Pathway to Partnership - Background Information
Background
Community-based services for families, children and young people play an important role in supporting families and making sure children get the best start in life.
The organisations providing these services know what their community needs, where the gaps are, and what can be done to make sure families, children and young people are taken care of. More often than not they are the people in the community that vulnerable families go to for help.
Pathway to Partnership is a multi-year strategy aimed a strengthening community-based family, child and youth focused services. Over the next four years the Government is increasing its investment in these services by $446 million.
The money is being progressively introduced from 1 July 2008, with an extra $52 million available in 2008/09. This is made up of the $37.5 million announced in February 2008 as well as $15 million already allocated as part of Pathway to Partnership in the 2007 Budget. The funding increases to $192.8 million in 2011/12.
The funding is for existing services that currently have a contract with Family and Community Services, Child, Youth and Family, the Ministry of Youth Development, or parenting support services currently with the Ministry of Education that transferred to the Ministry of Social Development on 1 July 2008. It is also for Ministry of Justice funded victim support and family violence perpetrator services.
| $ million | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | Total (4 years) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full funding | 28.504 | 39.262 | 72.466 | 104.279 | 244.511 |
| Forecast demand | 11.974 | 19.493 | 28.674 | 39.514 | 99.655 |
| Annual adjustor | 8.128 | 16.971 | 27.878 | 42.116 | 95.093 |
| Workforce and provider capability and infrastructure | 3.972 | 5.262 | 6.132 | 6.902 | 22.268 |
| Total new funding | 52.578 | 80.988 | 135.150 | 192.811 | 461.527 |
| Existing funding for services within scope of Pathway to Partnership | 203.000 | 203.000 | 203.000 | 203.000 | 812.000 |
| TOTAL FUNDING | 255.578 | 283.988 | 338.150 | 395.811 | 1273.527 |
Key Elements
Pathway to Partnership will:
- move existing essential family, child and youth focused services to full funding by 2011
- provide for annual cost adjustment payments
- address forecast volume increases
- focus more on achieving outcomes and less on inputs / programmes
- enable providers to build workforce capability and capacity
- support organisations to work more closely together to reduce duplication and get more resources into services.
The funding builds on work already underway, like simplifying our funding and contracting processes, moving some services to grants to reduce their compliance costs, and providing multi-year funding to ensure more security for providers.
What Pathway to Partnership achieves
For families Pathway to Partnership means:
- more effective and easier access to services that support them
- better outcomes for families, children and young people
- less need for remedial intervention.
For community social support services it means:
- better ability to plan ahead
- being able to attract and retain qualified staff
- improved service effectiveness
- encouraging closer collaboration.
For the government it means:
- a stronger working relationship between the community sector and government
-
funding is directed at those services that achieve the best outcomes for families, children and young people.
