make it available to any media organisation, website, publisher, business or individual who wishes to use it, in any way.

“We all want to get back to the good things. So we must all play our part encouraging people to get vaccinated,” Ms King said.

“We urge everybody to share this video.”

The ad is available captioned in nine languages, with VCOSS to work with frontline service organisations to share it through migrant, refugee and CALD communities. Languages include:

• Arabic (العربية)
• Dari (دری)
• Dinka (Thuɔŋjäŋ)
• Greek (Ελληνικά)
• Hindi (हिन्दी)
• Italian (Italiano)
• Karen (ကညီကျိၥ်)
• Simplified Chinese ( 简体中文) and
• Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt).

Ms King said it made sense for VCOSS to encourage COVID vaccination update.

“Community workers are on the frontline of the health and social response to COVID-19. And it’s already vulnerable people who are often hit the hardest by illness, lockdowns and business closures.”

The ad has been created in partnership with journalist Zoe Daniel and production house Samurai AV. VCOSS is a proud participant in Victoria’s Vaccine Ambassadors Program.

VCOSS is the peak body for social and community services in Victoria. VCOSS supports the community services, industry, represents the interests of Victorians facing disadvantage and vulnerability in policy debates, and advocates to develop a sustainable, fair and equitable society.

Access to high-quality education can transform lives. Education provides protective factors that can prevent or moderate the impact of social disadvantage – however, schools need to be equipped to support the diverse needs of their students for this to happen.

This Review is an opportunity to improve initial teacher education (ITE) so that the workforce has greater skills and confidence to create inclusive school cultures and deliver inclusive classroom education. 

Part A – Attracting high-quality candidates into ITE matters

How can we increase ITE completion rates so that quality ITE students graduate and pursue careers as quality teachers?

While students may be eligible to enrol in a Commonwealth Supported Place to access a HECS-HELP loan, there are peripheral expenses that still prevent some students on low incomes from taking up the opportunity to study. For example, some students cannot afford to buy textbooks, a digital device, pay for rent, childcare or transport.

It becomes even more difficult for students to afford to study when they are unable to undertake paid employment during placement periods.

Current social security payments don’t cover the costs of meeting the basics. Government should lift the rate of income support payments, including for student payments, so learners can afford to undertake further education, including student placements. For low-income earners not eligible for Commonwealth income support, consideration should be given to providing these students with access to a scholarship fund to ensure cost is not a barrier to completing their studies.

Part B – Preparing ITE students to be effective teachers

Are ITE programs preparing graduates for teaching diverse student cohorts, including through cultural competency and inclusive education?

Students with disability

Approximately 10 per cent of Australian school students have a disability. The majority attend mainstream schools (89 percent).[i] It is important that initial teacher education better equips the future teaching workforce with skills and knowledge to create inclusive learning environments for students with disability.

The case for improvement is underscored by a range of educational attainment and employment indicators.

For example, young people with disability aged between 20 – 24 years are 17 per cent less likely to complete Year 12 or equivalent compared with peers who are not disabled (68 per cent to 85 per cent).[ii]

Education attainment strongly influences employment participation. Data shows that:

• Only 48 per cent of working-aged people with disability are in employment, compared to 80 per cent of people without disability.[iii]

• Just under 40 per cent of young people with disability aged 15 – 24 years are in employment, compared to 63 per cent of young people of the same age without disability.[iv]

To better equip the teaching workforce, ITE needs to explicitly include:

• The human and legal rights of students with disability. At a minimum, all graduating teachers should have a comprehensive understanding of the Disability Standards for Education 2005.

• Foundational skills that provide teachers with a robust and practical framework to support a broad range of students with disability.

• A comprehensive understanding (including practical application) of how to provide reasonable adjustments for individual students to meet their learning needs.

Additionally, ITE should:

• Build greater understanding of how negative community attitudes and individual bias can impact on school culture, teaching practice and student outcomes, and create a culture in which new teachers enter the profession with high expectations and aspirations of students with disability.

• Equip teachers to understand that students with disability may hold multiple, intersecting identities which may impact their individual learning needs. For example, a student with disability from a culturally and linguistically diverse background whose first language is not English will have a different set of individual learning needs to a student with disability whose first language is English.

There is also a need for ITE to improve the skills, knowledge and confidence of new teachers to support the learning needs of other students who experience – or are at risk of – marginalisation, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

This needs to be embedded in the core learning of the ITE (for example, in different pedagogical approaches to teaching literacy and numeracy) rather than through a single, stand-alone unit or subject.

Student voice

When students are empowered to ‘own’ their learning and development and have a voice in decisions about learning, teaching and schooling, this leads to greater student engagement in education, higher self-worth and increased academic motivation.[v]

The ITE should support prospective teachers to understand the principles of amplifying student voice and student empowerment. Practical placements may also provide an opportunity to learn about different student-led models such as the Victorian Student Representative Council’s ‘Teach the Teacher’.[vi]

Some students may experience discrimination or oppression because of gender, class, ethnicity and cultural background, religion, disability and/or sexual orientation. It is important that ITE builds an understanding of this, and how different aspects of a student’s identity may expose them to overlapping forms of discrimination and marginalisation and – in the context of student voice – silence some voices. Family Safety Victoria has developed a Family Violence Diversity and Intersectionality Framework to assist family violence workforces to understand and develop an intersectional approach to their practice. This type of resource could be relevant for ITE.

[i] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia: in brief, 2020.

[ii] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia 2020: in brief, 2 October 2020, <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia-2020-in-brief/contents/education>, accessed 9 July 2021.

[iii] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia, 2 October 2020, <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents/people-with-disability/prevalence-of-disability>, accessed 9 July 2021.

[iv] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia. Working full- or part-time, 2 October 2020, <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/dis/73-1/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents-1/employment/employment-rate-and-type#Working%20full-%20or%20part-time>, accessed 9 July 2021.

[v] Victorian Department of Education and Training, Amplify: Empowering students through voice, agency and leadership, 2019.

[vi] VicSRC, Teach the Teacher, <https://www.vicsrc.org.au/teach-the-teacher>, accessed 9 July 2021.

The Review of Social Housing regulation is not only timely, but necessary.  The Big Housing Build package will significantly grow the community housing sector over the next four years and will create the conditions for further growth through the Ten-Year Strategy for Social and Affordable Housing (the Ten-Year Strategy). 

This submission outlines issues that VCOSS recommends the Panel consider as part of the Social Housing Regulation Review.

We want a contemporary social housing regulatory framework that:

• Ensures the sustainability and growth of the community housing sector.
• Strikes the right balance in terms of industry oversight – determining the ‘right’ balance will require deep engagement with all stakeholders.  VCOSS urges the Panel to ensure the process is not siloed – it will be important to bring people together to co-design fit-for-purpose solutions.
• Supports resident wellbeing and housing security – VCOSS agrees with the Panel’s contention that there is scope to improve the integration of support services with housing services through regulation (though government should not rely on regulation as the only means by which to drive system improvement).  This Review provides an opportunity to bring stakeholders together to develop a common understanding of the issues that need to be addressed, identify fit-for-purpose regulatory measures and indicate complementary non-regulatory measures that would need to be instituted in a reformed regulatory environment.  
  

Prioritise quality outcomes for people who live in social housing

Public and community housing play a critical role in the housing market, providing affordable housing options for people excluded from the private market, safeguarding the fundamental right to a home and preventing people from homelessness.  

A best-practice regulatory framework should focus on the reason for the existence of social housing: to provide housing for those who find it difficult to access and sustain housing in the private market. VCOSS believes that improving the experience and quality of service for both public and community housing residents will be the most important outcome of reviewing the regulatory scheme.  

Two important issues the Panel should consider are how contemporary regulation can support:

• Better alignment of people’s housing needs and preferences and stock allocation across the system.  Currently, there is no consistency across the system. 
• Secure tenure, so that people in social housing can make a home and live a good life.   

VCOSS notes that the Panel will consider whether to harmonise residents’ rights under public and community housing models. VCOSS looks forward to engaging with the Panel on how to achieve this, noting that, currently, there are significant inconsistencies between public and community housing, as well as within the community housing sector. VCOSS notes that this is complex work that – on its own – will require a significant investment of time and expertise from a range of industry and community stakeholders. To ensure a wide range of stakeholders can engage with this issue, as well as other issues that will be considered in the Review, the Panel should allow ample time and flexibility for consultation.

An outcome of this review should be better alignment and transparency of policies and procedures across all tenures. This may include policies and procedures on allocations, modifications, rent setting, rent payment difficulties, internal dispute resolution and evictions.

The regulatory review should also consider Social Landlord responsibilities.  Both public and community housing providers are Social Landlords with responsibility to support tenants who are vulnerable or experiencing disadvantage and to maximise tenant wellbeing.[1] The Social Landlord framework aims to avoid evictions into homelessness, for tenants who would be at risk of eviction in other tenure types.

However, both public and community housing providers face constraints in delivering on their Social Landlord responsibilities. In public housing, the Social Landlord framework is Departmental policy, but more staff will be required in Housing Offices to make this framework fully operational. In community housing, providers will need to be adequately resourced to formally adopt Social Landlord frameworks in their policies and practice. 

Give residents a voice from review to implementation

Regulation has a primary role to play in protecting the interests of residents and providing them with a voice. Yet currently, tenants are often the least visible stakeholder in policy debate about regulation despite having the most immediate interest in the condition, amenity, location, security of tenure and cost of their housing.

VCOSS welcomes the Review’s strong focus on resident voice, and how to strengthen engagement with residents and prospective residents to contribute to good practice and development of the sector. VCOSS notes that the Panel is already working with community to engage residents and prospective residents in the Review, which is the right starting point to strengthen resident voice in the system into the future.

As we told Homes Victoria in our submission to the Ten-Year Strategy, VCOSS believes that involving residents and would-be residents in the design of the social housing system is critical. Involving residents and prospective residents early and in an ongoing way to create, shape and implement policies, programs and places brings a range of benefits. Potential problems can be identified and resolved earlier, reducing the likelihood of avoidable, expensive and exclusionary decisions and mistakes.

VCOSS is acutely aware of the power imbalances between residents, prospective residents and landlords – even values-driven, ethical social landlords. Some social housing residents will need support to have a voice, or develop their voice, to engage with policy discussions that impact them. Independent, third-party advocacy support and representative resident groups are important safeguards in this system, supporting residents to have a voice and assert their rights.  The Panel should consider how regulation can ensure access to this critical support in both public and community housing.

Complaints are another important way for residents to raise issues as they arise during their tenancy. As part of the review, the Panel will consider options to ensure an effective and coherent complaints management and redress system for social housing. VCOSS welcomes this, noting that, currently, the way that complaints and disputes are resolved is inconsistent between public and community housing, and within the community housing sector.

An outcome of this review should be the establishment of a single, third-party complaints and dispute resolution body accessible to all social housing residents. Principles to underpin the design of an effective complaints body include timeliness, accessibility, and ability for users to self-help and navigate. The Panel should also consider how residents would access information about policies, the reasons for decisions and the ability to assert their rights (for example, to have complaints, reviews of decisions and grievances dealt with fairly and promptly).

VCOSS recommends that the Panel consider how complaints can be used to identify systemic issues and drive change. A starting point should be establishing a consistent reporting requirement for both internal and third-party complaints.

Use data to drive accountability, quality service delivery and workforce development

A best practice regulatory system can provide a valuable source of data on tenancy services and provider quality, including indicators such as:

• Wait list and allocations data from the Victorian Housing Register, including key demographic and vulnerability indicators.
• Tenancy insights, including tenure length, arising issues, and referrals to support.
• Complaints and disputes data, including outcomes and resolutions. 
• Exit insights, including whether provider or renter-initiated and actions taken to ensure provider-initiated evictions are an option of last resort.

Such data can be used to track improvements and areas of concern in the sector. Regulation should provide transparency in social housing provider performance outcomes, including both positive and negative performance.

Useful data insights rely on consistent, sustained data collection across the sector. The panel should consider how to establish consistent terminology for different housing types, programs, and tenure types, as well as comparability with national data sets, such as the Census, Report on Government Services, Australian Institute of Public Health and Welfare and Productivity Commission. 

Delivering high quality housing services with a genuine Social Landlord approach requires a skilled workforce. Including workforce insights in data collection and analysis will assist with developing the social housing workforce to meet the needs of residents.

Make the human right to housing a reality

The Panel should consider one important lever to centre resident rights in the social housing system – establishing the human right to housing in state legislation.

The Final Report of the Inquiry to Homelessness in Victoria recommended that the right to housing be included in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic). Further, the Committee recommended that community housing providers that are registered under s 84 of the Act be expressly included as ‘public authorities’ for the purposes of the Charter.

While many community housing providers already consider human rights obligations in their policy and practice, this would ensure that all social housing residents would have their rights under the Charter taken into consideration in tenancy matters regardless of which type of social housing they reside in.[2] As with implementation of the Social Landlord framework, providers must be adequately resourced to comply with any new obligations under the Charter.

Improve housing outcomes for all social tenants

The Background and Scoping Paper notes a group described as “social tenants”, who are people with similar needs to social housing residents, and who may be eligible for social housing, but who live outside the social housing system, due to a chronic shortage of public and community housing supply.

We welcome the Panel’s acknowledgement of “social tenants” in the background paper, as we believe this is a cohort that should be in scope for this Review.

VCOSS’ view is that the Review should not be limited to current residents and people who are listed on the Victorian Housing Register. Social tenants, as the Paper describes, are a group who can and should be afforded better protection. This Review provides an opportunity to consider the role regulation can play to improve outcomes for social tenants, and to clarify responsibilities of the range of rental providers that house social tenants. The Review can also consider how to capture insights, including through data, on social tenants to drive evidence-informed policy and investment decisions.

For example, while many Victorian renters will benefit from the recently introduced reforms under the Residential Tenancies Act 1997, the Review can consider targeted protections that might be required to improve outcomes for “social tenants” in the private market. They may experience the worst that the private market can serve up in terms of housing that is in poor condition, expensive to maintain, and bad for their health and wellbeing, and who may not be aware of or engaged with community-based supports.

Similarly, modelling to indicate the quantity of social housing homes required to meet demand are commonly based on population growth, and maintaining social housing stock at a proportion of all housing. However, in research commissioned for the Family Violence Housing Assistance Implementation Taskforce, Dr Judith Yates notes that projected social housing supply requirements based on the population growth model should be doubled if supply is to meet the needs of lower income households currently facing housing stress in the private rental market.[3] In this context, including “social tenants” in data collection and analysis will ensure that social housing supply requirements are based on accurate modeling of demand.

[1] AHURI, Examining the role of social landlords, July 2020.

[2] Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee, Inquiry into Homelessness in Victoria – Final Report, March 2021, p199.

[3] Dr Judith Yates, Victoria’s Social Housing Supply Requirements to 2036, May 2017, p3.

MEDIA RELEASE

The Victorian Government is cutting funding to the state’s social service groups and frontline charities, in a move that will lead to job losses and service cuts.

“This is an absolute body blow to those organisations which supported Victorians through the worst of COVID,” VCOSS CEO Emma King Said.

Government funding for social service agencies is indexed, meaning it’s supposed to go up each year in line with the cost of delivering services. This year costs are going up more than 4%, but the government will only increase funding for 2021/22 by a paltry 2%.

“In real terms, that’s a cut,” Ms King said.

Ms King said costs have increased dramatically over the past year because of three main factors outside the control of service organisations.

These include: a recent increase to the minimum wage (up 2.5%), new superannuation contribution requirements (increasing charities’ wages bills by 0.5%), and new Portable Long Service Leave obligations.

“Funding needs to increase by at least 4%, just to cover the rising costs of delivering services,” Ms King said.

Historically, Victoria’s social services sector employs mostly females. So it will be Victorian women most at risk of losing their jobs as a result of the funding cuts.

Funding needs to increase by at least 4%, just to cover the rising costs of delivering services

Ms King said the cuts follow recent praise heaped on the social sector during COVID.

“Politicians are very good at thanking us for our service.”

“But thanks isn’t enough. Thanks doesn’t pay the bills.”

“Thanks rings hollow when funding is being cut,” she said.

Ms King did commend the government for establishing a new Working Group to review the process of funding indexation going forward, but warned this will achieve little in the short term.

“A new Working Group won’t avert a funding crisis this year,” she said.

The funding cuts take immediate effect. To avoid an imminent crisis, VCOSS is urging the Victorian Government to index funding by a fair and adequate amount, or introduce new short-term funding measures to plug the gap.

Government has undertaken an ambitious reform agenda to support best outcomes for children and families as outlined in the discussion paper Working Together to Build Victoria’s Early Childhood Education Workforce.

Building a sustainable and diverse early childhood education workforce is integral to achieving the government and sector’s vision of ensuring every Victorian child has access to two years of high-quality early learning.

