CRUcial Times Issue 23 - Feature Article

Resisting the Red Tape

Lisa Cooper of Tableland Community Link in North Queensland describes why it is important for a service to be flexible in its response to the needs of people that it supports. She also believes it is important for a service to provide a buffer between the bureaucracy and the people supported by the service.

We call it bureaucracy, red tape, paperwork, official procedures and sometimes words which cannot be put into print. It is in effect part of the relationship between government departments and recipients of government funds. It is this part of a relationship which has undergone a slow and furtive change - nothing too obvious which could be confronted or challenged, but nonetheless just as daunting. Whatever happened to that government department whose role it was to fund services that could then provide support as required by the individual? Whatever happened to Community Resource Officers whose role was to provide support and to resource information for funded services?

Over the past couple of years our service has struggled with increasing ‘administrivia’. It has taken us away from our prime objective, which is to support people with a disability to connect with their community in whatever ways they choose. We were getting so caught up in the red tape that we were slowly losing our way, allowing the funding body to come up with answers. We were losing our creativity, our flexibility, our purpose, and most importantly we were no longer assisting people in the manner they should expect and receive. We all knew something was wrong, but no one was able to put a finger on what it was. Each bureaucratic request was simple enough and taken on its own, did not amount to anything substantial, but looking at all those simple requests over the past few years it is clear that there are major changes at hand.

In July last year three people from our organisation attended a Michael Kendrick workshop in Cairns. Michael discussed the idea of support agencies creating a bureaucratic ‘buffer’ for consumers, the concept being that people may not want to know all the rules and regulations of departments and may only be interested in their needs being met. It was like a lightning bolt, and such a simple idea - just focus on delivering the most appropriate service to people, and deal with bureaucracy internally. We had been getting caught up in the notion that consumers wanted to know all the ins-and-outs of everything and this was taking us away from our main goals and activities.

Since that workshop, the organisation has found the dollars to employ a part-time Service Co-ordinator whose sole purpose is to deal with all bureaucracy matters. This then frees up our Client Coordinators to focus on support issues only. We now ask all consumers how much bureaucratic information they want and people request varying levels of information on official procedures. For some we become a bureaucratic buffer, for others a bureaucratic filter, and for the remainder, a bureaucratic envoy.

Our focus has returned to the job at hand, supporting people to the best of our ability. For us, this means not getting bogged down in what the rules say we are not allowed to do, but rather of finding a way to make things happen. For example, our service supports a woman in a rural community and a worker has to travel 25km to her home. The woman has her own vehicle but lacked the confidence to drive to town. Her confidence gradually increased with the worker’s assistance and she now drives herself to various locations. Coming into the wet season, the woman’s confidence begins to slide because her car’s demister doesn’t work and the woman is unable to pay to have it fixed.

This situation was bought to the attention of the coordinator and the possible solutions were seen as: encourage the woman to save and fix the demister (under the funding guidelines we were not allowed to utilise her funding in this manner); return to the arrangement where our support worker travels to the woman’s home to pick her up each time she wants to go somewhere; or to pay for the demister to be fixed. It was once said, It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, and we decided to abide by that wise saying.

Another example would be of someone who thought it was very important to have members of that person’s own family as paid support workers. There were many reasons for this: the family lived in a small isolated community so there were limited other people who could do the support work; it was culturally appropriate to have family members providing personal care; the family had a history of providing this care; if family members had to go elsewhere for employment there would be little opportunity for them to visit, further isolating this person; and in these arrangements the family is more able to get on with making decisions (with input or assistance from the service coordinator). In a nutshell, the whole family had a sense of ownership in these support arrangements.

The official stance on having family members as paid workers is frowned upon, because the general feeling is that family members cannot be trusted and will take advantage of the situation. We have found quite the opposite - family members do additional hours over and above the amount of paid support, and provide a higher quality of support. Another wise person said, If it’s not broke, don’t try and fix it.

We would like to see consumers, service providers and funding bodies have an equal partnership, with each party respecting what the other brings to the partnership. I think it is called Trust.