from YAPRap June 2005
by Jennifer Anne, YAPA Policy & Training Officer
Those of us who work in the youth and community sector know there is never enough money. With yet another state budget that offers no increase in the amount of funding available to generalist youth services, it has never been clearer that funding for our sector is in crisis.
Background
In the 2002 NSW Youth Services Census of 770 services, 95% of respondents nominated 'funding for the youth sector' as one of the top two priorities facing the youth sector (50% nominated as highest priority and 35% as second highest priority).
Even before that, it was the common perception that funding levels and arrangements for the youth and community sector were inadequate for the services required, both in terms of government expectation and community need.
Concerns around funding continue to be of the highest priority to youth service providers. Looking at recent state budgets, the Youth Services Census in 2002 and interviews for YAPA by Maria Kissouri with 10 CSGP funded youth services across NSW, we can see that these concerns are well founded.
YAPA's research focuses on the Community Services Grant Program (CSGP) funding available through the NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS). Of the approximately 800 youth projects operating across NSW, around 300 receive funding under this program - the biggest single chunk of funding for the youth sector. But the 'crisis' highlighted in this paper is not limited to CSGP funded youth services or indeed to the youth sector. Recent research by the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) indicates that the trends and experiences observed in CSGP youth services is part of a wider context of community services which suggests that service costs are increasing, government funding is decreasing and service demands are higher than ever before (Australians Living on the Edge 6 ACOSS 2002-2003 financial year).
With the exception of the 2004-2005 state budget, the funding increase budgeted for CSGP Community Youth Projects and Adolescent Support Programs did not rise notably above the year's indexation, and in some cases represented a reduction of funding in real terms. Indexation of funding allocated is not accurately reflective of the increase in costs experienced by services. The 2003-2004 budget provided an increase of about $2 million over the indexation adjustment (due to one off additional money injected by the NSW government to meet the increases in the Social and Community Services Award). However, this was offset by a marked decrease in the 2004-2005 budget.
CSGP Community Youth Projects and Adolescent Support Programs |
||
Financial Year |
Budget $000 |
Revised $000 |
1999-2000 |
15, 149 |
15, 172 |
2000-2001 |
15, 867 |
16, 261 |
2001-2002 |
16, 610 |
17, 139 |
2002-2003 |
17, 050 |
19.046 |
2003-2004 |
19, 678 |
20, 030 |
2004-2005 |
19, 281 |
19, 369 |
2005-2006 |
20, 055 |
NA |
In the 2004-2005 budget, 261 organisations were funded for a total of 297 projects under the CSGP Youth Projects and Adolescent Support Programs. 2003-2004 the median CSGP youth service project funding was $54, 018 and the average was $62, 411. The median funding given to youth services was equivalent to roughly one full time worker. The average project funding would allow for an additional day of work.
How to measure a crisis
How would we measure a 'crisis' in the funding of the youth sector? Crisis here is defined as the negative short term and/or long term impact of funding levels and arrangements on the capacity of the youth sector to meet the broad aims of the funding programs as well as the basic aims of youth work generally. These aims are most generally articulated by DoCS's own statement of aims. If funding levels and administration negatively impact on the ability of services to meet these objectives then the funding context can be said to be in crisis.
The Community Services Grants Program (CSGP) aims to assist all people in NSW to live in a just society and to participate in strong communities that cope effectively with change and promote safety, welfare and wellbeing.
The CSGP's objectives are to:
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support children, young people, individuals and families so that they can enhance their independence, safety, self-esteem and quality of life within the community
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build strong communities and social capital and undertake community development, so that communities are well-informed, resourced and connected and equity and diversity are embraced
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build and sustain the capacity of the community services sector at a state or regional level to deliver responsive services through sector development, policy and advocacy.
This includes funding for individual and family support services, community development services, neighbourhood and community centres, youth support services and some child protection services, as well as services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and ethnic groups.
An Inquiry into Child Protection services in NSW 2002 highlighted the need for "substantial investment" in support services, that is; a large increase in funding for services such as youth services. It is recognised here that youth services play a preventative role, which assists young people to break through cycles of abuse, poverty and disadvantage.