Attraction and retention

VCOSS notes the government’s discussion paper makes a distinction between attraction and retention initiatives. In our submission, we have integrated our insights on attraction and retention, given the interconnectedness. 

Pay and conditions

Pay and conditions are important for both workforce attraction and retention.

VCOSS members have highlighted that current pay and conditions “fall short” – they don’t appropriately reflect the responsibilities of teachers and educators and don’t allow for sufficient investment in learning and development.

Members particularly noted:

• Workplace culture is important – there is a direct correlation between investment in professional development (for example, leadership training), staff wellbeing and staff tenure. The sector will continue to lose educators and teachers unless there is greater investment in their wellbeing and professional development.

• The Victorian community is increasingly diverse and early childhood educators and teachers are dealing with greater complexity. Pay and conditions don’t appropriately reflect this complexity – for example, the amount of time and the skills that staff require to manage relationships with families and manage families’ expectations. This is exacerbated by gaps in pre-service training that mean staff are entering the sector not sufficiently prepared to respond to children and families who have multiple and complex needs. Members also noted that the number of children presenting with complex needs has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 stay-at-home measures in 2020.

• Where staff have access to professional development, there is often insufficient time and support to develop and put into practice their new skills (for example, to undertake complex communication and engagement support with children and families).

• There is insufficient time for documentation, reflection and planning.

• The administrative burden on staff is significant and growing. Members note that the sector has undergone significant change over the last 10 years. While these largely positive changes promote better outcomes for children, new reporting requirements have added to staff workloads. For example, the introduction of Child Safe Standards, Child Information Sharing Scheme and MARAM, alongside the introduction of School Readiness Funding (SRF), all carry an additional administrative function. These reforms are welcome; however, implementation is resource-intensive and adds to the workload of teachers and educators who are feeling under pressure and burnt out from COVID-19.

This all occurs on top of supporting the needs of individual children to set them up for success. The new Victorian Early Childhood Teachers and Educators Agreement (VECTEA) is a welcome step in addressing aspects of this.

Funding should take into account the staffing costs associated with introducing and implementing these reforms. 

An additional solution is to fund peak bodies to alleviate some of this administrative burden. Additional funding would enable peak bodies to expand their remit to support their members to apply for grants, and support services to collect and analyse data and insights to support best practice outcomes for children and families.

Mentoring

Members highlighted inequities in support available to VET-qualified early childhood educators compared to Bachelor-qualified early childhood teachers. For example, all staff can benefit from mentoring – mentoring can help to embed knowledge and develop their practice. However, VET-qualified early childhood educators do not enjoy the same access to Victorian Government mentoring initiatives as Bachelor-qualified teachers.

While SRF provides enormous opportunity for staff to undertake professional development and to build the capacity of the workforce, mentoring will continue to be a vital part of improving quality practice in addition to professional development opportunities.

Dual qualified teachers

Additionally, members raised concerns about the attrition of dual qualified teachers from early learning to primary school. Members identified the following challenges:

• Lack of exposure to early childhood education and care during student placements.  When dual qualified teachers gain training and support in the school system but not in early childhood settings, they can feel nervous or underprepared, and exit the early childhood system.

• Disparity in class sizes, pay and conditions. Some members spoke of the smaller class numbers in primary schools, and better pay and conditions particularly compared to those working in long day care settings.

• Members also noted the added complexity for early childhood educators in meeting every individual child’s needs based on the child’s interests, compared with delivering a more structured school curriculum.

• While the new VECTEA sees significantly improved conditions for those covered by the award, funding is not confirmed for the entirety of the agreement.

• For those not covered under the award, members spoke about the appeal of the primary school sector for teachers.

Access to subsidised training

In terms of attraction, a key constraint for the sector is the eligibility criteria for accessing a government subsidised training place, including Free TAFE. Currently, students cannot access a subsidised training place to gain new skills and retrain if their nominated course does not lead to a ‘higher’ qualification. The exception to this rule is if a student can obtain an eligibility waiver. This means prospective learners who are looking to upskill or change career may be disincentivised to do so because they cannot afford the cost of undertaking additional education and training.

Wrap-around support to boost student completion

The Free TAFE initiative has removed the major cost barrier to training for early childhood educators.

However, there are peripheral expenses that still prevent some Victorians on low incomes from taking up the opportunity. For example, there are prospective students who cannot afford to buy textbooks, a digital device or other course materials and equipment, pay for childcare or transport, or pay for a Working with Children Check. The government should provide additional support to low-income students to ensure they can take up and complete early childhood qualifications at TAFE. 

For example, the government’s scholarship program for higher education students (those studying a degree to become an early childhood teacher) is an excellent initiative that helps students pay for essentials while studying a Bachelor degree. The government could give consideration to extending this program to those studying to be an educator in the VET system.    

A key challenge for government is to ensure these students complete their qualification and enter the early childhood education workforce. While completion rates for Free TAFE are not yet available, we know that, historically, completion rates for VET and higher education are poor,[i] and indicate students need more support to complete their qualifications and successfully transition into the workforce.

VCOSS acknowledges that TAFEs, in particular, provide a range of supports for students facing barriers to participation, learning and attainment. For example, students with disabilities can apply for reasonable adjustments and there are literacy and numeracy supports for students who have gaps in their foundational skills. 

However:

• Some students don’t have the knowledge, skills or confidence to access these supports.

• Some students have complex needs that exceed what is currently provided. 

There is an opportunity to build on current supports. VCOSS encourages the government to:

• Make further investments in the capacity of the VET workforce, so staff have the time and skills to identify emerging issues for students undertaking early childhood education qualifications, work alongside students to help identify the right support to match their need, assist them to navigate processes and, where necessary, advocate for them. One way to increase this capacity is to invest in evidence-informed supported traineeship models – more detail is provided on page six of this submission.

• Expand investment in student support services, so that the suite of services on offer reflects the full continuum of student needs. Currently, students with more intensive support needs are not receiving the right type or frequency of support.

Some examples of personalised support that make a difference to students at risk of disengaging include: mentoring, counselling, or warm referrals to specialist supports (such as family violence or housing and homelessness agencies).[ii]

Traineeship models

Traineeships can help attract more people to the industry, as they enable students to ‘earn and learn’. They also provide employers with real-time insights into the quality of learning.

Supported traineeship models can provide additional value to trainees, employers and training providers, by providing a range of personalised supports that help to prevent education disengagement and/or placement breakdown.    

The Victorian Early Childhood Workforce Strategy presents an opportunity for government to work with the early childhood sector to design and implement an industry-relevant supported traineeship model that is responsive to employer and student needs. 

Community Traineeship Pilot Program

The Community Traineeship Pilot Program (CTPP) delivered by VCOSS and funded through Jobs Victoria is an example of a successful approach to growing and diversifying the workforce. The CTPP supports young people experiencing barriers to labour market participation to undertake a community services qualification, while supporting community service organisations to host traineeships and meet their future workforce needs.  

The CTPP takes a holistic approach to supporting students into meaningful career pathways by providing up front resources (both human and financial).

A key feature of the program is a learner-focused support structure, that fosters connection and collaboration between   trainees, employers, youth workers from the trainee’s local community (from ‘Local Partner Organisations’), VET providers and teachers. All parties work together, to ensure trainees are provided with early help where needed.

The model also has a strong focus on peer support, which provides further scaffolding for the trainee. For example, trainees are brought together in classes run specifically for them. A dedicated youth worker attends class with them, providing 1:1 youth work support to individual trainees, whilst assisting the whole group to build connection and mutual support. This assists trainees to build their identity as part of a learning community.

The holistic approach of the CTPP has seen positive outcomes. This includes a retention rate of 80 per cent for the first group of participants, with more than 50 per cent gaining further employment with their employer upon completion of their traineeship. The developmental evaluation of the CTPP has identified the flexible, high-support components of the model as a key success factor thus far.

This model could be used to diversity the early childhood workforce which would complement government’s recent budget announcement of a new cross-government bicultural worker strategy.

For the early childhood sector, the supported traineeship model could be one way to stem the loss of new workers from the industry. Receiving on-the-job mentoring and guidance, and having the opportunity to build networks, could help new workers feel more supported and confident to access early help if challenges present. Supported traineeship models could also help to address employer concerns that some recent graduates are not meeting the minimum requirements of the role and are not suitable to employ.

Current Commonwealth wage subsidies make traineeships a more attractive proposition, but service providers will also need additional funding, particularly at the beginning of a traineeship. This is because, from an employers’ perspective, when a trainee is ‘learning the ropes’, they are a supplement to, not a substitute for, experienced staff. Consequently, they are an additional cost the service carries, and should not be counted as part of the child to staff ratios. VCOSS members also spoke about the need for wage subsidy support beyond the first 12 months, where it takes more time to complete the qualification, to make the model sustainable. The Victorian Government could fill this role as demonstrated through the CTPP to support the entire length of a traineeship.

Student placement support for community service organisations

Universities and VET providers and community sector employers have a shared interest in the provision of high-quality student placements. However, a significant challenge for early childhood education and care services is that they are often over stretched and have limited capacity to cover the significant administrative and staffing costs to support student placements.

VCOSS notes that the government has invested in training providers’ capacity to coordinate student placements. For example, the TAFE Reform initiative provides brokerage funding for TAFEs to connect students with services to complete their placements. However, there is no equivalent support for community service organisations who do the heavy lifting as placement host and supervisor. 

Models such as the Enhanced Pathways to Family Violence Work Project provide examples of how employers in other priority industries have been assisted to support their workforce to expand. These models recognise that, while placements provide high value to employers (particularly as a pipeline for new workers), there are significant costs associated with hosting placements that are hard for smaller and mid-size community service organisations to absorb. Employers that have participated in the Enhanced Pathways initiative have received funding, tools and training to assist them to host student placements.    

Other attraction and retention initiatives

In addition to improving pay and conditions to retain early childhood educators and teachers, there should be targeted incentives to support the return of people who have left the sector and those who have retired early.

Another factor that influences retention is access to professional development. Services need additional funding to enable staff to undertake career development activities such as leadership training. For example, additional resources would enable services to backfill staff with agency personnel. 

An additional constraint raised by one member is the difficulty in accessing full-time roles in kindergarten settings. This member noted this was due, in part, to an unintended consequence of the introduction of 15 hours of universal access to early childhood education. A solution could be to support collaboration across neighbouring services to offer full-time positions to boost attraction and retention.

Quality

School Readiness Funding

School Readiness Funding supports services to deliver high-quality early childhood education to their student cohort. The investment has been universally welcomed. However, some VCOSS members spoke about the need for greater flexibility in how they use their allocated equity funding.

For example, we heard that there are services who want to use their SRF to employ an allied health professional, rather than engage them for a small number of sessions.

This is because, since the full rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), services are concerned there are children who are missing out on timely allied health support. Our members say this is because:

• The NDIS is “complex” and “confronting”, and services and families are still unclear about roles and responsibilities.

• Collaboration between early learning services and early intervention agencies has been eroded. Staff don’t have the same access to secondary consultations they enjoyed under the previous state-based system.

• Some children who would have likely received support under the state-based Early Childhood Intervention Service have been excluded from the equivalent NDIS stream (Early Childhood Early Intervention). This is because some parents have found it difficult to navigate the NDIS or meet evidence requirements, or some children have been deemed not to meet the eligibility criteria by a planner who is not familiar with their child or their particular disability or developmental delay. 

Training and qualification requirements

VCOSS raised in our submission to the Ten Year National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2021-30)[iii] that changes should be made to pre-service training to ensure teachers and educators are appropriately equipped with embedded skills and knowledge needed to support children with a range of needs from a range of backgrounds, including children with disability and/or developmental delay, those with complex needs, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.

VCOSS members report many educators and teachers do not feel equipped to support children with additional needs, which can lead to the exclusion of children and families.

Though the make-up of qualifications primarily sits within the Commonwealth’s remit, consideration should be given at the state level about relevant qualifications and training requirements for discrete parts of the workforce providing specialised supports, for example, professionals that provide funded support for children with disability and/or developmental delay.

Members report good workers in particular programs like Kindergarten Inclusion Support are “snapped up quickly”, leading to services engaging workers who have no qualifications in early childhood education. This means services spend additional time and resources ‘upskilling’ these workers before they can begin working to support children and families.

While any changes in this space would require a ‘long-view’ perspective given ongoing workforce shortages across the sector, the quality component of specialised workforces and their role in improving outcomes for children and families means they should be considered as part of this strategy.

This strategy should also examine existing inclusion supports provided through the state to ensure they are meeting the needs of children and families through a broader understanding of inclusion, not limiting support only children who have disability and/or developmental delay.

Taking action together

Partnerships between early childhood education and care services and the broader community sector can improve service quality, providing additional expertise and support for children and families. However, establishing and sustaining partnerships takes time and costs money.

For example, VCOSS members spoke about reduced connection and collaboration between early childhood intervention services since the introduction of the NDIS. For services to fill these gaps, they need to be funded to collaborate so staff have the time to plan with other services and families, coordinate supports and embed inclusion strategies. This is not currently supported by NDIS or early learning funding, but it should be.

This submission was prepared by Talisha Ohanessian and authorised by VCOSS CEO Emma King. For enquiries please contact Deborah Fewster at deborah.fewster@vcoss.org.au.

[i] For example, 2018 VET completion rates in Victoria were only 48 per cent – the worst in Australia. Nationally only 41 per cent of students studying early childhood competed their degree, compared with 53 per cent in the primary and secondary school sector: National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Australian vocational education and training statistics: VET qualification completion rates 2018, 2020; Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority, National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy. Workforce Snapshot, <http://snapshots.acecqa.gov.au/workforcedata/index.html>, accessed 18 June 2021.

[ii] Youth Action – Uniting – Mission Australia, Vocational Education and Training in NSW: Report into access and outcomes for young people experiencing disadvantage – Joint report, February 2018.

[iii] Victorian Council of Social Service, VCOSS submission to the Ten Year National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2021-20), May 2021.

The Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS) is the peak body for social and community services in Victoria. VCOSS supports the community services industry, represents the interests of Victorians facing disadvantage and vulnerability in policy debates, and advocates to develop a sustainable, fair and equitable society. VCOSS members span rural, regional and metropolitan Victoria.

VCOSS welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the Victorian Economic and Infrastructure Committee’s inquiry into the use of school buses in rural and regional Victoria.

Transport helps people to access the opportunities around them and build a meaningful life. The more limited a person’s transport choices are, the more limited their opportunities. Transport connects communities to services, facilitates social connectedness, and opens education and employment opportunities. When the transport needs of communities are not met, people face unaffordable transport costs, experience social isolation, and have limited, reduced or no access to healthcare, community services, or food shopping.

While rural and regional Victorian communities are diverse and their needs differ, they are united by a lack of adequate and appropriate transport.

We commend the Committee for considering how school buses could be used to fill the gap in transport needs in rural and regional Victoria but note that the priority must be child safety.

Expanding access to school buses in a limited way could help some people get where they need to go. But school buses are not a silver bullet. Addressing transport disadvantage will need to look well beyond just the use of school buses, to more services, better connections and integration between services, improved accessibility and a clearer understanding of the needs of different communities.

This submission builds on 10 roundtable discussions VCOSS undertook in 2018 with regional community organisations across the state,[1] and was informed by targeted consultation with our members about this inquiry.

Recommendations

• Undertake a place-based, independent analysis of transport disadvantage to assess the financial, social and economic impacts for rural and regional Victorians.
• Identify and fund place-based transport strategies that address transport disadvantage in local communities.
• Clarify roles and responsibilities of state government departments and local government for transport planning, coordination and funding.
• Review the safety of school students in transit, and relevant duty of care policies.
• Consider requiring and subsidising a Working with Children’s Check for students aged over 18 years who are accessing the bus under the post-secondary students and apprentices criteria, rather than reliance on verbal checks.
• Review processes for determining school bus routes and stops, to ensure they are responsive to changing community need and parent requests.
• Explore the feasibility of adding additional stops to relevant TAFE campuses and training providers to service eligible post-secondary students and apprentices.
• Allow parents/carers of three- and four-year-old children attending kindergarten or childcare to use school buses on school routes.
• Require school buses to meet accessibility standards and advocate to the Commonwealth to amend the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 that currently exempt school buses from meeting accessibility requirements.
• Recognise the role of community transport and provide adequate block funding to enable providers to service rural and regional communities.

Rural and Regional Victorians experience transport disadvantage

Recommendations

• Undertake a place-based, independent analysis of transport disadvantage to assess the financial, social and economic impacts for rural and regional Victorians.
• Identify and fund place-based transport strategies that address transport disadvantage in local communities.
• Clarify roles and responsibilities of state government departments and local government for transport planning, coordination and funding.

