Homeful
and young
What does it take to help young people become homeful and safe?
What does it take to help young people become homeful and safe?
As is true in most countries, accessing support from Australian support agencies is a fraught process. For many people, the process of accessing support in itself can be traumatic and only sets them back on their journey for help and answers.
You work at a design studio, Tackle, known for working with NFPs and service-based government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. You’ve been put in charge of the agency team who will work in conjunction with the homelessness advocacy NFP Homefull to pioneer a revolutionary new way of managing support agencies. You are tasked with training and executing multi-agency teams (MAT) built around an individual and tailored to their needs and the agencies they’re seeking support from. Instead of forcing the individual to manage the administrative load of working across agencies, the MAT will work together on behalf of and with the individual.
You will lead your agency team through the implementation of the training, the prototype project, and the evaluation process. As well as political and media pressures, you will also have to manage the currents flowing within the MAT and between the key implementation stakeholders.
In Australia, a vulnerable person seeking help from government agencies faces a hefty, and often unmanageable, organisational workload. Agencies are designed to help young people recover from homelessness, illness, or manage disability but operate independently of each other, rarely communicate effectively, and make it difficult to coordinate holistic care.
A significant percentage of the population in Australia need to access government services to help with the maintenance of their lives. In Australia:
There are hundreds of agencies, both private and government-run, designed to help Australians through difficult times.
In Victoria, people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, access emergency, crisis and transitional housing, and gain assistance with private housing through ‘housing access points’. These 75 access points serve as localised and centralised housing ‘hubs’. For example, in the inner city, the access point is Launch Housing. At these housing access points, specialist homelessness service case managers complete the initial assessment and planning (IAP) to determine what type of housing would be appropriate in the person’s situation. These options are short-to-medium term. To access long-term housing, an application must be submitted for the Victorian Housing Register through Housing Victoria.
Other key players in the Victorian context include:
NDIS
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a scheme of the Australian Government that funds the costs associated with disability.
Drug and alcohol
Similar to housing, people experiencing drug and/or alcohol issues access support through ‘catchment-based intake services’. These services triage and refer people to support such as counselling, non-residential withdrawal, residential withdrawal, therapeutic day rehabilitation, residential rehabilitation, care and recovery coordination or pharmacotherapy.
Services for people exiting custody
There are three main services for people exiting custody. They are the Jesuit Social Services, the Victorian Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (VACRO) and the Australian Community Support Organisation (ACSO).
Domestic Violence
Safe Steps is an online crisis support service, information and accommodation response centre. The Orange Door was established in 2017 as part of the Victorian Government’s response to the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The Orange Door is anticipated to have statewide coverage by 2022.
Aboriginal cooperatives
There are a variety of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations in Victoria that provide health, housing, legal, family violence and child protection services.
Mental health
Government, non-government, and private organisations in hospitals and the community provide acute, subacute, specialist, residential and inpatient community services, and community support services. For people under 18-years-of-age, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service provide crisis assessment and treatment. For people 16-years-and-older, Community Mental Health Services provide care to people experiencing mental illness and is managed by catchment areas. Phone lines such as the Kids Helpline, Beyond Blue and Lifeline provide information and support to people.
Each service agency aims to satisfy their own objectives and regulatory requirements. Budget allocations set the limitations for each agency. However, organisational and disciplinary cultures also play a part in making each access a new experience.
For someone already dealing with their own difficulties, managing a handful of agencies is an additional, often untenable, load.
“Lawyer Tom Monks applied for NDIS funding a year ago and said while acceptance was straightforward, getting funding for the things he needs has been a struggle. The 46-year-old lost both his legs in an accident when he was two years old. ‘It has taken me three months to get the reports to substantiate that I have no legs. It has taken me an exhaustive amount of time.’” Navigating NDIS an exhausting and disempowering process, people with disabilities say, ABC, 27/05/21
The agencies generally don’t do a good job of communicating with each other although there are often events with knock-on effects that implicate multiple agencies. For example, gaining employment can lead to losing benefits from another service agency. Or seeking medical attention for an overdose may exclude a person from an abstinence-only drug and alcohol program. Navigating the variety of services and systems is overwhelming as anyone who’s applied to Centrelink can attest.
The problem of inter-agency communication extends to case managers and frontline workers too. Each agency works according to its own procedures, culture, and accountabilities and often there are conflicting processes and ethos between agencies. For example, the NDIS is set up to help a person manage a disability over a lifetime. However, the health departments in individual states, that work with the same clients, are based on remedial care. This creates a gap between the services, which can exclude some people. An example is someone on NDIS for an ongoing condition losing their cover if they are taken to hospital for another short-term ailment.