The youth sector funding can be said to be 'in crisis' in that funding levels and administration has a direct negative impact on the service delivery capacity of the organisation. There is an imbalance between the amount of funding and the level of costs associated with youth service provision. In particular there is a disparity between the indexation applied to youth sector funding and the increases in costs experienced by services. Existing funding levels are not adequate to meet existing obligations and identified need. This has crisis implications in that the quality, frequency, and appropriateness of service delivery are negatively impacted upon. Service provision implications also including staffing related impacts, including inability to attract and keep appropriately qualified and experienced staff, high staff turn over (which in turn increased recruitment related costs), inadequate provision for staff support (resulting in staff burnout), inability to provide specialised services or meet the needs of specific disadvantaged or minority groups and negative impact on the frequency, range and type of service that can be offered.
Impact on Service Delivery and Outcomes
Core costs
Of the services interviewed by Kissouri, it was reported that there is a 4-40% gap between the actual cost of services contracted for (under programs nominated as CSGP) and the funding received. The reasons for this funding/cost imbalance are multiple, but can broadly be summarised relating to (increasing) unmet core costs and continuing and increasing unmet need.
The increases in running cost of services are disproportionate to the indexing and increases in allocation of funding, both to the sector as a whole and to individual services. Services dealt with this shortfall through a number of strategies, from decreasing staff hours, reshuffling other internal budgets and grants received, including making up the short fall from other core funding, contingency or long term investment, and seeking additional private and public money. Other experience suggests that many non-government agencies have begun adopting user-pays systems for the sharing of resources in order to subsidise high operational costs. Employing any of these strategies has wide ranging negative impacts on the quality, frequency and accessibility of services offered.
Increases in operation costs for youth services have included:
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Increases in SACS Award rates of pay. Changes to the award handed down by the Industrial Relations Commission in November 2001 provided for an immediate increase to all hourly rates of pay of at least 11.5%, full time hours of work reduced from 40 to 38 hours per week and a further 3% rise in November 2002. Some additional money was injected by the NSW Government to meet these increases.
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In addition, there is pressure to provide award wages in order to retain experienced and qualified workers in the non-government sector.
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Costs relating to the legal obligations of services: including general and public liability insurance, Work Cover and related OH&S requirements. Of the services interviewed by Maria Kissouri, Insurance and public liability costs are recorded to be the highest increasing cost for services. Such costs have tripled the core expenses of some organisations. One auspice organisation reports a total increase of $20, 824 in insurance costs alone from end June 2002 - end June 2003. ACOSS research found that (Australia wide) community services experienced an average increase in insurance costs of 19% from 2002-2003 to 2003-2004.
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Increased rental costs
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IT equipment and maintenance costs: increasing depreciation of existing capital, increasing cost of equipment maintenance including technological advancements and replacement.
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Translation and interpreter user-pays fees
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Management training and orientation: Management of services is often the responsibility of community volunteers who generally require specific skills development. This often creates an increased need for professional training. The cost of this is often absorbed by the personnel of agencies, via the introduction of in-services facilitated by staff themselves.
Larger organisations are better able to absorb the increasing disparity between increasing costs and funding indexation increases. This is because through pooling resources, larger organisations can increase the efficiency of operational support, such as finance and administration, management, equipment and insurance and rent. Kissouri found that this capacity could be found in organisations of four or more staff or a total funding of $150, 000 or more. At present, only 22 (or 8.4%) of the 261 organisations funded in the 2004-2005 budget were allocated over $150, 000. The overwhelming majority of youth projects cannot at face value even begin to absorb this pressure. It is true that some of these projects are themselves part of broader community service organisations, and would have access to this wider infrastructure. But where this happens it is by organisational initiative, not through funding design. It is happy coincidence for funding bodies that a single organisation auspices many diverse projects, not whole-of-government approaches to funding. It still remains that the majority of youth services operate solely and independently on the project funding received under CSGP.
Recurrent and non-recurrent funding
It is not practical or even desirable for only the largest of organisations to receive funding, and it is not possible for the smaller organisations - which represent the majority of those providing services to young people - to operate on current funding arrangements. As the gap between the funding provided under CSGP and the cost of service provision widens existing shortfalls have made one off project grants the only viable alternative for services struggling to meet high core costs. The prevalence and nature of non-recurrent funding in the context of inadequate recurrent funding has placed an additional pressure on services' ability to holistically meet their client bases' needs in both the short and long term.