Transport disadvantage compounds other forms of disadvantage and reduces access to opportunities.[2] It makes it harder to learn, work and socialise. Too many rural and regional Victorians struggle to get where they need to go. Unreliable or insufficient services, inaccessible vehicles and inconvenient routes all contribute to transport disadvantage.

VCOSS members spoke of families unable to attend important health or child protection appointments, or being unable to take advantage of important prevention and early intervention programs because of no transport options. Some households will prioritise medical appointments, leaving them without enough time and money to get to social activities, sporting matches, or art and recreational activities. This leaves children unable to get to extracurricular activities or catch ups with family and friends. 

Reliance on private cars is higher in rural and regional Victoria. If public transport does not provide a genuine option for people to get to school, work, shopping or services, people have little choice but to use private vehicles. The costs of registration, insurance, maintenance and fuel are high, adding financial stress for low-income households. For those without access to a car, they are dependent on the availability and generosity of a family member or neighbour.

Children and young people not old enough to get a driver’s license are particularly disadvantaged. VCOSS members also report there is insufficient support for adults aged over 25 years to gain their driver’s license, including those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

When families cannot get to their local kindergarten and students cannot get to school, the consequences can be lifelong. For example, attending two years of high-quality early learning is a key factor in preventing children from starting school behind, and children experiencing disadvantage stand to gain the most.[3] Starting school behind can lead to early school leaving – and students who leave school early are more likely to be at risk of long-term unemployment and poor mental health outcomes.[4]

Getting to school has been identified as a key issue with school attendance in metropolitan Melbourne[5] and is exacerbated by distance and limited options in rural and regional Victoria. For example, one VCOSS member in regional Victoria identified a cohort of students were not engaging in school because their part of the community was not serviced by public transport and was not on the school bus route. This is likely to be a problem for students studying at TAFE or undertaking post-school training.

VCOSS members told us in many of their communities when liaising with state government transport was seen as “no one’s problem”.

Connecting different departments and levels of government with communities and local organisations will be required to address transport disadvantage and improve outcomes for rural and regional Victorians.

An independent, place-based analysis should be funded by government to understand the full impacts of transport disadvantage, including the role of geographical location, where services are located in communities, and where education and employment opportunities are compared to existing transport infrastructure.

Issues to be considered in this analysis include:

• Improving access between towns and regional centres, not just transport to and from Melbourne.

• Making it easier for people to travel from regional towns to outlying areas or farms where they work.

• Providing services where people need to travel. For example, VCOSS members spoke about existing bus routes only servicing a limited route to the railway station.

• Adding evening and weekend public transport services so people can get to work, sport and social activities.

• Improving the integration and coordination of services and planning so users can connect easily between services on their journey.

• Improving accessibility of all transport modes, including train stations, to support access for people with disability, older people, people with health conditions or short-term mobility restrictions, and young families with prams.

“If we can intervene early in families’ lives, we can make a huge difference, but what we find is they’re struggling to get their children to kinder or playgroup… We’re often working one on one with families for resolutions but feel our hands are tied as there’s no funding or infrastructure to support them to access those services.” – Mallee Family Care

School buses are one part of the puzzle

Recommendations

• Review the safety of school students in transit, and relevant duty of care policies.
• Consider requiring and subsidising a Working with Children’s Check for students aged over 18 years who are accessing the bus under the post-secondary students and apprentices criteria, rather than reliance on verbal checks.
• Review processes for determining school bus routes and stops, to ensure they are responsive to changing community need and parent requests.
• Explore the feasibility of adding additional stops to relevant TAFE campuses and training providers to service eligible post-secondary students and apprentices.
• Allow parents/carers of three- and four-year-old children attending kindergarten or childcare to use school buses on school routes.
• Require school buses to meet accessibility standards and advocate to the Commonwealth to amend the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 that currently exempt school buses from meeting accessibility requirements.

The Committee is exploring options for extending school bus services to other members of the public to help rural and regional Victorians get where they need to go. School buses are a main form of transport in many rural and regional towns, and have vast coverage across the state. We commend the Committee for its consideration of how to make best use of school bus resources and infrastructure.

VCOSS members identified a range of opportunities and challenges in extending school bus services to the general population, or to identified cohorts of non-school students. Some were in support of opening up school routes to non-school students, with appropriate safeguards in place. Others would prefer reforms to focus on getting the most out of school buses outside or in between school hours. And concerns about child safety were important to everyone.

All VCOSS members consulted agreed that extending the school bus program will not resolve the deep transport disadvantage faced by many rural and regional Victorians, and should form just one part of a broader suite of actions to tackle the barriers to transport affordability, accessibility and utilisation.

Safety must be the priority

Providing a safe environment for children to travel to and from school must be central to the scheme. Schools are required to actively identify and manage risks to child safety. Any extension of school bus services must comply with Child Safe principles and standards.

Some VCOSS members reported concerns in their community, especially among parents and carers, about extension of school bus services to the general public. They expressed concern that parents may not want their children to use school bus services if they opened to adults from the general public, potentially undermining their importance in supporting school attendance and engagement. 

Others noted that there are already risks to student safety on buses that must be managed, including bullying, discrimination and racism. Increased presence of adults could actually prevent these kinds of harms. 

Consideration should be given to a requirement for anyone over the age of 18, including students or school leavers already eligible to travel on school buses, to gain a Working with Children’s check rather than reliance on verbal reference checks. Where appropriate the costs of these checks should be subsidised.

Other considerations could include a strengthened complaints process, a review of duty of care policies, and training for bus captains and drivers on child safety.

Communities lack awareness of existing transport options

There appears to be some confusion or a lack of knowledge about existing policies that enable coordinating principals to determine access to school buses for post-secondary students and apprentices, pre-school students, and the general public, with appropriate checks (for example the requirement that general public applicants provide a Working with Children check).

An extended program should be accompanied by appropriate communication strategies to make sure people who would benefit from the service know about it and can access it.

Some existing policies also act as a barrier to using this program. For example, current guidelines only enable a four-year-old kindergarten child to access the bus where their early learning service consents to their capacity to travel independently, which is a significant risk for a service to bear.

Use of school buses outside of school hours should be considered

School buses have significant “down-time” between school hours and during school holidays. But for many community members including older people, shift workers and single parents, these may be the times they would or could travel. The Committee should consider better utilisation of school bus infrastructure and drivers outside of or between school hours.

VCOSS members spoke about their efforts to explore options in extending the use of school buses outside of school hours but experienced a range of barriers, including:

• Difficulties navigating responsibilities between multiple government departments and private bus operators.

• Insufficient organisational resources to manage significant procedural requirements and paperwork.

Government should lead the planning process and logistics of contract management in the use of school buses outside of school routes but work in partnership with local communities to determine appropriate routes and timing to ensure it meets the needs of local communities.

Consider vulnerable cohorts and priority groups

VCOSS members identified several groups who would benefit from extension of the school bus program.

Young people who are early school leavers and undertaking further education and training (such as at TAFE or through an apprenticeship) are particularly vulnerable to transport disadvantage. Better transport options would provide them with opportunities for more or different work, and to connect with their communities.

For those young people attending school, there could be benefit in extending the school bus program to enable travel between schools to attend an outside school hours care program where their school does not offer a program, or other sporting or recreational activities.

Consideration should be given to whether the service could be extended to three-year-old children with appropriate permissions and safeguards in place. Members also noted that enabling pre-school aged children to access the bus normalises the experience and supports the transition to primary school.

VCOSS members also noted that for some children, kindergarten or childcare may be safer than home with the added benefit of providing children access to nutritious food and supporting developmental growth. VCOSS members were concerned that removing access to school buses for these children may have unintended consequences for their health, safety and wellbeing.

Extending the use of school buses to parents/carers of three- and four-year-old children to attend kindergarten or childcare would also support engagement with early learning. Routes may need to be reviewed to ensure they stop at kindergartens and childcare centres.

Routes and capacity must be appropriate and regularly reviewed

As well as lack of knowledge, low capacity and poor route planning limit the value of school buses to reduce transport disadvantage among non-school students.

For students to achieve their potential, they need to be able to get to school. School buses are a vital part of encouraging school engagement and attendance in rural and regional Victoria, and are the only option for many rural and regional students. Expansion of the school bus program to other members of the community should not be at the expense of any children needing to get to school. But many VCOSS members reported limited capacity on local school buses, so opportunities for non-school students to travel on buses will be few.

School bus routes also might be inappropriate and need to be reviewed as communities grow and change. For example, school bus routes do not always travel close to where students live, or do not stop at TAFE campuses or training providers, so are of limited use to eligible post-secondary students and apprentices.

Processes to request changes are complicated and time-consuming. Appropriate review channels need to be available to parents/carers and the community to request additional stops to school bus routes for eligible students.

The current process to request a new school bus stop requires parents of students to make a request to the coordinating principal and allows for parents to contact bus operators directly.^[6]But there is little opportunity for parents/carers and community members to have requests reviewed if they are denied.

For example, one VCOSS member organisation experienced several barriers in successfully extending the school bus route to service a group of students who were being excluded from the school bus route. This was despite evidence that this group of students, many of who were Aboriginal or from low-income households, were not attending school because of transport barriers. The school principal was resistant to updating the route and it took the community organisation over 12 months of negotiating with the private bus operator directly to change the route.

Services must be inclusive

School buses are exempt from the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 so are inaccessible to many people. The Victorian Government should advocate to the Commonwealth for changes to the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 (the Standards) that exempt school buses from meeting accessibility requirements.[7] In the absence of changes at the Commonwealth level, the Victorian Government can require buses to meet accessibility standards as part of procurement or contract management.

In addition, the accessibility of bus stops needs to be addressed to ensure school students and the general public can actually get on the bus.

It is unclear whether buses would remain exempt from the Standards if they were used outside of school times. The definition of “dedicated school bus and dedicated school bus service”[8] probably means a bus is only a school bus when it is performing school duties but this requires clarification.

VCOSS members spoke about the important role of community transport in bridging access gaps for some children and young people with disability in traveling to education through their services. While these additional options may improve access for some students, it does not address inclusion.

An integrated approach to transport planning

Recommendation

Current provisions that enable access to school buses on the school route for the general public have not solved transport disadvantage in rural and regional areas. While communication strategies may increase the uptake of existing pathways, school buses will not be the quick fix to giving rural and regional Victorians access to a wide range of services and opportunities.

VCOSS encourages the Committee to consider other options for tackling transport disadvantage in rural and regional Victoria, especially by focussing on the potential to grow and support community transport.

Support community transport

Community transport plays a vital role in increasing accessibility of transport for those who can’t access or use cars or other transport because of cost, geographical isolation or mobility issues. Community transport is an important part of the transport infrastructure in rural and regional Victoria and provides affordable, flexible, accessible and adaptable services to people experiencing transport disadvantage.[9]

Unlike current regulation that exempts school buses from meeting accessibility requirements, community transport is accessible for older people and people with disability from young children to those in their later years. Community transport has the potential to meet the needs of rural and regional communities, however, it needs additional funding. Community transport providers are oversubscribed with no resources to increase services to meet demand.

Many community transport services are funded under a volunteer model that covers the cost of some infrastructure but relies on volunteer drivers. A key issue raised by VCOSS members is that infrastructure (such as vehicles) is only part of the issue. Volunteers, even when they are available, are not free. It takes time and costs money to train, supervise and manage volunteers and to factor in risk management.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns in Victoria much of the volunteer workforce dried up, and many have not returned to volunteering positions. The community transport sector is heavily reliant on volunteers and lacks funding to employ paid staff to replace the volunteers lost. 

While community transport is primarily funded through Commonwealth funding mechanisms, the state could extend the role and provision of community transport to service rural and regional communities to address transport disadvantage through the provision of block funding. Block funding provides predictable revenue, which supports forward planning and enables community transport providers to pay for drivers when volunteers are unavailable.

Explore on-demand and flexible transport

VCOSS members held mixed views about on-demand transport services. For some, on-demand was seen as a way to meet the needs of individual community members. For others, the additional capacity and requirement for infrastructure to be idle to be ready ‘on-demand’ was not seen as the best use of transport infrastructure.

VCOSS members spoke of local programs such as GisBus working well to service their community by providing an ongoing permanent route and an on-demand roaming service.[10]

Review routes and utilisation

Government should also consider existing uptake and effectiveness of current bus and transport routes in rural and regional communities to explore whether changing routes and/or timetables could improve transport outcomes. Additional services should also be considered.

Government could take lessons from a previous inter-government initiative, the Transport Connections Program (TCP). This model was designed to partner government departments with local government and community organisations to “build capacity for local communities to work together on overcoming transport disadvantage”.[11] A Victorian Auditor-General’s Office Report found that due to poor governance, oversight and monitoring as well as limited community engagement there was little evidence to determine how effectively the program improved local transport. The report also found, however, that many aspects of the model were sound and made recommendations to improve accountability. Government could revisit this model with increased leadership and strengthened compliance from government to explore transport solutions in local communities.

[1] Victorian Council of Social Service, The Voices of Regional Victoria: VCOSS Regional Roundtables Report, November 2018.

[2] J Pope, The role of infrastructure in addressing regional disadvantage in Victoria, Background paper prepared for Infrastructure Victoria, October 2019.

[3] S Fox, M Geddes, Preschool – Two years are Better Than One: Developing a universal preschool program for Australian 3 year olds – evidence, policy and implementation, Mitchell Institute Policy Paper No. 03/2016, Mitchell Institute, October 2016. 

[4] S Lamb, J Jackson, A Walstab & S Huo, Educational opportunity in Australia 2015: Who succeeds and who misses out, Centre for International Research on Education Systems, for the Mitchell Institute.  

[5] WEstjustice, Travel Assistance Program, September 2020.

[6] Public Transport Victoria, School Bus Program, School bus stops, accessed 10 May 2021 <https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/tickets/regional-tickets/victorian-school-buses/school-bus-program/>.

[7] Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 (Cth)

[8] Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 (Cth) s.1.13

[9] VicTas Community Transport Association, ‘Welcome’, accessed 9 December 2020, <https://www.vtcta.org.au/>.

[10] GisBus, How does GisBus work?, accessed 10 May 2021, <https://gisbus.com.au/how-does-gisbus-work%3F>.

[11] Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, Local Community Transport Services: the Transport Connections program, March 2011, p. viii.

Stories into Evidence

Covid-19 adaptations in the Victorian community sector

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This research was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (2020), and produced in partnership with the Future Social Service Institute.

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DOC

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused profound social and economic dislocation.

This report documents the Victorian community services sector’s response to the first six months of the crisis. In particular, it identifies adaptations to service delivery and practice, and emergent changes in service-user demand and community need.

The purpose of the report is to inform recovery and reform, including opportunities to embed or scale innovation, and identify areas requiring deeper investigation and co-design between government and the community sector.

The report draws on qualitative data gathered from interviews with over fifty Victorian community service organisations across all sub-sectors, conducted between July 2020 and September 2020, across family violence, housing and homelessness, alcohol and other drugs, child and family services, young people and justice, mental health, community health, Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), aged-care and disability.

The most significant adaptation to emerge from the crisis is the sector-wide shift to primarily digital service delivery to minimise the risk of virus transmission. In order to ensure continuity of services, organisations moved with incredible speed and agility to a range of digital modalities.

While this has worked effectively as a short-term measure in response to a crisis situation, and many organisations have advised that they are likely to move to a blend of face-to-face and digital modalities as restrictions begin to lift, they also said there is an urgent need to understand more about the situations and cohorts for which digital service delivery is appropriate.

More research will be required to fully scope the impact on service users in terms of accessibility and cost, alongside investigating digital service delivery’s effectiveness and impact.

VCOSS acknowledges the ESC’s considered and constructive approach to the development of this strategy.

This work has adopted a nuanced understanding of the nature and causes of contemporary consumer vulnerability in electricity, gas, water, and other regulated sectors, and subsequently identified a range of promising projects and practices that the ESC, relevant service providers and other stakeholders can further progress.

It has also adopted a practical, learning-by-doing approach during the 2020 development phase. That approach has produced both new guidance on sensitive and appropriate engagement with consumers experiencing vulnerability, including in relation to family violence, and expanded the ESC’s toolkit through trialing contemporary community engagement



practices (a deliberative panel of representative consumers).

VCOSS also notes the valuable frontline research contained in the work done for the ESC by the Consumer Policy Research Centre, and the data tool developed for this strategy.

Finalising this strategy will be an important milestone in ongoing cross-sector efforts to ensure that all Victorians have equitable access to essential services. VCOSS endorses the ESC’s commitment to ensuring the strategy has a practical positive impact on the ongoing operations of both the ESC and its regulated sectors.

Having actively engaged with the ESC throughout the strategy’s development, including as a member of the community sector Stakeholder Reference Group and in multiple issue-specific workshops, this written submission focuses on a small number of key points on setting the tone for the strategy’s rolling implementation.

