UnitingCare Australia Continues to Contribute to the Community Response Taskforce

UnitingCare tells Senate Inquiry that social services get better value for money and produce better outcomes than involuntary income management. 25 February

Major Church Providers host successful Industry Issues Forum. 18 February

UnitingCare Australia announces new acting National Director. 16 February

UnitingCare Australia looks forward to the Third Intergenerational Report. 02 February

UnitingCare's submission to the Inquiry into the contribution of the NFP sector. 18 December

Review of the Australian Public Service: UnitingCare submission. 3 December

UnitingCare Australia Opposes Involuntary Income Management. 25 November

'Because Children and Families Matter' - Analysis of Government reforms released. 18 November

UnitingCare Australia Continues to Contribute to the Community Response Taskforce

29 May 2009

The Community Response Taskforce’s (CRT’s) most recent meeting was in Melbourne on Friday last week. The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister Macklin and Senator Stephens were all in attendance. Lin Hatfield Dodds was present at the meeting as UnitingCare Australia’s National Director and gave us some on-the-ground feedback from the meeting:

The work and thoughts of the Major Church Providers (MCPs) were seriously considered at the meeting. Significantly, the only non-government papers submitted to the meeting were the MCPs’ Financial Health and Wellbeing paper and UnitingCare Australia’s CRT submission: ”Social Service Sustainability: Regulation, compliance, and administrative process reform.”

As Lin reported, “The department has been very positive to work with and credit to both them and the Minister for recognising the expertise across our networks.” The MCPs have been requested to continue to work with the department as the CRT work enters the implementation phase.

The quality of our services sustainability paper was commented on, and the Deputy Prime Minister committed to a number of our recommendations immediately, with the rest going to be considered by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s grants reform working group.

It is hoped that many of the issues we raised in our paper about the broader sustainability agenda will be addressed through the Productivity Commission findings and the Compact. As Lin’s report concluded, “While we will continue to work hard in both these spaces, we will continue to work across Government in many places to keep services sustainability under active consideration.”