In interviews with Kissouri, services raised concerns regarding the pattern within youth services to apply for grants as a way of sustaining an income for the organisation. Increasing the number of grants received increases the volume of work, however it does not necessarily increase, or even maintain core service delivery. Core service delivery includes provision of information, referral, support, educational activities and community development programs. One-off grants are commonly sought by youth services as a means for survival. Yet one-off grants are also reported to be time intensive and expensive to manage. Often grants received, although necessary, are insufficient to meet the total administrative and operational demands of the new service. It is commonly reported that amounts received by funding bodies are less than the proposed budget amount. This requires the service to review the outcomes and activities of the funded program - which requires again more staff time in consultation and planning.
Short-term funding contracts come with an expectation that the activities and programs offered will be maintained past the expiry of the funds. The idea of one-off grants is that their results will be sustainable, so as to prevent a reliance on on-going government funds. Sustaining the outcome of one-off programs is difficult to measure as the programs often cease once the funding term ends.
One-off grants provide valuable programs to the community. However, such programs often identify greater need, which requires sustainable, on-going program delivery, rather than short-term one-off strategies. Recurrent CSGP grants do not provide provisions for increasing funding levels to incorporate the activities initiated by a previous short-term funding contract. Evidence from other major funding providers suggests that the allocation of pick-up funding is being continually decreased. Hence, the work of one-off funding projects often cannot be sustained past the expiry of the funds.
Of significance is that the youth sector attracts very little private money. 90% of total youth sector funding is from federal, state or local government, with the remaining 10% being made up of a combination of private, corporate and religion based sources. In general, shortfalls in funding are being made up from other sources of public money. Youth services do not and cannot absorb excess costs: responsibility is simply shuffled between government funding programs and by staff working unpaid overtime. If a funding body is not providing all the cost associated with a contracted service then the provision of that service is reliant on siphoning money from another funded project.
Given the additional stress multiple funding sources places on services in the form of accountability and reporting requirements, and service provision impacts of low funding as detailed in this brief, effective whole-of-government approaches to funding have never been more crucial.
Inadequacy for existing and increasing need
81% of CSGP youth projects claim they're already running to full, or over capacity. 77% of CSGP youth services believe it would benefit their clients to be open longer and/or different hours. Of those services, 75% stated that more paid staff were needed and 76% that additional funding was required to make this change possible.
Pressure on services is higher and competition is greater. This exists within an environment of increased social disadvantage. More young people are more disadvantaged than ever before including higher youth unemployment rates, higher youth homelessness and associated higher rates of risk of homelessness.
In a 2003 Submission to the NSW Government, the New South Wales Council of Social Services (NCOSS) wrote; "services report having to reduce staffing hours and hours of service opening to work within their very tight funding arrangements - yet more is expected of them." This evidence suggests agencies may be finding it necessary to reduce services in order to meet the demands of the increased cost of operating their service. The common consequence of this is reduced outcomes for users of services, as well as whole communities.
Work with young people with higher, more complex needs requires greater levels of resourcing and staff training, hence the most isolated and most disconnected young people are most likely to be disadvantaged by a services' low funding levels. Accessing and working with marginalised young people, for example: young people at risk of homelessness, young people with drug and alcohol dependency, indigenous young people or young people from refugee backgrounds, is particularly resource intensive. Working with these young people requires implementing a variety of strategies including the employment of bi-lingual / bi-cultural staff, indigenous staff, staff with specialised skills, supplementary training for all staff, physical maintenance of venues and reflective program development. The diversity of the young people who access youth services requires resourcing to implement the types of programs which will attract and engage marginalised groups of young people, as well as all young people in the community serviced by the organisation.
Service Provision
Youth services provide myriad services across a broad spectrum of recreational activities, training and education, counselling and support, and community development. There is a definite preference for styles of service provision that have a high staff to client ratio, are non time-intensive and have low resource and capital outlay. Amongst the services Kissouri interviewed, it was reported services have shifted towards this model of service delivery away from more frequent and intensive client servicing.
snapshot of CSGP service provision:
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The most common service available to young people from youth services / projects is the provision of information and referral, provided by 93% of CSGP funded Youth Services. A high level of collaboration and networking required is implied by this service.
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Drop in is the most common group activity, provided by 67% of services. Drop in is often the only contact many young people have with support services and facilities. Many young people who are considered socially isolated gain access to a range of services and information via their participation in drop in activities.
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Youth services are commonly providing recreational activities, with 71% of CSGP projects providing structured sporting and recreation activities.
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46% of CSGP services offer individual casework advocacy. The resourcing and training levels required to undertake comprehensive case management tasks may be a significant contributing factor to the above.
