Communities represent more than dollar values

This is no way for the government and the community sector to be working together. We do not need to accept that premise that it is a legitimate approach to the development and implementation of community services of any kind.

The inherent uncertainty in current purchasing arrangements is crushing the community sector. It detracts from our agencies’ capacity to build goodwill and to attract and retain staff, especially in regional areas. It also contributes to high staff turnover, destabilisation of the workforce and loss of expertise at a time when it is needed most.

More importantly, current purchasing arrangements see local community agencies inexorably displaced by private sector and franchise based social service agencies - arriving to deliver a contracted government service and then leaving again once the particular contract is concluded. But like Darryl Kerrigan’s home, local community services are built not just of bricks and mortar. What will remain when the contract is over?

Local community services are potential partners with government, not merely agents or providers of out-sourced government services. This means that not all of what a community service is or provides can be captured in a dollar terms on a balance sheet. It may even mean that they are not the cheapest to work with. But the cheapest may not always be the best.

Measuring the value of community-based services is a challenge for all of us. But to limit funding to those things that can be measured easily is short sighted.

There is currently no plan for future social services in Australia. No projections regarding the services that will be required over the next decade. No policy guidance to suggest what mix of agencies will best meet future needs - private providers and for-profits, churches, charities and other non-for-profits and community-based agencies. In the absence of such a plan the future of the sector is being determined by capricious tender processes that cannot measure some values that many consider to be not just important, but essential to building stronger, self reliant communities and community-based services.