Coalition of Aboriginal Agencies Address by Dean Collard, Chair of Coalition

Coordination of a collaborative approach in the context of Aboriginal service delivery within a Noongar Nation framework.

KEY WORDS :Authority            governance       self determination            Rite to do principles such as respect that are not incorporated into many systems

Aboriginal perspectives and systems and the implementation of political strategies provide the evidence that a contrary process to the existing mainstreaming of Aboriginal service delivery exists. Mainstream leaders at a political level talk about a “whole of Government” approach. Individual Government Agencies have legislative requirements that have little control over or understanding of the reality of the barriers of implementation of a “whole of Government” approach through the bureaucratic process.

Historically the Coalition of Aboriginal Agencies intervened by developing and implementing a community development process. This occurred after the Commissioner of Police in 1999 expressing concern about the number of Aboriginal juveniles in the justice system and that it reflected an ineffective service delivery to address this issue. The Coalition developed a holistic approach to the problem and created the Indigenous Family Program.

This process is not new to Aboriginal organisations. Aboriginal people own this process as part of their fundamental principles in life such as giving and sharing information and maximizing resources – “sharing the carcass of the kangaroo”. Aboriginal heads of agencies are part of a wider community with community obligations. Current funding agreements force silo operations in Government and non – Government Agencies. The Coalition is working through these barriers to create a tangible and practical ‘whole of Government” delivery of service that also meets the holistic needs of our people. We have identified huge gaps in the capacity of the Government to operate in this way. The Coalition will take the responsibility of teaching the Government our way of working. The success of this process is demonstrated in the Indigenous Family Program Report.

The community development model is interactive and supportive of this way of doing things. The Government appears to react by placing blockages almost as an automatic response because of this lack of knowledge of this way of doing things. A great deal of mind shifting and workplace culture shifts are required to embrace this process. This naturally is very threatening for some of the workers. We make the observation from 40 years of experience in working in this environment that the existing system is chaotic, inefficient and destructive and offers little advantage to our community. The Coalition way empowers our people to move beyond crisis and into achieving their own goals.

The Coalition of Aboriginal Agencies’ mission statement states that through the application of the principles of self determination and Noongar cultural values will endeavor to work in partnership with each other and all Government Agencies to achieve the aims of the Indigenous Family Program.

The Coalition is the mechanism that needs to exist to deal with the chaos of the Government systems. It exists and endures at this stage through the chaos including the turmoil of individual Aboriginal Agencies by tirelessly working towards unity. Agencies individually come and go because of the chaos that challenges individuals and Agencies. The membership will be expanded to offer inclusion of all Aboriginal Agencies in the metropolitan area.

The Coalition is also the framework by which ATSIC could use the mechanics of the process. ATSIC operate at a political level through mediums such as the Regional State Agreement. The Coalition complements this Agreement at a service delivery level. The instrument under that framework is the Indigenous Family Program. This program has been established as the operating arm of the Coalition to coordinate the service delivery of Agencies working with identified Aboriginal families within the Perth metro area. IFP is based on a vision to better meet the needs of Aboriginal families at extreme risk. It is about capacity building, empowerment and grass roots development work with both families and service provision agencies in Noongar country.

An example to demonstrate the need and the ensuing success of the Program is found with one of the families. This particular family had at least 40 different Agencies visiting them. These Agencies visits were not collaborative or coordinated. The family was completely disempowered and there were no successful outcomes. The problems have traversed generations within this family. The Indigenous Family Program developed a system of coordinating services to visit this family based upon what the family identified as their needs. The IFP has maximised the services through collaboration and coordination inclusive of the grass roots clients.

The major barriers that have faced the Coalition and the IFP include

• Lack of resources.

A lack of understanding of the community process by the funding Agencies has led to blocks of the process that enables the grass roots workers to engage the families. For example under resourcing housing needs. This creates severe delays in engaging the families to develop their Family Development Plans.

The Coalition has not had access to capacity building funds to enable a structure to be implemented that would allow utmost efficiency in governance of the IFP and other social ventures. Each Coalition Executive member is a CEO of an organisation. The allocation of time and energy is prohibitive without a formal structure such as a Secretariat body. Never the less the Coalition has achieved tremendous success despite the difficulties. Imagine the accomplishments if funded at full capacity.

• Funding inadequacies.

The Coalition has attempted to create a single line of funding with one acquittal and one report to one set of outcomes for the IFP. This has not occurred. The result is a cumbersome work load to acquit 6 lots of funding with 6 reports and 6 sets of outcomes. Relying on 6 funding areas has also led to “drip feeding” with the funds. The IFP have been delayed by 9 months with the latest funding round. This demonstrates another institutional blockage for a coordinated approach to service delivery that the Government Agencies have been unable to cope with.

• Evaluation methods.

Our experience with this process of interacting with Government Agencies is the recognition that they don’t have any tools to measure the evaluation of the IFP. CAMS were contracted to develop an evaluation model. The “off the shelf” model that they presented to the Coalition evaluated only part of the process ie the quantitative information. The Coalition needed a means of legitimizing and measuring the qualitative outcomes of families. This led to the need for suspension of the CAMS approach and the commencement of working in partnership with Curtin Indigenous Research Centre to develop an evaluation tool to measure the social impact on the families. This was very successful and once again has not reached full potential due to a lack of funds.

The Coalition has had to recognize the gaps, develop, design, implement and manage the tools.

In summary the Coalition members have developed the strategic capacity to negotiate with Government Agencies regarding internal policies that affect our Aboriginal community. There is no other identified mechanism to challenge the policies. Coalition is the voice to challenge the policies that aren’t culturally appropriate.