Recent trends toward alternative delivery of leisure activities such as cafes need to be measured against priority needs of young people. Even within this shift, youth work and the delivery of services to young people is human resource intensive. Staff contact hours cannot be reduced or replaced by other mechanisms. Without an increase in funding, existing services are unable to match need and run high maintenance facilities at the same time.
Amongst the general responsibility of youth services is the generation of social and cultural capital and community capacity building and development. Non-government, community-based agencies have the potential to generate social capital. Most services that are provided to young people via CSGP funded programs have, to varying extents, elements of community development. These projects, however, seldom have the resources to provide innovative and intense community education programs to young people who are "detached" from their communities. Without increased resourcing such as additional staff hours and training, these innovations remain absent. Adequate funding levels would enable these projects to obtain relevant training, build their infrastructure and consult their target groups in order to build community capacity.
Staff Training and Support
The highest ranking reason for staff not attending training was a lack of training money in the project budget. Professional supervision is often considered a luxury item within a restricted budget. In an environment with increasing social disadvantage and growing demand on services, the lack of professional supervision, often results in high staff turnover and reduced consistency of service provision. This consequently impacts outcomes for young people, and often it is the most disadvantaged young people that miss out. The CSGP program does not have an allocated amount of funds specifically for the provision of training to CSGP funded staff.
Recruitment and Retention
Organisations' ability to employ staff with appropriate relevant industry training and experience in youth work positions is reported to be increasingly difficult. The NSW Youth Services Census shows that 56% of services had difficultly filling advertised positions. This is directly linked to the service's incapacity to offer wage levels that match the qualification and experience level requirements of the job. 35% of CSPG services stated that, of applications received, the number and standard of applications was poor or very poor. The highest rating reasons given by services for not attracting appropriate staff were: not being able to pay staff enough hours per week (32%), low rates offered under the Social and Community Services (SACS) Award (29%) and general low rates of pay in the youth sector generally (32%).
Restrictions on wages are reflected in the outcomes of the services. The desire to meet higher experience and training in recruitment tends to mean compromising on weekly hours of employment. There are a higher number of part time positions than full time positions in CSGP projects. But part time employees are restricted in terms of developing innovative programs and increasing the capacity of service provision to young people and the community. Limits on outcomes for young people include the reduced accessibility and appropriateness of services, the quantity and quality of the work conducted by the service and the restricted time for staff to address requests.
Staff retention rates are notoriously low in the youth sector, with many services registering permanent position turnover at least once less than every two years. Of the services Kissouri interviewed, more than half reported staff position turnover within two years. Retention rates are symptomatic of many varied issues including salary, operating in isolation, temporary employment contracts, support and supervision levels, and position descriptions. The only cause of low retention rates articulated by the interviewed services was funding levels for staff wages.
The Social and Community Services Award is commonly adopted for the employment of youth workers. Grades 2 and 3 of this award cover a large number of youth workers conducting multiple tasks such as drop in supervision, activities and program development (including camps), networking, administration and reporting. The base salary for a Grade 2 youth worker is $28,324 per annum (Social and Community Services Employee (State) Award December 2003). Larger community-based organisations may have a greater capacity to retain staff. In Kissouri's interviews, three of the four services reporting stable retention rates were larger organisations employing four or more full time staff members.
As well as the impacts of low retention on service provision and service interruption, high turnover carries inherent increased costs. Recruitment costs alone can represent a significant proportion of the program budget, coupled with the cost of service delivery time for orientation and training into the new position. Yet again this is another indication of the cyclic nature of the funding crisis - low funding levels means less appropriate staff and minimum professional support which in turn leads to higher turnover and increased recruitment costs.
Conclusion & recommendations
Current funding levels are not adequate to meet the existing and ongoing responsibilities and costs of youth services. Funding levels are certainly not adequate for services to sustainably meet the existing and emerging needs of the community they serve. This suggests that a long-term commitment to increasing funding levels and an immediate increase of funding is needed. Furthermore, on-the-ground experiences of services demonstrate that the current funding context does indeed have implications of crisis for the provision of youth services in NSW.
YAPA recommends:
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An immediate one-off funding injection into youth services to enable services to meet existing financial commitments. This would address the historical running down of services.
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A reassessment of indexation policy to ensure youth services can maintain current levels of service provision and financial commitments into the future.
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An increase, in real terms, of the funding available to youth services. This would enable services to address the identified increasing demand on service provision.
