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CRU Director's Chair - January 2010
The CRU Director’s Chair is a periodic email update from the Director of CRU.
The CRU Director's Chair is available here.
Book Launch October 2009
The Committee and Staff
of Community Resource Unit,
Michael Kendrick and friends launched
Letting in the Light
Reflections on Leadership, Ethics
and Human Services
by Michael J Kendrick PhD on Thursday October 15th 2009.
Individual Book Order Form.
Further information on all CRU publications here.
Michael Kendrick
Marg and Ross Graham, Catherine Raju, Dianne M, Gemma Scott
Alison Jones, Anita Speed and Michael Kendrick
Pam Collins (Editor)
CRU Annual General Meeting
The Community Resource Unit Inc. Annual General Meeting was held at:
The Pavilion Function Centre (Century Room)
1 Bogan Street, Breakfast Creek, ALBION, BRISBANE.
Time: 5:30pm
Date: Thursday 15th October 2009
Appointment of CRU Director
The Management Committee of CRU is delighted to announce the appointment of Margaret Rodgers to the position of permanent Director.
Marg will be well-known to many throughout Queensland and beyond. She has a long history of working alongside people with disabilities and families in many roles and contexts. Marg displays all the qualities CRU is seeking in a new leader. She has the values, the depth of experience with people with disabilities and families, the understanding of the issues, and is well equipped for this leadership role.
CRU is now ready for the next stage of its re-visioning, building on where we have come from and moving forward to where we are going. We warmly welcome and congratulate Marg and look forward to working with her as we take up the challenges ahead. Marg will formally commence with CRU on 3rd August 2009.
The announcement is available here in PDF format.
CRU Director's Chair - July 2009
The CRU Director’s Chair is a monthly email update from the Director of CRU.
The CRU Director's Chair is available here.
CRU Resource Library News - June 2009
This is the third part of our series on self directed funding, and a warm-up to our second workshop on Self-directed Support and Personalised Budgets on July 30 2009.
Part 1 in Word format.
Part 2 in Word format.
Part 3 in Word format.
Self-directed Funding, Part 3
In 2008, in a paper entitled ‘How does the research inform the debate about individualised funding?’ www.scopevic.org.au/Bigby121107.pdf Professor Christine Bigby, Associate Professor Latrobe University, stated that the benefits of individualised funding are ‘no longer a matter of faith’.
‘Individualised funding redefines purchaser/provider/user relationships. There is higher satisfaction, greater emotional, social and psychological well-being, greater community presence and participation in employment and education. Users can say how they will live and who will support them. More support hours are accessible, and more use is made of family and friends to provide that support. There is greater satisfaction with support services and they are more stable. Higher use is made of preventative health care.
There is a cost savings of up to 30-40%.
Families are expressing less carer strain. Parents are able to step back and give up power which gives them more flexibility to address family needs.
As well as covering the ‘overwhelmingly’ positive outcomes of individualised funding, Bigby also looks at areas of concern e.g issues of power sharing within families, fear of the unknown and the overall lack of public commitment to disability services. She will also speak at the Social Policy Research Centre Conference 2009 in July, regarding the issue of ‘the community presence rather than community participation’ of people with disabilities.
Around the world, information regarding the strengths and challenges of self-directed funding are surfacing, giving us a great opportunity to plan a service that will truly meet our needs.
It would be interesting to know the date that Bruce Uditsky, Executive Director, Alberta Association for Community Living wrote “The Erosion of Individualized Funding’ http://members.shaw.ca/bsalisbury/The Erosion of Individualized Funding - Bruce Uditsky.doc. He writes that the promotion of Individualized Funding led to a growing bureaucracy around it. To keep the program within budget parameters, the government controlled staff wages, which led to a high turnover of staff and became a disincentive to follow a career as a carer. This led to a drop in the quality of staff as none of the individualised funding could be used for staff development, and as services became more responsive, more and more families purchased the standard services offered by agencies. As more and more people purchased the standard service, agencies could argue that IF wasn’t necessary….’
Staff wages is also an issue in April 2009 in the United Kingdom. Phil Saunders writes at www.sitra.org.uk/index.php?id=1038 on the issue of hourly rates. 9) He says ‘low rate, high input models come from
- Local authority inhouse services, which do not quantify or attempt to cover the full cost of management or overheads
- Large firms who can afford to price at marginal cost where they can absorb overhead costs in other contracts
- Lean, almost virtual organisations with a small head office functions and teams of ‘franchised’ workers, who operate remotely’
and weren’t appropriate for many roles and situations in the new individualised payment system. Just as the driving instructor gives his client ‘the full hour’ and builds administration, travel time etc into his fees, so the hourly service fee must reflect ‘out of contact hours’ expenditure.
‘If we are not careful, a seriously insufficient sum of money will simply be divvied up and doled out, with service user’s left to fend for themselves in the marketplace. www.sitra.org.uk/index.php?id=902
Consumer-Directed Health Care: How Well Does it work ? www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2004/consumerdirected.htm This report produced by American National Council of Disability, in October 2005, made one overarching recommendation, aimed at consumer groups, foundations that support consumer advocacy, and government agencies, that, there be ‘the inclusion of consumers representing a wide range of disability perspectives in decision making at every step in the process that ultimately shapes programs, from development and implementation of a research agenda, through policy making to program design, oversight and evaluation.’
Direct Payments were first introduced into England in 1997. By 2004, the uptake was described in Direct Payments: Whatare the Barriers? by the Commission for Social Care Inspection as ‘slow to the point of stalling’. The authors attributed this to the lack of information/training on Direct Payments within government and the social services; confusing terminology; lack of promotion of the scheme and the role of personal assistants; and unclear quality standards. Questions on equality/equivalency of access in the UK have also been an issue. Practical learning from the pilots was captured and is available in a Personalisation Toolkit. The UK is committed to the growth of direct payments, sees no significant difference in cost to previous models, but offers much greater value.
We received a note from an ex-QueensIander who now receives self-directed funding for her post-school aged son, as part of a pilot scheme in NSW. Since moving to NSW she has been thrilled with the difference in support available for her son. He receives three times what he would have received in QLD ($36.000 per annum), and she has total control over how those funds are spent. Her service provider works with the family to develop a support plan and budget. She said ‘families are treated as the experts in their own life. My son enjoys his life and he is surrounded by people of his choosing and who want to be with him.’ The service also empowers families through training and regular information.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on the e-news. If there is any particular topic you would like to see covered, or have stories you would like to share, please let us know.
Errata: http://ici.umn.edu/products/impact/171/prof1a1.html is the correct link for the University of Minnesota website. Sorry!!!! Got my 1’s and l’s confused. Also, ‘ Michael Kendrick’s ‘The Many Ways that Service Users and Families Can Help Improve the Workforce’ is not on the Irish website anymore. I’m happy to send anyone a copy of ours if they would like it.
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