On 16 April 2000 the Prime Minister announced the government’s "Stronger Families and Communities Strategy". As Family and Community Services Executive Director, Robyn McKay has said:
"We will have the privilege of modelling at every level the partnerships that lie at the heart of new social policy directions. At a practical level we can make an enormous difference to the experience and opportunities of Australian
families and communities by enabling and encouraging partnerships which need not depend on government at all.
We will be breaking new ground on a number of fronts at once. The Strategy requires us to become facilitators – rather than national "experts"-- who support families and communities to bring forward initiatives which will best
address their local needs."
That includes better outcomes for children in extended-family groups and those at risk. The Diverse Care Project is highlighting previously unacknowledged realities for certain groups in Australian society. We have identified two factors that
affect the policy intent of families’ assistance.
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It is always tempting to say that the solution lies in cutting through "bureaucratic red tape" and make arrangements tailored to every individual’s circumstances. In many of the cases we have studied, the issue is not whether people
continue to remain eligible but whether they are in a position to report every time their eligibility changes. The family structures of the identified groups do not match the assumptions embedded in the arrangements designed for the majority of
Australian families.
One approach could be to require all families to adjust to the norm and either meet normal eligibility requirements or go without income support. Clearly that approach would not meet our policy commitments to building stronger families and
stronger communities. Just as clearly, as findings from the Diverse Care Project indicate, the enforcement of such requirements is unlikely to be effective. For these groups the standard requirement of reporting changes of care whenever a child
has moved out of "ongoing care" is often impractical.
The Diverse Care project suggests that encouraging recipients to take responsibility for ensuring that payments are applied to the costs of caring for children is likely to be more effective than on the enforcement of arbitrary payment
procedures. That approach expresses the principle of "mutual obligation" in seeking better outcomes for children regardless of differences in family structures.
his is an edited extract of a paper presented to the 7th Annual Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Sydney, July 2000.
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