Building on statutory authority and firm foundations

The ESC has an explicit statutory requirement to consider questions of consumer vulnerability and low-income in its decision-making.

These issues are well within the ESC’s operational mandate, and the aim of seeing retailers supporting (rather than labelling) consumers has been part of the regulator’s approach for some time. Other recent milestones include the 2016 energy hardship inquiry and the subsequent 2017 payment difficulty framework final decision.

Reconsider the definition of vulnerability  

In putting this perspective and approach into practice, both in its own operations and in its multi-dimensional work with regulated entities, the ESC has proposed a working definition of consumer vulnerability – being:

A person experiencing vulnerability is someone who experiences barriers to participating in the essential services we regulate or administer. As a result of those barriers that person experiences economic and social exclusion or harm.

VCOSS supports the intent and rationale underpinning this definition, in that it is primarily the real-world circumstances and socially constructed barriers that create barriers to essential services for households (not a presumed failing or personal characteristic of those consumers).

This definition is intended to highlight the role of regulators and business practices addressing barriers to access. It is also an important reminder that there are systemic factors and structural barriers to equitable access to essential services and ultimately wellbeing (such as adequate income support and minimum housing standards) that require ongoing policy attention but are beyond the ESC’s direct control.

Given the use and emphasis elsewhere in the draft strategy on equitable access, however, we question the focus in the definition on people “participating” in essential services. There are many reasons why some people may never “participate” as theoretical “active consumers”, including their health, complex living situation, or simply not wanting to.

The system should provide a safety net for people who do not engage with their retailers or providers or essential services. Amending the definition to “someone who experiences barriers to accessing or engaging with essential services” would be preferable.

As also noted in the draft framework, many people may not identify as vulnerable, and this language may act as a deterrent or barrier to people getting the help they need. We support the use (as suggested by the deliberative panel and MSEI) of more inclusive language in key communications, including around wellbeing, fairness, accessibility, rights, and entitlements.

Critically, this is not simply a matter of having a “hybrid approach” to navigating sometimes sensitive terminology; rather, it is an important recognition that the ultimate aim of regulatory authority is to promote public wellbeing.

Engage meaningfully with consumers

An overarching positive of the draft strategy is the repeated emphasis (as in initiatives 3.2 and 3.3) on facilitating and better engaging with the lived experience of vulnerability, i.e. real-world consumer voices, in ESC planning.

Meaningful engagement, where there is genuine openness to hearing and including different views and perspectives, leads to better decision making and program design, and more engaged communities.

The framework would be further strengthened by including a clear understanding of the principles of co-designing with people and communities in vulnerable circumstances. Co-design involves more than just consultation.
Co-design means coming alongside people who experience vulnerabilities, to work with them in creating interventions, services and programs that work in the context of their lives and reflect their values and goals.

Too often VCOSS members and stakeholders report that engagement processes by government agencies or regulators are poorly designed and do not place the experiences and perspectives of communities at the centre.

We commonly hear examples where engagement processes:

• Do not clearly articulate the purpose of the engagement or identify where people can influence decisions
• Adopt a starting point that stakeholders disagree with or is misunderstood
• Ask the wrong questions or make incorrect assumptions about communities or needs
• Are overly formal, bureaucratic or confusing
• Fail to identify and therefore engage the right stakeholders and impacted communities.

The framework should not assume that marginalised groups, who often have histories of trauma or past negative experiences with systems and policies, will engage, even where decisions will directly impact on their lives. People might experience stigma around identifying (for example as having a mental illness or being part of the LGBTIQ+ community), fear of speaking up, and mistrust of government and support services.

The framework should emphasise the need for specific strategies to reach communities including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, refugee and asylum seekers, people with disability and LGBTIQ+ people. Younger people, older people, single parents, rural and regional Victorians, people who are homeless or living with a mental illness may also need targeted consultation strategies.

The draft framework could go further in providing practical information about engaging with all Victorians. Some people have chronic illnesses, allergies or anxieties that make attending and participating in events difficult. Accessibility is not limited to physical venue and materials. A significant number of Victorians have low levels of literacy. Many also do not have access to the internet at home. Online engagement mechanisms or notification of consultations may not effectively engage these groups.

The Victorian Government already provides guidance about accessible communications and documents. In VCOSS’ experience not all staff know about or are familiar with these guidelines.

Meaningful engagement also requires sufficient time. Time for people to become aware of the process, undertake their own research, consultation and thinking, and prepare their responses accordingly.
A minimum of 6-8 weeks should be provided for the preparation of written submissions. Similar notice should be provided for in-person consultations.

An obvious area for implementing this approach is in relation to initiatives 1.1 and 2.2, particularly for the ESC to work directly with First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse consumers.

Feedback on individual sector initiatives

VCOSS notes that the ESC has run a series of workshops on its proposed
sector-specific initatives, and has indicated that these projects would be subject to further detailed consultation and/or collaboration on planning in due course.

Taken collectively, the proposed initiatives amount to a comprehensive and coherent workplan. VCOSS particularly welcomes further development of projects such as 3.4, 7.3, and 7.5, which emphasise the potential for sharing data and working across sectors to address systemic issues and identify complementary (and preventative) community engagement efforts.

VCOSS also supports the categorisation of initiative 2.5, the review of the effectiveness of the payment difficulty framework, as a critical project. To help ensure the review of this important regulatory mechanism is well-designed, there would be merit in the ESC consulting with stakeholders on its the scope, aims and approach.

Key areas of focus could be exploring how the cultural change anticipated from this framework has been implemented within retailers; how they could better align internal incentives and drive more consistent implementation through better training; and how it might achieve even better early identification and intervention outcomes.

From engagement and lessons to expectations and outcomes

As noted, it is a strength of the draft strategy that so much emphasis has been put on engaging with the diverse voices of consumers experiencing vulnerability. VCOSS also supports the ESC recognising the full range of potential activities that are in-scope for a contemporary essential services regulator in driving better outcomes in its regulated sectors.

Alongside robust compliance auditing and rigorous enforcement, that full range of activity includes creative cross-sector collaborative leadership to share engagement insights, inspire better business practices, and facilitate complementary industry and community education, as is envisaged by initiatives such as 3.4, 4.2 and 4.3.

VCOSS also expects, however, that proven better business practices (identified, for example, through initiative 4.2) should be embedded in higher shared expectations for all regulated entities, whether through relevant rule-making or other forms of locked-in continuous improvement.

This is not ultimately a question of either/or in terms of innovation or regulation,
but – over time – both/and.

In preparing this submission, VCOSS held a member consultation to seek views from Victorian community sector advocates and social service organisations.

Without a doubt, the overarching message from that event was that – while the current formal regulatory requirements are generally sound – there is a real frustration with retailers behaving inconsistently. As a result, people don’t trust them to follow the rules and worry that they aren’t accessing available help because they don’t know the “magic words” to be put through to the right support team.

Finally, cultural change and practical outcomes – in both the ESC and its regulated sectors – will need to be tracked with robust progress and impact measures.

Many of the current “measures of success” for the sector-specific initiatives are quite process and milestone oriented. Given the strategy will be an ongoing priority and includes planning for monitoring, evaluation, and review, further consideration of relevant operational and consumer wellbeing outcomes would be welcome.

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To discuss this submission, please contact Jarrod Lenne, Energy Policy Advisor on jarrod.lenne@vcoss.org.au

Feds, state and power companies must do more.

With thousands of Dandenong Ranges residents facing an extended period without power and internet services, VCOSS is calling on utility providers and the Victorian and Federal governments to provide more formal emergency support.

“No power means no electric heating, no way to refrigerate fresh food and limited cooking and lighting options,” VCOSS CEO Emma King said.

“Internet outages make it difficult for many people to access essential government services, such as MyGov or the Services Australia website.”

“Many residents are also temporarily without an income, as local businesses remain shut, tourists are asked to stay away and casual shifts are cancelled.”

Ms King said community organisations across the state have stepped-up in recent days, as they always do, but with outages in the Dandenongs now set to last weeks, more formal support is required.

Specific measures VCOSS is calling for include:

The Victorian Government:

• Relax the application process and eligibility criteria for the existing Personal Hardship Assistance Program, so affected residents can access money sooner and for longer.
• Make an immediate cash injection to frontline charities, so they can keep providing essential services (including food) on the ground.
• Work with local councils to open more temporary accommodation facilities for displaced people and their pets.

The Federal Government:

• Declare the storm a natural disaster, triggering support payments under the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment scheme.

Power companies:

• Make formal plans to support people over the long-term, with a series of discounts, deferrals and payment plans.

Ms King said employers must also show compassion and leniency, with many people unable to leave the mountain to attend work.

“The storm damage won’t end the day that power is restored. It’s going to take a long time for people to recover, rebuild and recoup their losses.”

“They must be supported over the long-term,” Ms King said.

===ENDS===

VCOSS welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Essential Services Commission’s (ESC’s) proposed approach to determining the Victorian Default Offer (VDO) tariffs to apply from 1 January 2022.

The VDO is a simple, fair and independently-set retail electricity price for all residential consumers, and is a critical measure for driving improved energy affordability in Victoria. It is a key safeguard for consumers who are on retailers’ standing offers or who are unable or unwilling to engage in detailed comparisons of current market offers.

As of 1 September 2020, it is also the maximum price embedded network operators may charge residential and small business customers.

The VDO also serves as a credible reference point for those residential consumers who are able to shop around.

VCOSS strongly supported the development and introduction of the VDO, which saves nearly 130,000 households on standing offers between $310 and $450 per year.[1]

Staying true to reform goals

VCOSS supports the ESC’s overall proposition that it largely use the same approach (updated for the most recent data available, such as falling wholesale electricity prices) in setting 2022 VDO tariffs as it has adopted in past years.

At the same time, however, VCOSS encourages the ESC to be vigilant in maintaining the intent and discipline inherent in the VDO’s methodology.

VCOSS shares the concerns of other community sector organisations that the current approach risks a gradual growth of the cost stack.  In particular, the temporary bad debt allowance – if continued – could result in increased costs for VDO customers, alongside a dulling of incentives for retailers.

VCOSS maintains the view that any assertion of pandemic-related additional costs should be robustly justified, and unless a clear case is made the ESC should not extend the temporary bad debt allowance.

The onus for making this case lies firmly with retailers, given that they hold most of the relevant customer information.

At the same time, VCOSS encourages the ESC to continue monitoring the retail margin incorporated in the cost stack.
As the consultation paper recognises, the proposed 5.7 per cent is at the
top-end of comparable regulated retail margins.

As the VDO matures, it is also important the ESC commit to a timeline for incorporating an overarching downward pressure on the cost stack. While noting the ESC’s current embedded operating cost adjustments, an explicit productivity factor would have the benefit of reflecting savings across the VDO as a whole.

Caution required on a new VDO variant

VCOSS is not convinced of the merits in introducing a third type of VDO arrangement to reflect changes in network tariffs. We are concerned it could detract from the core objective of the VDO in providing households who are unable or unwilling to engage with complex retail offers a simple flat tariff option.
In addition, a straight passing through of time-of-use network tariffs to households who can’t adjust their consumption patterns may have unexpected or inequitable outcomes for some households.

Network charges are incorporated into electricity bills to cover residential consumers’ contribution to the operation and maintenance of the “poles and wires” of the electricity grid.

Given that these charges comprise between 35 and 43 per cent of the cost-stack, it is clearly important that they are as accurately reflected in the VDO as possible.

But, as noted above, a fundamental purpose of VDO is to require retailers to provide a no (or low) engagement option, and it is neither as obvious nor as necessarily desirable as the consultation paper presumes that network and retail tariffs should be consistent.

VCOSS encourages the ESC to explore this proposal further from a consumer perspective, particularly to identify any perverse outcomes from more detailed modelling.

Prioritise consumer outcomes when
weighing-up timing options

As noted in the consultation paper, the ESC is also seeking feedback on the length of the next VDO regulatory period.

While these price determinations are currently set on a calendar year basis, the Victorian Government has passed legislation to align the VDO with the regulated prices of electricity distribution network charges (which, from this five-year cycle in Victoria, will run on a financial year basis).

These options include setting either a
6-month or 18-month timeframe for the 2022 VDO tariffs (and updating them in mid-2022 for any major cost stack fluctuations).

As was the case last year, VCOSS does not have a strong view on the most appropriate timeframe.

A shorter period would mean resolving these timing issues sooner while also providing an additional six months for weighing up issues like the bad debts allowance and that rationale for an overarching productivity factor.

A longer period would provide greater price certainty to low-income households who may struggle to meet energy costs. But strategies for supporting households in the events of a large price change at the end of the longer period would need to be considered.

In weighing up options and associated demands on stakeholders, the ESC should have as its paramount consideration ensuring that final VDO tariffs are as fair as possible for low-income households.

[1] Essential Services Commission, Victorian Energy Market Report 2018-19 (November 2019), p. 48-49.

Additional support for early years management
$7m in 2021-22 ($31.2m/4 yrs) to increase support for early years management services that deliver kindergarten programs in over 950 kinders across the state. Community-based kindergartens are a vital part of the early learning eco-system. Additional funding will support management of community-based kindergartens, improve service viability, access and quality, and meet projected demand for kindergarten services to access these arrangements.

Ready for school: Kinder for every three-year-old
$21.3m in 2021-22 ($167.2/4 yrs) will provide additional funding to continue the Australia-leading initiative of universal access to three-year-old kindergarten. Funding will also expand workforce attraction and retention activities ($32.4 million) and will support the continued expansion of kindergarten infrastructure ($44.8 million). This investment builds on the $346.4 million over four years allocated in the 2020-21 Victorian Budget.

Maintaining universal access to 15 hours of four-year-old kindergarten
$8.1m in 2021-22 ($16.2m/2 yrs) to maintain access to kindergarten for children in the year before school. This is in addition to $16.6 million over two years allocated in the previous budget.

Giving vulnerable and disadvantaged kids the best start in life
$8.6m in 2021-22 ($33.8m/4 yrs) to deliver tailored support for vulnerable and disadvantaged children to participate in early childhood education and care. This includes funding to expand early intervention and outreach support through the Access to Early Learning Program and trialing new intensive early education supports for vulnerable children affected by complex trauma. Funding will also continue the Kindergarten Improvement Advisers initiative and expand kindergarten programs at the Royal Children’s Hospital Education Institute.

Mental health reform in education: setting up children and young people to thrive
$9.5m in 2021-22 ($217.8m/4 yrs). Funding is provided to establish a School Mental Health Fund, enabling schools to select and implement mental health and wellbeing initiatives that best suit their students’ needs from an evidence-based menu. The initiative will be rolled out to regional and rural government schools from Term 3 2022, before roll-out to all government schools by 2024.

This initiative also includes the expansion of the Mental Health in Primary Schools pilot to include 90 government schools and 10 non-government schools in 2022, up from 26 schools. Government has already committed to fund a mental health practitioner in every government secondary and specialist school by the end of 2021.

Marrung (Koorie Initiatives Package)
$8.7m in 2021-22 ($39.3m/4 yrs). Funding will continue the Koorie Literacy and Numeracy Program, expand the Koorie Pre-School Assistants program to four new locations, and continue the Koorie Families as First Educators and Koorie Engagement Support Officer programs. Funding will also support the introduction of a two-year statewide consultation and co-design process, to progress Aboriginal self-determination in education.

Marrung: Aboriginal Education Plan 2016-2026 is a strategy to improve educational outcomes for Koorie Victorians to ensure Koorie Victorians achieve their learning aspirations. The strategy was co-developed with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.

Doctors in Secondary Schools
$5.9m in 2021-22 ($43.4m/4 yrs) for students in participating secondary schools to have access to primary health care in schools through the continuation of funding for the Doctors in Secondary Schools program. This doesn’t look to be an expansion of the program to enable more secondary school students to access doctors in school.

Enhancing secondary vocational pathways
$0 in 2021-22 ($8.8m/2 yrs). Funding will continue to support secondary students to access high-quality VET offerings for the second half of 2022. The Head Start Apprenticeship and Traineeship program will also continue, giving students the opportunity to undertake a traineeship or apprenticeship while completing their senior secondary certificate.

Addressing the cost of delivering education
$6.1m in 2021-22 ($41.7m/4 yrs) provides additional funding to schools for transport costs associated with swimming and water safety education, and for essential materials for students undertaking vocational education and training (VET) subjects as part of senior secondary schooling.

Increasing access to Tech Schools
$2.3m in 2021-22 ($20.5m/4 yrs). Funding will expand on-site and virtual delivery capabilities of existing Tech Schools and a pilot mobile Tech School delivery model for students in remote areas of Gippsland. Tech Schools help build students’ science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills and connect them to jobs of the future.

Student health and wellbeing
$2.1m in 2021-22 ($12.5m/4 yrs). Funding is provided to continue implementation of the school-wide positive behaviour support (SWPBS) framework. Implementation in schools will be supported by 17 specialist SWPBS coaches, working with schools to improve teachers’ capability.