Over the last two years, accessing fractured services in Australia has been rendered even more difficult by frequent lockdowns in Australia. During lockdowns, face-to-face meetings are usually off the table, in-person medical services are limited, and helpful administrative services (like printers, libraries, and post offices) are either shut or onerous to access.
One thing did change for the better - Job Keeper and Job Seeker benefits. Early in the pandemic, the government introduced a payment of $750 per week for anyone who had lost their job, any employers who had lost work, and anyone on government benefits.
The COVID supplement alleviated more than just COVID-related stress and poverty. Many people reported they were able to afford the basics they had previously denied themselves. Studies suggest people used their COVID supplements to shore up their family’s finances among other positive behaviours.
“"People could get job ready, get a haircut and buy new clothes. Single parents could afford for their children to play sport," Terese Edwards said in an ABC article.
“An online survey conducted by Swinburne University and the Australian National University found the money was used for basic needs and strategic expenditures to “improve their household’s long-term financial security”. Before COVID hit, the poverty rate in single parent households was 20.2%. In the absence of policy change and the advent of COVID-19 it would have climbed to 27.9%. The COVID stimulus payments cut it to just 7.6% in June. A survey of single mothers found 88% suffered less anxiety. More than two-thirds (69%) reported being healthier as a result of being able to buy enough and healthier food.”https://theconversation.com/australia-was-a-model-for-protecting-people-from-covid-19-and-then-we-dumped-half-a-million-people-back-into-poverty-165813
In October of 2020, the research company YouGov, on behalf of the Green Institute, ran a study that asked: "Unconditional income support is sometimes called a Guaranteed Living Wage or a Universal Basic Income. This means that just as we can rely on basic health care and education, everyone in a society has a guaranteed minimum amount of money that they can rely on. Would you support or oppose a guaranteed living wage being introduced in Australia?"
1,026 Australians answered and the majority either strongly support or somewhat support the idea.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already forced change in the service-delivery sector. Is it possible to harness uncertainty and create intentional and impactful change for vulnerable Australians?
The COVID-19 pandemic has already forced change in the service-delivery sector. Is it possible to harness uncertainty and create intentional and impactful change for vulnerable Australians?
This was the question asked by your design studio Tackle when they pitched for the APS tender. Tackle is a design studio with a focus on not-for-profits and support service design. Tackle has identified the potential for a prototype intervention to improve the experience of a person accessing support services based on previous work with the Young People in Nursing Homes (YPINH) around care for sufferers of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and recent research.
The intention is to form multi-agency working teams (MATs) around each individual. The team would acquire the status of an independent and self-organising unit, fully constituted in policy and resources. The team would attain an independent identity, beyond the individual agencies.
The implementation would include high-level training in cross-functional collaboration. Tackle will build and deliver the training. The proposal includes the ability to bring on people with specific expertise as needed. It also recognises that teams may need to reform at different times, considering the client’s specific and changing needs.
KPIs for the team would be: to experiment with new ways of working together (under supervision); research innovations in the space; drive holistic evaluation processes; and contribute to the alignment and integration of systems for management, communication, and delivery.
The objectives of this program are:
This will be a challenge to the way many agencies operate. However, based on the Whanau-led model from New Zealand [see Evaluation page] this not only enhances the likelihood of success for the person involved, but also helps government agencies to evolve to offer better services. Human rights are central to the guiding principles used in this proposal.
This multi-agency team would be guided by the following ideas:
You will lead the Tackle team, based on the work and research you did with YPINH. However, you’re not coming in at the start of the project. The proposal has been developed largely by a Victorian university partner and requires significant refinement to make it workable for you. Your first task is to translate the research proposal into a functional project with milestones, accountabilities, KPIs, and evaluation process. You can delegate some of the work, depending on the Tackle team you select.
You will be part of an internal team of four, including yourself, and your first task is to choose your team. There have been many studies done on what makes a good team. The dynamics of interaction and the benefits of psychological safety are two vital perspectives to consider when forming and managing any team.
You will be required to select your team from among your available colleagues at Tackle. You will occasionally be able to draw on the studio for extra help and expertise, in areas such as technology, administration and management, and group care.
You will need to find a way to develop and divide the roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. You’re advised to begin with a series of workshops with agency representatives.
Forming a team is a collaborative and creative process. Each member must be open about both:
Choose three colleagues to join your team.