Supporting students with disabilities
Initiatives include:

• $4.8m in 2021-22 ($19.6m/3 yrs) to support students with disabilities and additional needs through continued funding for a pilot in outside-school-hours care and school holiday programs across six government school sites
• $25.2m in 2021-22 for the Students with Disabilities Transport Program
• $10m in 2021-22 ($15m/2 yrs) for the Accessible Building Program
• $1m in 2021-22 ($10m/2 yrs) to deliver Round Six of the Inclusive Schools Fund.

$1.6b/4 yrs on infrastructure projects including:

• the construction of 13 new schools
• upgrades to 52 schools (35 in metro areas and 17 regional schools)
• essential maintenance.

Analysis

Early childhood education
Two years of high-quality early learning in the years before school supports children’s cognitive, social and emotional development. The Victorian Government continues to lead the way in early childhood education through continuing universal access to four-year-old kindergarten and boosted investment for the roll-out of three-year-old kindergarten. Once the roll-out of three-year-old kindergarten is complete across the state, Victoria will be providing universal access to the recommended two years of early learning in the years before school.

The Budget makes a welcome investment in additional funding to support early years management services to remain viable. This funding will ensure early years management services can continue playing an important role as the Victorian Government rolls out universal access to two years of early learning.

Early childhood education investment includes funding to attract and upskill the workforce, which will need to see an additional 6,000 teachers and educators join the sector. This investment is one of many initiatives the Victorian Government has explored and is seeking feedback on to inform the Victorian Early Childhood Workforce Strategy.

Government could extend on significant investment in early childhood education by agreeing to fund the newly negotiated enterprise agreement until 2024 to support improved pay and conditions for the early childhood workforce, and continuing conversations with sector peaks to develop a long-term vision and plan for a robust not-for-profit early learning sector.

School
The 2021-22 Budget confirms the Government’s continued commitment to make Victoria the Education State through significant investment in early childhood education, school infrastructure, and exciting investment to develop and implement a School Mental Health Fund to provide schools with a suite of evidence-informed initiatives to improve the mental health and wellbeing of students.

The School Mental Health Fund will address Recommendation 17 from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. A similar model is due to finish rolling out in kindergartens across Victoria through School Readiness Funding by the end of 2021, to give services access to a menu of initiatives to build the capacity of services, educators and families to support children’s learning and development outcomes.

Rural and regional government schools will begin to see funding for this initiative from Term 3 2022, while all metropolitan schools will gain access to the Fund by the end of 2024. Access to appropriate mental health and wellbeing services for young people in rural and regional Victoria has been an ongoing identified gap and we hope schools gaining access to the initiative as soon as possible. The consequences of remote and flexible learning and stay-at-home measures during 2020 have exacerbated pre-existing issues for school students across the state, and seen new issues emerge. Many students need additional support. Once the menu has been developed, Government should explore options to speed up the roll-out of the Fund to all government schools.

The Budget promotes some positive early intervention initiatives. It continues investment in the School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support Framework, provides support to schools and early childhood services impacted by the 2019-20 Victorian bushfires, and makes investment to embed family services in universal settings such as school sites and early years services to divert more families from involvement in the children and families system and statutory interventions.

The next step in the Government’s commitment to early intervention and investment in wellbeing is to take full advantage of the protective factors schools can provide for students by investing in school lawyer programs, youth workers and mental health peer support training.

In addition, to make sure no student misses out on a high-quality education the Government should address the costs of school. Schools and families need additional support to cover the full costs of education. The ‘addressing the cost of delivering education’ initiative will help address some school cost concerns, but does not go far enough.

If Victoria is to meet its goal of being the Education State we should fully fund public schools to cover the costs of delivering the standard curriculum, including through closing the digital divide and ensuring all students have access to the internet and a device. Government could also help children get to school by providing free public transport to those who need it.

Students with disability
This Budget commits $70 million of funding over three years to continue existing infrastructure and school transport programs, as well as a pilot program to improve outside-school-hours care and school holiday programs for students with disability across a small number of sites.

The 2020-21 Victorian Budget’s Disability Inclusion Package provided almost $1.6 billion to improve outcomes for students with disability by redesigning the Program for Students with Disabilities to implement a new funding model that includes a strengths-based functional needs assessment. This package will double the number of students with disability in government schools who will receive extra supports in the classroom and delivers new resources to build the skills and knowledge of school staff. The catch is that it will take five years to fully roll out by geographic region. Government should speed up the roll-out so no student with disability misses out on the support they need to get a high-quality education and make a successful post-school transition. Student voice must be at the centre of this landmark reform, at a systemic level and individual level.

The Victorian emergency relief sector provides vital financial and material aid to people in need.

Emergency relief can take many forms, including bill payment, vouchers, clothes, furniture and food. It is often supplemented with broader support and referral to other services.

The coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions in 2020 and 2021 imposed a significant toll on the health and wellbeing of a vast range of Victorians.

As a result, many Victorians sought emergency relief for the first time, leaving emergency relief organisations facing overwhelming demand.

The pandemic has highlighted the critical role the emergency relief sector plays in supporting the health and wellbeing of the most vulnerable Victorians, and the role it plays in supporting a range of Victorians during a disaster or crisis. But it also exposed the sector’s fragility.

This report, drawn from existing research and consultation with emergency relief organisations, provides an overview of the emergency relief sector in Victoria.

It examines the impacts of the pandemic on the emergency relief sector, and on demand and provision of food relief – as well as the policy responses we’ve seen from both the Federal and Victorian Government.

Finally, the report provides a range of recommendations for both the Federal and Victorian Government to help prevent people falling into financial crisis, and to strengthen the emergency relief sector for the benefit of those who do.

More must be done to meet the growing demand for emergency food relief across Victoria

As a result of the limited time for consultation, VCOSS’s member engagement was constrained.  VCOSS would encourage SkillsIQ to allow time for more extensive consultation in future, given the strategic importance of such reviews. 

Diversity of the community sector

Victoria’s community services industry is strong, vibrant and mature with a proud history of supporting people facing poverty and disadvantage. Comprised of thousands of organisations spread throughout the state, the industry is diverse, resilient and adaptable.[i]

However, it is an industry under pressure:

• Pre-COVID, the community sector was under pressure to substantially grow its workforce, at pace, in response to welcome Commonwealth and State reforms in family violence, disability, aged care and mental health sectors. Concurrently, community service organisations have been struggling with increasing costs and inadequate funding and revenue.[ii]

• This strain has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Anecdotally, workforce shortages are being exacerbated by employee burnout. Social distancing and other COVID containment measures have also presented new challenges for community service organisations to host student placements (noting that pre-COVID, small and mid-size employers particularly struggled to support student placements due to the resource requirements, for example, having staff available to provide student supervision).   

In this context, there is enormous pressure to ensure that the qualifications that support entry into the sector are:

• Robust;

• Provide sufficient foundational knowledge across core aspects of the diverse community sector so that the qualifications encourage student up-take and completion, and respond to the sector’s needs; and

• Enables students sufficient exposure to a range of workforce areas so they can pursue careers that align with their interests and skills.

Certificate IV in Community Services

Across Australia, there is increased community awareness of family and domestic violence. This is contributing to increased demand for specialist family violence support, and for non-specialist organisations to play their part in identifying and responding to family violence. While Victoria is moving to minimum qualifications for family violence practitioners to hold a Bachelor of Social Work or equivalent, this is not the case, at present, for every Australian jurisdiction and, further, as noted earlier, it is important that family violence knowledge be embedded across the broader community services system and, therefore, across a range of community services qualifications provided in the vocational and education training system.

The unit ‘CHCDFV001 Recognise and respond appropriately to domestic and family violence’ should be included as a core subject, rather than an elective for the Certificate IV in Community Services. This would ensure all graduating students can identify and appropriately refer both perpetrators and victim/survivors to specialised services.

While there are additional electives to provide domestic and family violence support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and people from non-English speaking background communities respectively, any foundational course providing students with skills to recognise and respond to domestic and family violence should have an intersectional approach.

People hold multiple, intersecting identities and this should be a core component of this unit to ensure it addresses elements of cultural competency when supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, those with disability, and people who may be experiencing mental ill health.

In addition, while not all students and graduates will gain placement or employment in disability specific services, it is vital that all graduates understand how to support the rights, interests and needs of people with disability and their support networks.

Just under 20 per cent of Australians have a disability[iii]. It is important that qualifications support a workforce that is able to meet community need by providing core foundational knowledge and skills that support graduates to work effectively with people with disability in a way that promotes and upholds their rights. Employers have told VCOSS that there are gaps in the disability knowledge of new workers – as a consequence of gaps in the VET curriculum, some organisations are having to provide supplementary, non-accredited training to recent graduates.

VCOSS’s written submission to the SkillsIQ VET Disability Education Delivery discussion paper provides additional information and recommendations.[iv]

Diploma of Community Services

The consultation paper proposes substantial changes to the Diploma of Community Services that VCOSS does not believe reflects the diversity of the sector and the capacity and needs of community service organisations.

Units of competency

VCOSS is concerned about the increase in the number of units required to complete the Diploma from 16 to 20. The increase in units may place an unreasonable burden on students that may impact enrolment, retention and completion rates.

Additional units may make it difficult for students to undertake the qualification:

• The increase in units will likely require VET providers to increase the duration of the course, increasing the financial and time cost for students.

• Conversely, some VET providers may try to deliver an increased number of units over the same period to minimise their own (ie. provider) costs but leaving students with insufficient time to reflect, learn and embed the content, while carrying the financial burden of paying for additional units.

Ideally the Diploma of Community Services should comprise 16 units, although VCOSS concedes that there may be a case for 18.  However, VCOSS does not support 20 units.

To ensure students are able to undertake the specialisation streams, there should be a minimum of six electives. Electives are also an important component of enabling providers to tailor courses to reflect local industry and community need, which is particularly important in urban fringe and regional areas.

Case management and counselling

VCOSS members expressed concern about the emphasis on counselling and case management in the proposed changed to the Diploma of Community Services. This is because many students and graduates will not go on to work in case management or counselling roles.

The Diploma is a generalist qualification that provides a broad base of foundational knowledge.

To this end, we recommend maintaining ‘CHCCSL001 Establish and confirm the counselling relationship’ and ‘CHCCSM005 Develop, facilitate and review all aspects of case management’, and removing the three additional counselling and case management units from core to elective, to ensure the Diploma remains a generalist qualification that can meet the needs of the sector more broadly.

Foundational knowledge

The Diploma of Community Services should provide students with the fundamentals to work across a broad range of areas and in a broad range of organisations. This will require the qualification to address key areas that are currently missing including family violence and disability. VCOSS members spoke about knowledge gaps in students and graduates for these areas.

As discussed above in feedback for the Certificate IV in Community Services, the Diploma level qualification should include a core foundational unit that addresses family and domestic violence through an intersectional lens. We recommend the same unit suggested for the Certificate IV in Community Services, ‘CHCDFV001’, be introduced as a core unit for the Diploma.

We also recommend the inclusion of a core unit that gives students an understanding of disability, including a human rights and person-centred approach, as discussed under feedback for the Certificate IV in Community Services.

Student work placement hours

The value of on-the-job training is significant. It can be an effective way to teach and to learn, can lead to better alignment with the skills sought after in the workplace or industry, and gives students the opportunity to obtain an understanding of the workplace. [v] Work placement also provides valuable networking opportunities that supports students to gain employment after graduation, often through their placement organisations.

VCOSS recognises that courses with a higher number of work placement hours provides better outcomes for students and the sector. VCOSS supports additional work placement hours to a minimum of 200 hours, acknowledging some members have expressed the value of 400 hours of placement, however, we do not support proposed changes that tie increased hours to case management units.

Members raised concerns that they would be unable to provide the number of case management hours required under proposed changes for student placements. For example, one large community service organisation said they would, at most, be able to provide 50 hours of case management for a student placement. This means the proposed placement reforms could be disruptive for student learning and limiting for organisations to offer student placements, raising questions about whether organisations would deem the investment in taking on a student to be worth their while.

If additional placement hours are being considered, these could be redistributed to other core units such as ‘CHCDEV002 Analyse impacts of sociological factors on clients in community work and services’ and/or ‘CHCPRP003 Reflect on and improve own professional practice’.

“Any amount of unpaid placement is difficult for a student but it’s critical… At the end of the day [more placement hours] creates better practitioners and that creates safety for clients, colleagues and themselves” – VCOSS member

While this may be beyond the scope of the review, to support the viability of the community services industry and improve access to high-quality student placements, community organisations need to be funded for this work.

Models such as the Victorian Enhanced Pathways to Family Violence Work Project provide clear examples of how organisations in priority industries can be assisted to support the workforce to expand, recognising that while placements provide significant organisational value (particularly as a pipeline for new workers), there are significant costs associated with hosting placements that are hard for many community service organisations to absorb.

Consideration should also be given to holistic traineeship models to provide students with vital on-the-job training while removing financial barriers to learners through the provision of a wage and boosting support to increase retention and completion.

For example, the Community Traineeship Pilot Program (CTPP) delivered by VCOSS supports young people experiencing barriers to labour market participation to undertake a Certificate IV in Community Services, while supporting community service organisations to host traineeships and meet their future workforce needs.

The wrap around model of this program offers a comprehensive, learner-focused structure of support, designed to foster collaboration between a range of key stakeholders to ensure learners don’t fall through the cracks. The CTPP has seen positive outcomes, including a retention rate of 80 per cent for the first group of participants, with more than 50 per cent gaining further employment with their employer upon completion of their traineeship.

This submission was prepared by Talisha Ohanessian and authorised by VCOSS CEO Emma King. For enquiries please contact Deborah Fewster at deborah.fewster@vcoss.org.au.

A fully accessible version is available online at vcoss.org.au/policy.

[i] VCOSS, 10 Year Community Services industry Plan, August 2018.

[ii] Future Social Service Institute with VCOSS, Stories into evidence: COVID-19 adaptations in the Victorian community services sector, 2020.

[iii] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia, 2 October 2020, accessed 9 June 2021, <https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents/people-with-disability/prevalence-of-disability>.

[iv] VCOSS, VET Disability Education Delivery. VCOSS feedback on the SkillsIQ discussion paper ‘VET Disability Education Delivery’, October 2020.

[v] Deloitte Insights, ‘The path to prosperity. Why the future of work is human’, Building the Lucky Country #7, 2019.

• Tackling the digital skills divide to get Victorians into jobs
  $3.1m in 2021-22 ($6.2m/2 yrs) to increase places in pre-accredited digital literacy and employability skills training courses delivered by Learn Local providers to enhance the employment prospects of educationally disadvantaged Victorians.

• Maintaining essential energy functions
  $16.9m in 2021-22 ($62.9m/4 yrs) to continue funding for a range of programs to maintain a safe, secure and reliable energy system and continue protections for consumers, including the Energy Fairness Plan.

• Addressing the cost of delivering education
  $6.1m in 2021-22 ($41.7m/4yrs) in additional funding will be provided to schools for transport costs associated with swimming and water safety education, and for essential materials for students undertaking vocational education and training (VET) subjects as part of senior secondary schooling.

• Good Money
  $3.8m in 2021-22 ($14.6/4 yrs) to expand financial services through four shop fronts in Collingwood, Geelong, Dandenong and Morwell. Good Money delivers no interest and low interest loans, low-cost insurance and financial advice to individuals and households facing financial stress. The funding will also enable the development of telephone and digital services and a continuation of financial wellbeing services in bushfire affected communities.

• Rural Financial Counselling Service
  $1.9m in 2021-22 ($5.8m/3 yrs) for the state’s contribution to the Rural Financial Counselling Service so it can continue to offer free and impartial advice to farming and related small businesses suffering financial hardship.

• Legal assistance and critical early intervention support services

Analysis

Last year’s State Budget included a number of welcome initiatives to support Victorian households experiencing both pre-COVID and pandemic-related financial stress. As those initiatives are still being rolled out, this Budget largely focused on targeted expansions or continuations of services helping people in financial hardship.

In particular, funding for the Good Money and WEstjustice Mortgage Stress programs are welcome. The Good Money expansion includes new telephone and online options that will enable about 25,000 more Victorians to access this financial wellbeing service.

VCOSS remains concerned, however, that low-income households entered the pandemic with wafer-thin financial buffers. Raising the ongoing rate of Commonwealth Government income support remains the single most important thing that could be done to substantially and permanently reduce poverty in Victoria.

The financial impacts of the pandemic continue to hit low-income Victorians. Energy concessions help households make ends meet and utility relief grants can be vital in starting the recovery process from a debt spiral. This year’s Budget papers reveal that the Government significantly underestimated the number of Victorians in 2020-21 who would receive these concessions and grants.

As VCOSS noted in our pre-budget submission, there are significant gaps in the concessions system. A wide-ranging review of the adequacy and effectiveness of the state’s concessions system is needed, to close gaps and make sure no one is missing out.

At the same time, the recent COVID-19 circuit-breaker restrictions in Victoria have been a hard reminder that this global pandemic will continue to drive demand for state-level emergency responses. As people continue to struggle to afford the basics, demand for emergency relief, food relief and financial counselling remains high. The Budget contains little new funding to reduce pressure on these services and further investment is required in planning and coordination for the emergency relief sector. 

VCOSS’ pre-budget submission also highlighted the need to close the digital divide, another ongoing inequity that the pandemic has brought into sharp focus. New funding for digital literacy and employability skills through Learn Locals is welcome, but it won’t resolve the bigger issues of affordability and access to devices and data, or extend hardship protections to telecommunications consumers. VCOSS is also keen to explore the implications of additional funding for the Victorian Government’s digital government work, particularly to ensure that the insights and perspectives of Victorians experiencing vulnerability and the community sector are incorporated.

VCOSS welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority’s (ACECQA) consultation into the Ten Year National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2021-30) (the Strategy). In particular, we appreciate the opportunity to provide a free-text submission. VCOSS understands that the principal channel for stakeholder feedback to ACECQA is via a survey tool. 

We take this opportunity to share with ACECQA that there is concern from VCOSS members who deliver education and care to Victorian children and their families that the survey does not allow for meaningful feedback about key issues, areas of priority, and the planning and design of the Strategy. The Victorian sector is seeking additional, rigorous consultation.

Early childhood education and care services provide vital support in building children’s cognitive, social and emotional development.

Government has a fundamental role to play in growing and supporting a skilled workforce that fosters children’s development and sets them up for success in school and life.  This will need to be supported by transparency and additional investment to address significant workforce shortages, low pay and conditions, and mechanisms to improve leadership, workforce wellbeing and service quality.

There is also opportunity integrate this ten year national strategy with state and territory strategies and objectives to ensure they are aligned and complimentary.

While there are opportunities for greater collaboration between key stakeholders such as early learning providers and education and training institutions, this ten year workforce strategy is an opportunity for government to take a leading role in supporting a sustainable, high-quality early childhood education and care workforce.

Professional recognition

The Commonwealth Government has a significant opportunity to improve professional recognition and support attraction and retention by improving pay and conditions.

Low wages undermine the professionalism and value of the early childhood workforce. When educators and teachers are unable to access a working wage and receive appropriate workplace and professional development support, the sector loses motivated and experienced staff to other sectors where conditions are better.

The Commonwealth’s main funding mechanism, Child Care Subsidy, is primarily a workforce participation mechanism. The Commonwealth should develop a new funding model that recognises and values a broader range of family and community needs. This should include access to a minimum benchmark of funded high quality early learning for children two years before school, regardless of parental workforce participation or meeting activity tests.

This would concurrently help drive up children’s participation in early childhood education and care and provide government with greater opportunity to support pay and conditions and look at funding levers to improve service quality.

In addition, there should be an intentional move away from the descriptor ‘childcare’ to education and care to reflect the important developmental role of the early learning sector in children’s lives.

VCOSS members spoke about the importance of workplace culture and the direct correlation between workplaces that actively support professional development and wellbeing of staff with increased tenure.

So, in addition to improved pay, the Commonwealth should ensure early childhood education and care providers have sufficient resources and incentive to give staff sufficient time to plan and reflect, and access to professional learning and development. Lower child-to-staff ratios can also make a positive difference.  One VCOSS member also suggested a cap on the percentage of income providers can take from a service should be enforced as a government lever to improve workplace culture.

The early childhood education and care workforce will need to grow significantly for both educators and teachers. Mentoring and induction support available to teachers should be extended to educators to reflect their importance.

Attraction and retention

A range of initiatives should be considered, in addition to improved pay and conditions discussed above, to attract and retain early childhood educators and teachers, including targeted incentives to support the return of people who have left the sector and those who have retired early, and specific incentives and strategies to target educators in outer regional and remote services.

VCOSS has piloted several programs that support targeted groups into training and employment, with higher than national average completion rates that improve workforce diversity. These models should be considered as part of this strategy.

For example, the Community Traineeship Pilot Program (CTPP) delivered by VCOSS is an example of a successful approach to growing and diversifying the workforce. The CTPP supports young people experiencing barriers to labour market participation to undertake a community services qualification, while supporting community service organisations to host traineeships and meet their future workforce needs.

The CTPP is not designed specifically for learners with disability, however, anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant proportion of trainees who have engaged in this program have a disability or mental illness.

A key feature of the program is a comprehensive, learner-focused structure of support, designed to foster collaboration between a range of key stakeholders to ensure learners don’t fall through the cracks. These key stakeholders include trainees, employers, Local Partner Organisations, youth workers, VET providers and teachers who all work together.

The model also has a strong focus on peer support, which provides further scaffolding for the trainee. For example, trainees are brought together in classes run specifically for them.  A dedicated youth worker attends class with them, providing 1:1 youth work support to individual trainees, whilst assisting the whole group to build connection and mutual support. This assists trainees to build their identity as part of a learning community.

The holistic approach of the CTPP has seen positive outcomes, including a retention rate of 80 per cent for the first group of participants, with more than 50 per cent gaining further employment with their employer upon completion of their traineeship. This compares very favourably to the national rate for non-trade traineeship retention, which is approximately 55 per cent.[1], The developmental evaluation of the CTPP has identified the flexible, high-support components of the model as a key success factor thus far.[2]

Traineeships are one important model to boost attraction and retention by providing students with on-the-job training and services the ability to monitor quality of learning. Current Commonwealth wage subsidies for traineeships support the uptake of traineeships, but services will also need additional funding, particularly at the beginning of a traineeship, to enable trainees to be above minimum child to staff ratios while they are learning the ropes. VCOSS members also spoke about the need for wage subsidy support beyond the first 12 months to make the model sustainable.

These models should be part of the suite of targeted programs that are explored as part of the Strategy to improve workforce diversity and boost student retention and completion.

In addition, community service organisations are heavily relied on to support student placements, however, current funding models mean services are often over-stretched and have limited capacity to invest in the extra staff and supervision training it takes to provide high-quality student placement experiences. The Strategy should increase the sector’s capacity to support student placements, to help boost the workforce and support high-quality graduates.

Leadership and capability

VCOSS members agreed additional support to understand the National Quality Framework (NQF) would be beneficial to educators and teachers but that there should be face to face learning options as well as online training packages.

Employers increasingly regard micro-credentials as an effective way to bridge skills gaps in the workforce.[3] While micro-credentials have the potential to help workers gain the right skills and capabilities and may improve access to reskilling and upskilling, any increase in access needs to ensure they do not undermine the integrity of VET qualifications and qualified workforces. For this reason, micro-credentials should not be used as entry points into the sector – they should be ‘stackable’ and have the ability to lead to full qualifications. This approach supports the professionalism of the sector while providing an additional pathway for upskilling.

Micro-credentials should be government subsidised. In addition, funding for micro-credentials should factor in time for educators and teachers to undertake professional learning. There are obvious workforce constraints as services face staff shortages, however, without providing the existing workforce sufficient time and support to undertake and complete micro-credentials, uptake is likely to be constrained.

Wellbeing

This submission has discussed a range of mechanisms that would improve staff wellbeing, including addressing workplace culture, providing sufficient time for staff to plan and reflect, and extending mentoring support to educators.

In addition, free mental health first aid training should be made available to all early and middle childhood educators.

Qualifications and career pathways

While there are significant workforce challenges facing the sector, VCOSS members spoke strongly about the importance of maintaining qualification requirements to support best outcomes for children.

A qualifications review should be undertaken to understand the complexity, unique needs and skills requirements of educators and teachers in early childhood education and care settings. This should look at children aged 0 – 8 years, instead of 0 – 12 years. VCOSS members expressed concern that aspects of the qualifications system are weighted too heavily towards the needs of the school sector.

When dual qualified teachers gain training and support in the school system and not in early childhood settings, teachers can feel nervous or underprepared, contributing to higher attrition rates in early childhood education and care.

The outside school hours care sector could benefit from nationally consistent qualifications. A review of staffing and qualification requirements, in partnership with the sector, could show the concerns and/or complexity that need to be addressed to establish nationally consistent qualifications in this area.

In addition, consideration should be given to relevant jurisdictional requirements for teachers and educators to provide high-quality care. For example, VCOSS members noted that in addition to low levels of awareness of the NQF, some newly qualified staff were unaware of Victorian Child Safe Standards or compliance regulation.

VCOSS welcomes a review of the requirements for initial teacher education programs, including the consideration of the current skills and knowledge needed. This review should focus on different facets of inclusions, such as supporting children with disability and/or developmental delay and look at cultural competency and safety.

Creating a sense of belonging in early childhood education and care services is vital for boosting engagement and improving outcomes and steps should be taken to embed the skills and knowledge needed to support children with a range of needs from a range of backgrounds. For example, VCOSS members report many educators and teachers do not feel equipped to support children with additional needs, which can lead to the exclusion of children and families. These aspects should be addressed in any initial teacher education program reviews. 

While the Strategy looks at these areas as potential activities and initiatives in relation to leadership and capability, linked to micro-credentials, VCOSS believes this should be part of core business for the skills that educators and teachers learn.

Consideration should also be given to qualification and training requirements for discrete parts of the workforce providing specialised support, for example, professionals that provide funded support for children with disability and/or developmental delay. This would ensure professionals have an understanding of early childhood education and care, as well as meeting the needs of children with disability and building partnerships with families.

Data and evidence

High-quality data collection and analysis is vital to understanding and responding to key industry issues, including workforce supply and demand. Providers/employers – as well as workers, unions, service users, peak bodies and community groups – will have valuable insights that government can leverage.  However, the administrative burden associated with data collection and provision should be recognised and no additional stress placed on services. 

As a starting point, the Commonwealth should leverage existing data capturing mechanisms to gain workforce insights, for example through Child Care Subsidy reporting systems. Relevant data should be shared with the states and territories to promote collaboration and to explore different system levers to improve workforce outcomes. Alignment between the Commonwealth and Victorian Government workforce strategies would also support collaboration.

In addition, the Commonwealth has access to existing demographic and attendance data on for services receiving Child Care Subsidy which would be beneficial to share with states and territories.

The Commonwealth’s recent budget announcement on Guaranteeing Universal Access to Preschool, yet to be negotiated with the states and territories, will see funding tied to increased participation and school readiness. The Commonwealth should consider investing in improved IT capabilities to support states and territories increase data collection for services that do not receive Child Care Subsidy. The Commonwealth should also tread carefully in the design and implementation of any preschool outcome measures, noting the complexity of assessing school readiness, differences in child and family backgrounds, and the additional pressure or unintended consequences this may have on the early childhood education and care workforce.

This submission was prepared by Talisha Ohanessian and authorised by VCOSS CEO Emma King. For enquiries please contact Deborah Fewster at deborah.fewster@vcoss.org.au.

[1] NCVER, Australian vocational education and training statistics: completion and attrition rates for apprentices and trainees 2019, July 2020.

[2] Victorian Council of Social Service, TAFE: Accessible for all. VCOSS submission to the inquiry into Access to TAFE for learners with disability, October 2020.

[3] NCVER, Focus on Micro-credentials, December 2018, <https://www.voced.edu.au/focus-micro-credentials>, accessed 28 May 2020.

A new Victorian Skills Authority 
$17.7m in 2021-22 ($85.9m/5 yrs)  
The Victorian Government has identified the care economy as a priority industry for job creation. A strong partnership between the new Authority and our industry will help ensure that our sector can depend on the post-secondary education and training system to deliver the skills we need. 

Enabling the mental health and wellbeing workforce to deliver a reformed system 
$55.1m in 2021-22 ($206.3m/4 yrs) to commence building the pipeline of workers required to deliver the mental health reforms. The package includes expansion of the mental health nursing workforce, new allied health graduate positions, and initiatives to support and increase the lived experience workforce.  

Recovery together: jobs for Victoria’s multicultural communities  
$4.4m in 2021-22 ($4.5m/2 yrs)  
The package includes funding to develop a cross-government bicultural worker strategy aimed at recruiting and supporting bicultural workers to assist CALD communities to navigate government services. 

Embedding early intervention in government service delivery 
4.1 million in 2021-22 ($15.5m/4 yrs) 
Funding is provided to lead and implement an early intervention framework across government to support reforms that invest early for better and fairer outcomes. 

Partnerships Addressing Disadvantage  
$6.3m in 2021-22 ($25.7m/4 yrs) 
Funding is provided to expand the Partnerships Addressing Disadvantage initiative to a fifth program that will be focused on solutions to address homelessness.  

Frontline Victoria 
Funding is provided to pilot a new employment program, Frontline Victoria, which will fast-track degree qualified career changers into a career in the children and families sector. This program will provide participants with financial support to complete graduate-level qualifications and paid placements with child and family services providers to develop their practical skills. 

Building better connected communities 
$1.8m in 2021-22 ($3m/4 yrs)  
The package includes funding for Justice Connect Not-for-profit Law to continue providing free and low-cost legal advice and support for community service organisations to understand the law and achieve good governance. 

Family Violence Graduate Program 
$0.5 million in 2021-22 ($1.2m/2 yrs) 
Funding is provided to support up to 80 new graduates to receive training and other development support while working to become specialists in a range of family violence services. 

Maintaining the foundations of the child and family system
This large package includes funding to continue the expansion of the child protection workforce and continue assistance to ensure the sustainability of community service organisations at risk of financial stress.

Analysis

Over the next five years, the social assistance sector is predicted to be one of the fastest growing industries in Australia. Major investments, including in early learning and in reforming the mental health system, will supercharge the demand for skilled and qualified workers.  

The community sector, like many other industries, is facing new challenges and disruptions because of COVID-19. Demand is growing at the same time as organisations have lost fundraising income and volunteer capacity. Some had to invest in digital infrastructure so they could shift to remote service delivery. And the costs of personal protective equipment and enhanced cleaning quickly added up. Some organisations had no choice but to draw on financial reserves to meet the additional costs.  

Services need extra funding to adapt to ‘COVID normal’ arrangements. Without this support, fewer Victorians will get the help they need, and the diversity and sustainability of vital community sector organisations will be at risk. Small and medium-sized organisations especially are struggling to meet extra costs.

The continued investment in the sustainability of community service organisations in the child and family services sector is very welcome, and could be expanded across the community services industry.

Several budget initiatives show the Victorian Government is thinking about the future workforce needs of the community services industry. The mental health package places workforce development at the centre of reform planning. Frontline Victoria and the family violence graduate program will also support a pipeline of workers into the industry.   

Low indexation rates in recent years, short-term funding extensions and a significant widening of the scope of the portable long service leave scheme have left organisations struggling to make ends meet. In the next budget, the Government can help make sure community need is met by providing community service organisations with a fair indexation formula incorporating wage rises, the superannuation guarantee and portable long service leave, and dedicated funding to meet growth in demand. 

More can also be done to improve security of employment in the community services industry. If the Government continues to only fund community service organisations through short-term contracts and extensions, these organisations can’t offer staff long-term, secure work. Only with secure and long-term funding can the industry offer more attractive wages, better conditions, decent hours and proper training to keep people in jobs and keep the community safer. VCOSS supports the Productivity Commission recommendation to extend community service contracts to seven years.

With demand for social assistance high, the workforce needs of the sector are growing. Student placements are part of the solution. They provide students with practical on-the-job training and create a pipeline of new workers for employers. Many community organisations want to take on students but can’t because they don’t have the resources for placement administration, student supervision or training. Additional support is needed to build the capability of community service organisations to provide supported student placements.  

VCOSS also welcomes the commitment to early intervention that has been demonstrated across this Budget, including through the development of an early intervention framework.  

Critical additional responses for people experiencing homelessness placed in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic
$11.5m in 2021-22 ($25.6m/3 yrs) for people who were placed in emergency hotel accommodation to remain there, with support to transition into longer-term housing arrangements. Funding is also provided for additional security at hotels.

Homelessness services
$46.7m in 2020-21 ($193.7m/4 yrs) to continue a range of programs supporting people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, including:

• the Private Rental Assistance Program (PRAP), with an additional outreach initiative and expansion of the Aboriginal Private Rental Assistance Program
• housing support for people exiting prison to prevent homelessness
• continuing the assertive outreach and supportive housing teams for rough sleepers in Geelong, Frankston, Dandenong Maroondah, Swan Hill, Bendigo and Warrnambool, established under the Homelessness Rough Sleeping Action Plan)
• on-site delivery of essential health and addiction services at three congregate crisis accommodation facilities, to help treat the complex and diverse underlying causes of people’s homelessness, including alcohol and other drug treatment, mental health treatment and chronic health treatment
• specialist leaving care and homelessness services for young people
• the Kangan Education First Youth Foyer, which supports young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness by providing integrated accommodation and education-focused intervention for young people; and
• the H3 Alliance, to prevent and resolve homelessness in the rapidly expanding Wyndham growth corridor by increasing access to housing supply, providing outreach, transitional, legal and health support, building capacity and addressing issues that lead to housing vulnerability.