In the early days of forming a team, it’s also useful to gauge if any team members foresee ethical dilemmas in the project. These can be highlighted without requiring any of the team members to leave the team. Ethical dilemmas could include:
After months of negotiating, approval is given to launch a prototype of this process. Three multi-agency teams will be established, each with a different focus.
The lead agency, the NFP Homefull, is the base for the trial and will coordinate with Tackle and the agencies that will be engaged on each team.
Team one
The first team is built around a formerly incarcerated person who is returning from prison to no employment and no fixed accommodation. Their agency representatives come from:
Team two
The second team is built around a person who has left a dysfunctional family environment and is dealing with some mental health issues. Their agency representatives come from:
Team three
The third team is built around a person who needs to re-connect with their cultural community. Their agency representatives come from:
One of the most practical and integral aspects to get right in this trial is the platforms and technology that will be used by the person and their MAT. As the agency representatives for each MAT become acquainted, questions immediately arise regarding communication platforms. Email or Whatsapp or Slack or text? Your first hurdle to overcome is to integrate the disparate technologies of the agency and the person they work for. To begin, ask yourself the following questions when creating a plan around technology:
Tackle has provided a budget with the proposal that includes developing a training workshop series, system alignment, and policy review. The Tackle working group will embed in the MATs (multi-agency teams) and participate in all activities, where ethically prudent.
One of your first points of contact with the MATs will be at the series of workshops held at Homefull. The intention of the workshops is to help the agency representatives approach the program as a team. While the workshops aim to educate, define processes, and discover opportunities and problems, the true aim is to take a handful of unaffiliated people and create a unit. Within that unit, their understanding of hierarchy has to be shifted to truly give the person they’re serving the reins to their own life.
The biggest issue that’s revealed in the early days of the workshops is around disclosure. Traditionally, when dealing with multiple agencies, people hold the flow of information in a delicate balance. What’s necessary for one agency to know may threaten their status with another. Some things to consider:
Agency representative
(Leander Kreltszheim)
Tackle Studio Manager
(Regine Abos)
More about you
You’re a 35-year-old human-centred designer. You live in Richmond with your partner and dog. You’ve been working at Tackle for six years. Your original plan was to become a social worker (you even finished a bachelor of social work) but after working for six months in the social support branch of at a religious charity, you realised the systems within support agencies could work better for the person who needs help. You decided to try a master of design futures at RMIT and after an internship, secured a job at Tackle. It took you a few years to find your stride and you’re now able to take on more demanding projects as the project lead.
“The National Disability Insurance Agency was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government on 1 July 2013, beginning with a trial phase known as the NDIS Launch. The NDIS began to be introduced across Australia from July 2016. It is being progressively rolled out and is not due to be completed until 2019–20.” - The National Disability Insurance Scheme: a chronology
Guiding Principles
After you’ve formed your team, one of the first tasks you must complete is to co-design a set of guiding principles for the team to refer to throughout this long-term engagement.
Guiding principles are a way to call out inconsistencies between an organisation’s stated aims and what it does. The act of developing principles either for the top-level or the instance is a valuable exercise for the team.
Guiding principles work at two levels. The first is as a framework for a values-based culture to develop across the organisation. The second is in specific design situations, such as designing a service or product.
At the top level, the principles are set so that any action within the organisation (such as writing a policy or recruiting a new staff member) references the principles. For example, when a policy is developed around environmental sustainability, it should also reference the accessibility issues as outlined in the principles.
With a product or service, principles become more focussed on the service or product itself. They will reference the top-level principles as well as what guides the specific design. For example: a design principle might be to rely on input from someone with lived experience. The principle would be to respectfully engage with a person with lived experience, with attention to the power relations and ethics in the situation.
Some examples of guiding principles include:
• Speak out loudListen intentionally
• Work out loud,
• Be transparent at all times
• Lean-in to ethical practices, call-out ‘ethical-fading’ internally and externally
• A bias towards care: self, team, project, partnersLearning in constant reflection and through documentation
• Seek to innovate
• Work smart
Questions for team selection
When selecting your team, ask yourself these questions:
• What are the resources that the team will use to organise itself?
These could include studies, current practices, or your experiences.
• How will you optimise the talent in your team? You may choose to do an analysis or 360s. Or you may choose to let the talent and dynamic surface organically. It depends on who is in your team.
• Is there someone in the studio or outside of work who could be valuable in helping you form the team or help the team form themselves? How would you involve them? For example, you could bring them in as a workshop facilitator.
• What are the responsibilities and accountabilities of each team member? Who is covering what tasks, outputs, deadlines, alerts, communications?
• Will your team change over time as the project moves through different stages? If so, how will this be managed? Who initiates the changes, what types of handovers will there be?
• What is planned for times in the project where the government team might change, or a significant pivot is taken by the partners?
On the line
As you leave a meeting with Homefull and the university partner who developed the proposal, Audrey, the project lead from Homefull pulls you aside for a word.
Audrey: Hey, can I just grab you for a moment … I just wanted to add, and this is just between us, that I’ve had some communication from someone quite high up in the health department, quite out of the blue. He somehow heard of the program--
You: Oh? That’s encouraging!
Audrey: It is! It definitely is, especially because he’s got a background in social work, he actually used to be a social worker, and he can see the value in what we’re doing here.
You: This sounds like good news.
Audrey: Definitely. It just means there’ll be a bit of scrutiny and if the pilot goes well, we have some support to extend the program.
You: And if it doesn’t…
Audrey: Let’s not think about that part. Let’s just say that there’s a lot to gain if it does go well.
You: Okay, thanks for letting me know. That is equally encouraging and terrifying.
Audrey: Ha! Yes, I know, this has actually become much bigger and more impactful than I could have imagined, let’s just keep up the good work and see what we can achieve.
Early days
In the first few weeks of the MAT program, everything works like a dream. The people at the centre of the teams respond positively to their increased agency and the carefully selected and trained teams are going above and beyond your expectations.
Unfortunately, one of the agency leads in Jess’s team has to unexpectedly take leave for personal reasons. She’s able to stay on in a reduce capacity and help out for a week or so while a replacement is found and rushed through training but the handover is hurried. The new team member is a young woman, nearly the same age as Jess, and in your initial strategy meetings with the MAT you get a sense they’ll get along and might even bond.
However, after introducing Jess to the new team member, cracks start to immediately show. The new team member hasn’t been in her position for long and doesn’t quite know how to cede authority to Jess. She also isn’t sure how to navigate the rules of her job and the new rules of the MAT. What’s making matters worse is her tone over email and text is brusque and cold. In the email chains and group texts you’re a part of, you can see Jess becoming more frustrated and frosty by the day.
The next day, while trying to figure out how help the distressed team member integrate into the team dynamic, you get a text from the team lead. Jess didn’t turn up to the weekly meeting. By the weekend, Jess has missed an appointment with her therapist and isn’t responding to messages. You can see on WhatsApp that she’s seeing the messages but she’s not responding. The milestone check in is coming up next week and the team are all worried about Jess. How do you proceed?
A conversation over coffee
One day you invite the new team member for a check-in over coffee. You make the effort to go to a coffee shop near her office. After some small talk, you ask if it’s okay to record her answers for your research and jump into it your questions.
You: So today I also wanted to ask you a few questions about how you’re finding the experience so far and what you need help with.
Team member: Yeah, great. Happy to answer any of your questions.
You: Okay, great! Firstly, how are you finding it in general? I know you haven’t been at the agency long so this must have been a big change.
Team member: Oh yep, it was a big shake up but my boss recommended me and I just felt like I couldn’t say no — couldn’t pass up an opportunity, I mean.
You: And has your boss been supportive?
Team member: Ummm, I guess? A little. It’s kind of outside of his expertise so he’s not really sure how to be supportive I think.
You: Yeah, I get that. Do you feel like you’re being supported by the rest of the team though, if you need it?
Team member: Umm, well it is a bit awkward, you know because I’m coming in late and replacing someone who already knows everyone. I do feel a bit out of my league sometimes but surely everyone feels like that, it’s a new kind of thing.
You: Yeah, it’s definitely a new and scary experience, like almost nothing at uni or your past work experience could prepare you for this. Which is a good thing, we’re doing something new, but it can also be overwhelming for you and the other agency leads. I notice you and Jess sometimes butt heads…
Team member: Oh you noticed that, I thought it was just me being paranoid. I don’t think she likes me very much.
You: I think she’s just shocked by the changed. She’s been through a lot.
At this point, the young woman starts to tear up and apologise. You turn off the recorder and get her some napkins. After a few minutes, she composes herself and you talk. She explains she’s terrified of losing her job. Before working at this agency, she was unemployed for nine months and still lives in fear she’ll be in that position again. She didn’t feel she could turn down the opportunity when it was offered to her by her boss but she doesn’t know how to handle it.
After you finish your conversation and assure her you’ll be in touch with a plan, you leave the coffee shop and walk around for a while. Next week is a milestone review and it would be beneficial for the program to have these issues sorted out by them.