Tackling rough sleeping
$5.9m in 2021-22 ($26.2m/4 yrs), including funding to continue the Journey to Social Inclusion program, delivered by Sacred Heart Mission, and to establish a linked dataset to integrate data from departmental and agency systems to build a microsimulation model to plan service delivery for people sleeping rough.

Aboriginal family violence refuge for Wimmera South West area
$3.2m in 2021-22 ($4.8m/2 yrs) to construct and operate a new refuge in Horsham, with six independent residential units in a secure setting for Aboriginal victim survivors of family violence, building on the existing statewide family violence refuge redevelopment program.

Paving the Way Forward: pathway to recovery at North Melbourne and Flemington housing estates
$2.5m in 2020-21 ($6.5m/4 yrs) to continue and enhance community engagement, resident voice and partnership activities undertaken during the COVID-19 shutdown of the North Melbourne and Flemington public housing towers. The program also responds to recommendations in the Victorian Ombudsman’s Investigation into the detention and treatment of public housing residents arising from a COVID-19 ‘hard lockdown’ in 2020.

Supported housing for adults and young people living with mental illness
$3.2m in 2021-22 ($40.4m/4 yrs) under the mental health and wellbeing package to deliver the support component of the 2,000 social housing homes quarantined for people living with mental illness under the Big Housing Build package.

Online and digital access to VCAT
$10.5m in 2021-22 ($27.8m/4 yrs) to upgrade digital services infrastructure, such as case management and process automation, in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Analysis

This Budget comes close on the heels of the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build package announced in the November 2020 Budget.  

This Budget builds on that record investment, by funding a range of supports that we know work. For example, it includes $110 million over four years to continue the Private Rental Assistance Program (PRAP) – a successful program that provides financial assistance to prevent evictions or to quickly rehouse people who have been evicted. The Aboriginal Private Rental Assistance Program has also been expanded, and we look forward to learning more about an additional outreach function that will be incorporated into PRAP.

Given that many Victorian renters continue to experience financial hardship due to lost incomes and the winding back of income supports, and many face rental debt accrued during the eviction moratorium, maintaining PRAP is an important measure to prevent homelessness. We will continue to monitor the effect the end of the eviction moratorium has on Victorian renters, and advocate for additional rent relief measures if necessary.

Additional funding for community legal centres and for the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal is welcome, to make sure that eviction moratorium legacy issues and other disputes can be addressed early and resolved quickly, and that renters can be aware of and benefit from their new rights under the Residential Tenancies Act that came into effect in March 2020.

While the Big Housing Build will be life-changing for those Victorians who get access to the 9,000 new social housing homes, there are still 100,000 people waiting for housing on the Victorian Housing Register, and the average wait time for public housing is 10.5 months for those on the priority access or transfer category.

We eagerly await the Ten-Year Strategy and future budgets, to build on the four-year Big Housing Build and establish and sustain a steady long-term pipeline of new public and community housing stock. We expect that the Ten-Year Strategy will also provide guidance on future budget investment for support models across prevention, early intervention and ongoing flexible support, so that people can get the right support at the right time to access and hang onto their housing.

VCOSS has long advocated for the establishment of a ‘no exits into homelessness’ policy. We were disappointed that, while the Final Report of the Inquiry into Homelessness in Victoria recommended establishing such a policy to guide discharge planning and support from institutional settings, this recommendation was absent in the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

Given this policy context, we welcome the investment in this Budget to expand support to people leaving prison and young people leaving care and youth justice, both important steps towards ensuring no exits into homelessness from state institutions. The Government will respond to the Final Report of the Homelessness Inquiry in September 2021, and we hope to see this recommendation adopted and funded in future budgets.

The homelessness service package also provides funding for programs supporting people experiencing long-term or recurrent rough sleeping, including maintaining the assertive outreach and supportive housing teams established under the Homelessness and Rough Sleeper Action Plan (HRSAP) 2018, continuing the Journey to Social Inclusion program delivered by Sacred Heart Mission and topping up funds to support people currently housed in emergency hotel accommodation (pending their transition to longer-term housing) under the pandemic response.

These initiatives are examples of ‘Housing First’, a best practice model for people who have experienced chronic or recurring homelessness or who have complex needs. While the Victorian Government has gone some way towards implementing ‘Housing First’ models in recent years, we note that a lack of long-term, affordable housing options makes these models difficult to implement universally across Victoria, and we hope to see more social housing stock dedicated to supporting this approach under the Ten-Year Strategy and in subsequent budgets.

$10.9 million is also provided for a project that seeks to use multi-agency data and insights to better understand service usage, and to coordinate programs and systems to improve outcomes for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, including people sleeping rough. This is a smart initiative that could be used over the course of the Ten-Year Strategy to plan housing and supports as demand changes over time.   

This Budget maintains existing place-based initiatives – the Kangan Education First Youth Foyer in Broadmeadows and the H3 Alliance in Wyndham, as well as a new Aboriginal family violence refuge in Horsham. This Budget also provides $8 million for on-site delivery of health and addiction services at three congregate crisis accommodation facilities, and $40.4 million to deliver the support component of the 2,000 social housing homes quarantined under the Big Housing Build for people living with mental illness.

Each of these initiatives offer integrated housing and supports, to provide opportunity for service users to have their housing needs met while also addressing the health and social issues that may underlie experiences of homelessness.

Modest funding has been provided to enhance community engagement and strengthen resident voice at the North Melbourne and Flemington housing estates. This funding builds on activities initiated in response to the hard lockdown of these towers in July 2020, including recommendations made by the Victorian Ombudsman. This initiative offers Government an opportunity to trial best practice, grassroots resident engagement in social housing communities. Insights from this initiative could shape how social housing residents and prospective residents are engaged to provide input towards the design of the Ten-Year Strategy, and towards the delivery of new social housing.

• Responding to community-based healthcare demand
  $78.3m in 2021-22 ($96.5m/4 yrs)
  Funding is provided to 12 women’s health services to meet growing demand for gender responsive healthcare, including prevention of family violence support services, women’s mental health and sexual and reproductive health services.

  Three new women’s sexual and reproductive health hubs will be established and the operating hours and scope of services at the eight existing hubs will be expanded. This initiative also supports community-based healthcare including catch-up care for dental services, cancer services, and maternal child health services to ensure clients who were unable to engage over the past 12 months receive the care they need.

  Increase in demand for alcohol and other drugs programs will be met by three new residential AOD treatment facilities, additional community-based counselling services and expanded forensic services.

• Support for victim survivors of family violence and sexual assault
  $21.9m in 2021-22 ($49m/4 yrs)
  Funding is provided to continue case management responses for victim survivors of family violence in emergency accommodation and for victim survivors of sexual assault, to extend family violence supports and services including sexual assault services, for state-wide 24/7 crisis services, flexible support packages, culturally safe responses for Aboriginal survivors, and case management and brokerage for women on temporary visas.

• Improving outcomes for women in Victoria: strengthening Victoria’s economic recovery through women’s participation
  $2.1m in 2021-22 ($4.2m/2 yrs)
  Funding is provided to establish a Gender Responsive Budgeting Unit within the Department of Treasury and Finance, working closely with the Office for Women to ensure outcomes for women are measured and considered as part of budget decision-making processes. This will embed gender impact analysis and understanding in the allocation of resources. The initiative will also deliver targeted economic security programs to support migrant and refugee women into employment.

• Specialist family violence integrated court response
  $10.1m in 2021-22 ($42.6m/4 yrs)
  Funding is provided to establish specialist family violence courts at the remaining Magistrates’ Courts, further acquitting the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

• Perpetrator accountability
  $12.8m in 2021-22 ($18.1m / 4 yrs)
  Funding has been allocated to enable family violence specialists to deliver perpetrator interventions and contribute to an increasing evidence base about what works to change behaviour and prevent violence, including delivering Men’s Behaviour Change programs.

• Responses for children and young people impacted by family violence and sexual assault
  $14.1m in 2021-22 ($44.1m / 4 yrs)
  Funding is provided to continue the statewide expansion of services to adolescents who use violence in the home, extend sexually abusive behaviour treatment services and provide sexual assault support services targeted to children and young people.

Analysis

The 2021-22 Budget invests $354 million to support victim survivors and address family violence. Funding will continue support for the operation of the Central Information Point, and support Phase 2 organisations to meet their obligations under the MARAM framework and Child and Family Violence Information Sharing Schemes. Funding has also been allocated to enable family violence specialists to deliver perpetrator interventions and Men’s Behaviour Change programs, which will contribute to an increasing evidence base about what works to change behaviour and prevent violence.

VCOSS is particularly pleased to see the establishment of a Gender Responsive Budgeting Unit within the Department of Treasury and Finance. This unit will help overcome the inequalities experienced by women by further embracing gender impact assessments, gender budgeting and gender auditing.

VCOSS welcomes the commitment to build three additional sexual and reproductive health hubs and the commitment to provide additional support for Victoria’s 12 women’s health services. We know that COVID had a disproportionate impact on women’s mental and physical health, as well as sexual and reproductive health, and these commitments will help ensure more women can access the tailored, gendered health information they need to effectively navigate Victoria’s health system.

While this Budget does provide some investment in the prevention of family violence, including $44 million to develop tools and resources to address the drivers of sexual violence in young people and the delivery of youth-focused programs that promote healthy relationships and community understanding of family violence, we know that more funding is needed if we are to stop violence before it starts.

Respect Victoria has identified that currently only 3 per cent of the family violence budget is spent on primary prevention. Victoria must commit to boost overall spending on family violence prevention to at least 10 per cent of the family violence budget to help change behaviour within families and the community so that we can all live free from violence.

Increased funding for the specialist family violence sector is also needed to meet rising levels of demand and ensure that services can cover higher operational costs, retain experienced staff and pay workers at a classification/level commensurate with their qualifications, knowledge and skills.

VCOSS is the peak body for social and community services in Victoria. VCOSS supports over 40 Victorian disability advocacy organisations to undertake collaborative systemic advocacy under the banner of the ‘Empowered Lives’ campaign. We welcome the opportunity to provide input to this discussion paper.

VCOSS feedback on the SkillsIQ discussion paper ‘VET Disability Education Delivery’.

The vision of the NDIS is to provide people with disability choice, control and confidence in selecting quality services and supports. This vision is contingent on having sufficient workforce capacity (supply) and the right capability (skills and attributes).

Ensuring current and prospective disability workers can access high quality, comprehensive and consistent training is a critical component and enabler of Australia’s transition to a consumer-driven environment.

As highlighted through our submission, the rights, interests and needs of people with disability and their support network should be at the centre of every aspect of training design, delivery and evaluation. There is no better way of ensuring that disability worker training meets the expectations and needs of people with disability than by involving people with disability themselves.

Quality and safeguards in the disability sector have been under the spotlight for many years. Inquiries into the harrowing neglect of South Australian woman Anne-Marie Smith, along with the ongoing work of the disability and aged care Royal Commissions, have highlighted significant workforce-related issues, risks and gaps.

The ongoing work of the Royal Commissions provides a clear window of opportunity to focus on how safety, quality and duty of care are embedded in training courses. Our submission highlights the benefits of this kind of highly qualified workforce and how it can support consumer choice and promote the value and culture of training in the disability sector.

Recommendations

• Implement fully supported traineeship programs which provide supports for both trainee and employer for the duration of the traineeships

• Co-design programs with community sector organisations for certain population groups to ensure programs provide appropriate supports that meet specific needs

• Educate the sector and potential students/trainees about the benefits and value of traineeships as genuine career pathways through the gathering and sharing of stories and evidence of existing programs and experiences

• Invest in the capacity of organisations to increase student placements by scaling-up current examples of innovative practice

• Engage people with disability and their support networks to:
  • Ensure the rights, interests and needs of people with disability are a shared, valued priority
  • Co-design training programs and delivery
  • Identify meaningful performance indicators aligned to key training outcomes
  • Seek their feedback and insights about the quality of services and support received

• Train and employ people with disability to teach and assess training programs

• Provide funding to enable smaller organisations to participate in course reviews and development

• Provide training providers with funding to collaborate with industry to develop industry relevant courses

• Ensure any pre-certificate courses are fully funded for providers, and fully subsidised for learners

• Promote the development and introduction of a national disability worker register to improve skills, quality, safety and consistency

Enablers of and barriers to training delivery

Response to question 2: What could be done to promote a culture of training in the disability sector?

Early and ongoing training and professional development opportunities are essential components to maintaining and building the skills, competence and professionalism of the disability workforce. Developing and nurturing a culture of learning and training takes time, resources and commitment from governments, service providers and workers.

Research shows one in five newly recruited disability workers have a qualification.[2] One in four disability workers received less than one day of training in the past 12 months.[3] Casual workers, who comprise a large proportion of the workforce, may be less likely to receive training depending on their nature of employment.

Disability services providers have significant concerns about workforce development[4], however in the marketised NDIS funding environment, financial and operational pressures restrict or limit the provision of training and professional development. Within hourly based rates to deliver individualised support for participants, service providers must find capacity and funding to cover the costs of in-house or external training, the wages of staff undertaking training, and the wages of staff back-filling the roles of those on training. To build a training culture, the issues around resourcing and the costs of providing training, professional development and mentoring need to be addressed.

While measures targeted at the workforce of the future are welcome, training and skills development initiatives should focus on supporting both new and existing workers. Two options to boost the skills and expertise of the workforce that are relevant to consider include a staged transition to minimum qualifications and/or the introduction of a national workforce registration scheme.

VCOSS members have a diverse range of views on minimum qualifications and value the choice and control of people with disability to select the workers who best match their needs. However, a gradual transition to minimum qualifications, coupled with improvements to the accessibility and quality of courses, could work to lift service standards and safety across the sector and boost the value and respect of the disability workforce. Part of the transition to minimum qualifications could include a stronger focus on funded and consistent minimum training, provisions for recognition of prior learning (RPL) and work placements, and incentives or resources for workers and providers to engage in learning opportunities.

A workforce registration scheme, designed with capacity-building, quality and safeguarding in mind, could also work to foster a culture of training and professional development in the disability sector. An example of this is the Northern Ireland Social Care Council’s scheme, which provides access to training and resources to assist workers to meet continuing professional development requirements of being a registered social worker.[5] An evaluation of the NISCC Standards of Conduct and Practice also shows they have raised the quality of care provided by workers.[6]

Response to question 3: What could be done to promote traineeships and address the barriers and stigma for certain population groups?

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Implement fully supported traineeship programs which provide supports for both trainee and employer for the duration of the traineeships
• Co-design programs with community sector organisations for certain population groups to ensure programs provide appropriate supports that meet specific needs
• Educate the sector and potential students/trainees about the benefits and value of traineeships as genuine career pathways through the gathering and sharing of stories and evidence of existing programs and experiences

The Consultation Paper describes two models of VET in disability support – classroom-based technical learning and traineeships – but notes that disability care worker traineeships are “rare in Australia” and seeks feedback on the opportunity to promote them and address barriers.

As the community services peak body in Victoria, VCOSS notes that traineeships are not a well-established pathway into the community services industry more broadly. This issue is not specific to disability care.  Industry-wide, the new worker pipeline is often strongly correlated with student placements, and a key policy concern is that the pipeline operates sub-optimally because many small and mid-size community sector employers lack the requisite organisational capacity and infrastructure to provide placements.  VCOSS has been engaged with programs such as Enhanced Pathways into Family Violence Work (described later in this submission) to pilot new approaches to addressing these concerns.

At the same time, VCOSS has also designed two community sector traineeship models, which are currently being implemented as pilots: the Jobs Victoria Community Traineeships Pilot Program (CTPP) and the Department of Education and Training Innovative Traineeships program.

Our insights from these pilot programs, so far, are that key aspects of successful traineeship programs include:

• Collaborative partnerships, established prior to implementation, to deeply understand barriers and co-design solutions – in particular, we note the critical importance of co-designing with industry partners, so that there the model clearly responds to the workforce priorities of employers and has a clear value proposition for them.
• A lead partner to provide overall program coordination and ensure continued collaboration
• Wrap around supports such as access to a support worker. Support workers assist trainees to navigate and overcome challenges that may arise during their traineeship. Depending on the cohort and program, support could be provided both in and out of the classroom.
• Program coordinators who provide ongoing support for employers and workplace supervisors. Through this access to support networks, best practice processes, and collaboration to ensure early identification and management of issues can be achieved.

Response to question 5: Can processes around the supervision of students and the availability of placements be optimised?

RECOMMENDATION

• Invest in the capacity of organisations to increase student placements by scaling-up current examples of innovative practice

The value of on the job training is an integral part of ensuring students gain the appropriate skills and knowledge to be job-ready, and enables job training to be responsive to the needs of individual learners as well as the needs of the employer.[7]

Supporting students to engage in placements takes time and costs money which means current supervision of students on placement varies widely. Many organisations in the sector face staff shortages and have limited capacity to accommodate student placements due to resource constraints. The root causes of these resource constraints are systemic – the community services sector has long experienced a challenging operating environment, with low rates of indexation, insecure funding and short-term contracts. The cost of implementing policy and service system reform, including the transition to the NDIS, has placed further strain on organisations’ capacity to provide supervision and mentoring for staff and students. The industry needs support to improve its capacity to take students on placement, and provide a positive, supportive, high-quality placement experience.

The Enhanced Pathways to Family Violence Work project is a model example of how government can support organisations with funding, training and other resources to build the pipeline of workers needed to address critical workforce shortages.[8]

This program invests in training to build supervision capacity and capability within organisations. Participating organisations have access to funding to train staff, including the costs of backfill. Organisational capacity is also built through the following:

• online and administration systems support to support student placement management
• supporting supervisors to build their supervision capability and sector knowledge through communities of practice
• support to develop formal partnerships with education providers.

This model could be adapted to support the provision and supervision of student placements in growing community services industries, including the disability sector.

Getting the right voices to the table

This section responds to questions 13, 18, 24 and 26 in the Discussion Paper.

recommendations

• Engage people with disability and their support networks to:
• Ensure the rights, interests and needs of people with disability are a shared, valued priority
• Co-design training programs and delivery
• Identify meaningful performance indicators aligned to key training outcomes
• Seek their feedback and insights about the quality of services and support received
• Train and employ people with disability to teach and assess training programs

People with disability are the experts in their own lives, and have extensive, lived experience about their individual support needs. People who receive support, and their support networks, are best placed to share their knowledge and expertise with training providers across a range of areas including:

• Course design and delivery
• The creation of activities and case studies to prepare workers for a range of real-life experiences
• The development and measurement of training outcomes to assess the quality and impact of disability worker training

People with disability and their support networks should be engaged through a co-design process to ensure all aspects of course design, delivery, training and outcomes are centred around the needs of people with disability. This approach would promote the rights and interests of people with disability, and build a shared understanding across students, RTOs and providers.

To complement and strengthen the inclusion of lived experience in courses, training providers should support people with disability to gain their Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and employ people with disability in teaching and assessment roles.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Provide funding to enable smaller organisations to participate in course reviews and development
• Provide training providers with funding to collaborate with industry to develop industry relevant courses

Many people and organisations have insights, perspectives and ideas to share that could support improvements to disability training, and it is important that there is space and time for multiple voices to be heard and valued.

Disability support organisations are funded to deliver services that align to the goals, interests and needs of people with disability. While the perspectives and expectations of providers are important in reviewing and improving disability worker education, as noted above, people with disability as the recipients of support services should also be engaged in all aspects of course design and delivery.

Smaller organisations and rural and remote organisations often do not have the funds to release staff to participate in industry engagement activities run by training providers and the training sector. The disability support sector is large and diverse, so to ensure training is fit-for-purpose and aligned to industry expectations, small, rural and remote organisations should be encouraged and funded to have a ‘seat at the table’ and participate in industry consultations and committees.

Training providers are currently not provided with funding to engage with industry in the development of resources. While industry validation is an auditing and compliance requirement, due to time and resource constraints, this is often achieved through cursory activities. Providing funding for training providers to engage with industry through robust development and review processes is essential for both the improvement of industry current courses, as well as the implementation of timely updates as industry changes occur.

‘Good fit’ – Attributes required for a disability support worker

This section responds to questions 19 and 22 in the Discussion Paper.

RECOMMENDATION

• Ensure any pre- certificate courses are fully funded for providers, and fully subsidised for learners

Pre-certificate programs provide prospective students with an introduction to and understanding of the work and sector before committing to a full course, and provide an opportunity for learners to get a feel of whether the course is right for them. In the disability training space, a pre-certificate program can service a range of functions, such as:

• improving awareness and understanding of disability, and the human rights of people with disability
• enabling learners to gain insight into the realities of working in the sector, and to consider whether or not the work is aligned with their values and expectations.

Pre-certificate programs should be fully funded and be available both during and after regular work hours to ensure wide accessibility. Fully funding and subsiding these programs is important to ensure they are available and accessible for learners, and does not place undue constraints on training providers to cover the costs of delivery. A different funding stream may need to be investigated to ensure training providers or students don’t foot the bill.

The Innovative Traineeships Program, funded by DET and managed by VCOSS, involves trainees undertaking a 12 month traineeship whilst completing the Certificate III in Individual Support (Disability). Prospective trainees/students participate in an eight-day pre-work training program prior to being signed up as a trainee. This pre-work training program includes sessions to introduce foundational knowledge about working in community services more broadly, and specific knowledge about working with people with disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Participants also complete the accredited course 22469VIC – Course in Introduction to the NDIS.  This free pre-work program provides students with an understanding of the sector and potential roles.

Program coordinators and VET teachers are able to follow up with students who need additional support and have timely conversations about how they feel about the program and future work in the sector.  This approach has multiple benefits and works to;

• Provide foundational knowledge and a ‘taster’ of the sector before students commit to a full qualification, therefore enabling students to ‘self-select’ in or out of further studies
• Present opportunities for program coordinators and teaching staff to have values-aligned conversations with students about disability work and offer alternative pathways if appropriate
• Enable training providers/teachers to identify language, literacy and numeracy needs
• Support professionalism of the disability workforce by including an accredited course

In considering values, attributes and fit, it is important to consider that people with disability are diverse and have diverse values and needs. A strong disability workforce needs to reflect the diverse community it supports, including comprising people with disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and people with a range of different lived experiences. People with disability and their support networks should be consulted to understand their individual and diverse needs when considering essential attributes of disability support workers.

Challenges of implementing best practice in training delivery

Response to question 30: Is registration of disability support workers a valuable option for ensuring best practice in this workforce nationally?

RECOMMENDATION

• Promote the development and introduction of a national disability worker register to improve skills, quality, safety and consistency

The introduction of a national disability worker registration scheme presents a range of potential benefits and opportunities for workers, providers and people with disability alike. Previous inquiries by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee[9] and the Victorian Parliament Family and Community Development Committee[10] identified the need for a national disability worker registration scheme.

The dispersed nature of the care workforce makes it difficult to identify, train and mobilise workers in usual times and in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.[11] Governments and funders, who have little oversight of and connection to the workforce, are less able to coordinate and implement surge workforce capacity.

A national workforce registration mechanism could improve the quality, consistency, safety and sustainability of the workforce and the sector by:

• Encouraging the professionalisation of the workforce
• Boosting the value and profile of careers in the disability sector
• Strengthening and streamlining safeguarding measures including:
  • worker safety screening checks
  • training in identifying and responding to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation
  • information sharing protocols with related professional practice registers, and
  • establishing an accessible complaints mechanism to receive and monitor worker-related complaints regardless of jurisdiction or funding source
• Capturing data about the size, skills and experience of the workforce, to inform areas for targeted planning, action and investment.

Workforce registration schemes exist in many comparable sectors nationally and internationally, including health, nursing, teaching and early childhood. Lessons from the introduction of these schemes should inform the development of a national disability workforce register.

In Victoria, the Victorian Disability Workforce Regulation Scheme will introduce a voluntary worker registration scheme from July 2021. While this is a welcome move, work must continue across governments to progress a national disability worker registration scheme.

There is potential for a well-designed national worker registration scheme to create a range of win-win opportunities for people with disability and the workforce alike, as outlined above. However, the value proposition, role and intent of a worker registration scheme, particularly of a voluntary nature, must be well defined and widely understood by workers, providers and service users to ensure it is an effective, meaningful and valuable mechanism.

It is also vital that workforce registration schemes are carefully designed to ensure the costs to register, or to meet registration requirements, do not present financial barriers for the current and prospective workforce.

[1] Empowered Lives, empoweredlives.vcoss.org.au

[2] National Disability Strategy, Australian Disability Workforce Report 3rd edition, July 2018.

[3] N Cortis and G van Toorn, Working in new disability markets: A survey of Australia’s disability workforce Sydney: Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, 2020, p.73.

[4] G Carey, M Weier, E Malbon, G Duff and H Dickinson, How is the Disability sector faring? A report from National Disability Services’ Annual Market Survey, February 2020, p.28.

[5] Northern Ireland Social Care Council, Homepage, accessed 29 October 2020.

[6] Future Social Service Institute, Valuing social care workers: The Northern Ireland Experience, 19 February 2020, accessed 29 October 2020.

[7] Deloitte Insights, ‘The path to prosperity. Why the future of work is human’, Building the Lucky Country #7, 2019.

[8] Family Safety Victoria, Building from strength: 10 year industry plan for family violence prevention response, Government of Victoria, 2017.

[9] Australian Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee, Violence, abuse and neglect against people with disability in institutional and residential settings…, Final report, November 2015, Recommendation 2 and 4.

[10] Parliament of Victoria Family and Community Development Committee, Inquiry into abuse in disability services, Final report, May 2016, p.111-125.

[11] H Dickinson, G Carey and A Kavanagh, Personalisation and pandemic: an unforeseen collision course?, Disability & Society, 35:6, 1012-1017, June 2020.

VCOSS welcomes the commitment in the consultation paper to addressing health inequities. Prevention strategies and efforts need to be targeted so they are appropriate for cohorts of people who are more likely to experience poor health outcomes, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, ethnic communities, people with disability, LGBTIQ+ people, and people on low-incomes.

We also support the strategic focus on early childhood development. Many of the risk factors that contribute to chronic illness occur well before the first symptoms of ill-health appear, even in childhood.

“Childhood health and the uterine environment have a lasting impact on health and socioeconomic status throughout life. Many adult health conditions, including major public health problems such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and mental health problems, have their origins in childhood health conditions.”[i]

We call for stronger emphasis on priorities including addressing the health impacts of climate change, preventing mental illness and the link between poverty and poor health.

Grow funding for preventive health

Victoria spends only about 1.5 per cent of its health budget on public and preventive health. Everything else goes to treating illness and critical care. A failure to increase the funding allocated to preventive health will doom the Strategy to failure.

We strongly welcome the commitment in the consultation paper to increased investment in preventive health. Alongside funding, a robust governance and implementation structure will be required, accompanied by long-term commitments and targets.

Preventive health outcomes are rarely quick wins; they usually take many years of work and incremental change.

Adopt a wellbeing framework

The Strategy is an opportunity to embed wellbeing across government, and recognise that health is not merely the responsibility of health departments and providers but is influenced by a range of economic, cultural, social and environmental decisions and policies.

One way to embed this approach would be following the lead of other countries like New Zealand, Scotland and Iceland who are becoming wellbeing economies.

Under this model, all branches of government are responsible for improving community wellbeing through budget priorities, policy-making and reporting.

Include additional focus areas

The consultation paper identifies six focus areas to boost prevention action in the first years of the Strategy. While VCOSS does not question the importance of any of the six focus areas, there are important omissions from the list that should be included or receive increased emphasis.

Promoting good mental health

The focus of the consultation paper is fundamentally on physical health issues. Preventing mental illness should receive greater emphasis in the Strategy.

A focus on mental health is more timely than ever. We do not yet know the full impacts of COVID-19 on the mental health of the community. But we know it will be significant and long-lasting.

Experts are warning of likely increases in youth suicide, and high demand for mental health services.[ii] Community organisations are reporting more people are seeking help to manage mental distress because of the health crisis, the lock-down and financial distress. And this impact is likely to be felt for a long time. Suicide rates could remain high for as long as five years if the economic downturn is protracted.[iii]

There is good evidence that mental illness can often be prevented. But Australia directs most of its funding into clinical treatment and service delivery. Less than 2 per cent of the total mental health budget is dedicated to promotion and prevention.

Preventing mental illness requires us to build mental health literacy, enhance protective factors, minimise risk factors and address the social determinants of poor mental health, including insecure housing, poverty and trauma.

Addressing the health impacts of climate change

The World Health Organization described climate change as the defining issue for public health in the 21st century. It is an urgent challenge, with implications at the global, national and community level.

Heatwaves, sustained high temperatures and disasters such as bushfires, storms and floods have significant health impacts, and are expected to increase as the climate changes. Air pollution is also estimated to kill 3,000 Australians each year.[iv]

Access to clean water, and healthy, nutritious food is at risk, with heavy rainfall increasing risk of contaminated floodwater and bacterial infections, and heat stress and water scarcity impacting food production.

People on low-incomes or already vulnerable to health risks bear the largest burden of the changing climate.

Tackling the health impacts of climate change requires leadership from governments, to reduce emissions and support communities and low-income households to build climate resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Tackling poverty to improve health

Poverty has a profound impact on people’s health and wellbeing. In Australia, the higher your income and education level, the better your health will tend to be. People on low incomes, people in rural and remote areas and Aboriginal people, on average, have poorer health, die earlier and receive less healthcare than other Australians.

Australians aged 25-44 in the lowest socioeconomic group are nearly five times more likely to have a chronic health condition as those in the highest.[v]

In turn, poor health can trap households in poverty, as healthcare costs, inability to work, stress and educational barriers add up.

“We know that lifting the incomes of people with the least has a huge benefit for people’s health. If you live in poverty, it is not only your bank balance that suffers. Your health, your education and your wellbeing also deteriorate.

We could do a lot for the health of the nation if we ensured that everyone can afford to eat three meals a day and keep a roof over their head.”[vi]

Raising the rate of income support and providing everyone with a financial safety net, is a crucial enabler of good health.

Preventing gender-based violence

Gender-based violence is a complex social problem with serious health consequences.

Intimate partner violence is the greatest health risk factor (greater than smoking, alcohol and obesity) for women in their reproductive years (18-44). Women who experience intimate partner violence are more likely to report poorer mental health, physical function, and general health, as well as higher levels of bodily pain.

The goal of prevention is to make the attitudes and behaviours that drive gender-based violence visible and change them through the promotion of equal and respectful relationships.

Reducing gender-based violence would improve the health and wellbeing of women and children, and promote a more equitable society for all Australians.

[i] National Health and Hospital Reform Commission, 2008.

[ii] Australian Medical Association, Joint Statement: COVID-19 impact likely to lead to increased rates of suicide and mental illness, 7 May 2020 https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Environmental Justice Australia, Clearing the air, May 2014.

[v] NATSEM, Health lies in wealth: Health inequalities in Australians of working age, Report No 1/10, September 2010, p. x.

[vi]Cassandra Goldie, Australian Council of Social Service, quoted in https://www.croakey.org/calls-for-national-preventive-health-strategy-to-address-poverty-and-other-determinants-of-health/

ABC Radio Melbourne Drive presenter Rafael Epstein will host the first of the three-part series of exclusive Facebook Live events ‘Victorian Voices’.

The sessions will be captioned in English,  Arabic (العربية),  Hindi (हिन्दी) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文), with guests drawn from across communities and organisations on the pandemic frontline.

Epstein said there will be a particular focus on working with CALD groups.

“It’s important that every Victorian can hear from experts, ask questions and air their concerns in a meaningful way,” he said.

VCOSS CEO Emma King said these events will provide an important new platform for critical exchanges of information.

“Every community is unique, with different ways of connecting and communicating. It’s great the ABC will be listening to the experts and leaders in these communities, and amplifying their voices and experiences.”

The sessions will explore a range of themes including general health advice, testing guidance, workplace issues, housing, wellbeing and mental health.

The first session ‘Victorian Voices:  Working during Covid-19’ will be streamed on ABC Melbourne’s Facebook page this Thursday (September 3rd).

Guests include:

• Dr Nadia Chaves, Infectious Diseases and General Medicine specialist
• Sainab Sheikh, Social Worker and founder Somali Women’s Development Association Inc.
• Catherine Hemingway, Legal Director at WEstJustice

Register now at https://www.facebook.com/events/230660758308448/

Click here for resources to help promote this event, including a short video clip of Raf Epstein (captioned in العربية, हिन्दी and 简体中文).

Media contacts:

Mary-Jane Fenech (ABC Melbourne), 0438 344 533, Fenech.Mary-Jane@abc.net.au

Ryan Sheales (VCOSS), 0418 127 153, media@vcoss.org.au

A note on captions: These events will be captioned in English, Arabic, Hindi and Simplified Chinese. Facebook automatically detects which language you use and presents you with those captions. For example, if you normally use Facebook in Arabic you will automatically be presented with Arabic captions for this Facebook Live event.