VCOSS

Cath Smith: VCOSS strongly advocates targeted policies to reduce disadvantage and create opportunities for all Victorians to access services and opportunities and we’ve been strong supporters of the (Labor) Government’s A Fairer Victoria framework. You were quoted in the Sunday Age recently as saying the Coalition Government would retain and build on A Fairer Victoria. What is your thinking here? What does this mean?

Mary Wooldridge: What it means, Cath, is that the Coalition’s had a very positive and proactive approach in relation to people who are disadvantaged, with disabilities, illness, younger people needing access to services… and we will be looking to build on what is already in place, because there are some good things there and there are some things that definitely need improvement, further investment and change, so they can have the impact that needs to be had. So…we’re intending to keep the funding that’s currently there for the Fairer Victoria programs but we’ll be investing further on that. Now the (Labor) Government’s announced a $493 million package…I’ve done a like-for-like comparison, and once all our policies are announced we’ll have an additional $660 million package that invests in the whole range of services, from people with disabilities to carers, early childhood, problem gambling, housing, all the different areas that are addressed through the A Fairer Victoria package. We see there are real opportunities to invest further to change the outcomes and have positive outcomes for people and families who need that assistance.

Cath Smith: Moving on to children and families, there has been a strong media focus recently on child protection from a crisis response perspective. However, we know that early intervention and the right support at the right time for children and families is the most effective means of delivering the best possible outcomes. How would the Coalition incorporate early intervention strategies into your children and families policies?

Mary Wooldridge: We’ve already made some significant commitments in relation to this, because we believe that trying to stop the abuse before it starts is absolutely critical to success in this process. We already can identify, particularly, both parents who are at risk through previous notifications, or young women who were in child protection themselves who are pregnant. We’ll be working in a very direct, one-on-one way with those women and parents, during their pregnancy if we know they’re potentially at risk, through till that child is 4 years old, to support them through that process, give them a helping hand that they might not have from a family member or their own parents…We think that will go a long way to helping to reduce the abuse before it happens because we know those at-risk mums often then become actual notifications to child protection because nearly three quarters of them go on into child protection themselves. We think that will make a significant difference in terms of helping reduce abuse before it starts and making sure those very vulnerable babies and children are protected.

We’ve got a whole series of other child protection announcements that we’ve made which go to the heart of trying to identify those most at risk and support them along the way. I’d just like to mention also the group in out-of-home care are a very, very vulnerable group and also a group that are, in some cases, getting pregnant, or ending up homeless, or ending up in the youth justice system. We’ve committed to, once again, a case management approach, putting an individual alongside them to plan for the future, plan for their transition out of out-of-home care, help them with that transition; there’ll be money alongside to (provide support), whether it’s furniture or actually helping them get employability skills or access further education or get a job and support them right up to 25, and I know that’s one of your (priorities) in Cause not Consequence (the VCOSS state election platform). We need to put support around them that they don’t have through their own families. And we think that will go a long way to reducing some of those significant issues for young people that we are currently facing when they are leaving out-of-home care.

The other thing on child protection that we committed to is that we will have a judicial review. We believe it’s really important to get to the heart of problems. The Ombudsman said the (Labor) Government’s approach had been ‘ad hoc and reactive’, particularly to media front pages. We want to get away from that and look at the whole system because it is integrated. The kids and families who are coming into ChildFirst, are going through into child protection, the children in out-of-home care, everything ties in and you can’t look at each section individually without understanding the implications for the rest of the system as well, so our judicial review will look at that comprehensive perspective and make genuine recommendations about how we improve it for the future. It’s about finding the ideas, what we need to do to improve the child protection system as a whole.

Cath Smith: Karen Scobell on behalf of Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare asks: The Coalition is proposing to establish an independent Children’s Commissioner. How do you envisage such a position working and what will improve for our children and young people with such a position?

Mary Wooldridge: Well, this is an announcement we made some time ago… Bernie Geary does a fantastic job as Child Safety Commissioner (and) we completely support what his role is, but the reality is he’s appointed by the Minister and he reports to the Minister. And even though there has been some widening of his responsibilities, he still can only investigate what the Minister asks him to investigate. So, instead of having a transparent and independent system, we’ve got a system that’s constrained by the pressures the Minister is under at any one time. So having an independent Children’s Commissioner will mean that person can initiate reviews, report to the Parliament, not the Minister, and actually be a real advocate for children with an independence that the current Child Safety Commissioner doesn’t have. We believe that will make a difference for children because their issues will be addressed, based on what’s needed, not perhaps what’s on the political agenda. It will also mean the community will have confidence because there’s a transparency and accountability of the Government through independent means to the Parliament rather than back to the Minister. This is something that’s been called for very widely, it’s actually something that’s happened in every state and territory practically around the rest of the country, and Victoria stands out by not having made this move to really have the independence of the role for the protection of the children.

Cath Smith: Anything you would like to comment on, Wendy, in terms of what a Bailleau Government would do in the early years area?

Wendy Lovell: In the children and early childhood development policy, we’ll certainly be investing in infrastructure for kindergartens and early childhood care facilities. We’ll also be committing $10 million towards the KISS (Kindergarten Inclusion Support Service) program, to support disabled children to participate in the kindergarten experience. We have also committed that we will review the criteria for qualifying for KISS. At the moment, it’s so narrow, you virtually have to be a danger to yourself or others to qualify for that program, so we’ll look at broadening that program….

We’ve also already announced support for small rural kindergartens that are really struggling to remain viable and their kindergarten committees have really onerous fund-raising requirements imposed upon them. So we want to support kindergarten services right across the state so that they are viable and every child can participate. We’ve had the current COAG (Coalition of Australian Governments) arrangements on the 15 hours of kindergarten, which of course was the Federal Government’s policy in 2007, policy that was announced the wrong way around. Normally you assess your capacity to deliver and work towards a timetable of delivery, not only train teachers but also provide the infrastructure that’s needed. What we saw was a policy announced without doing that planning first and the consequences of that, at the moment, is there won’t be universal access because hundreds of children may miss out on kindergarten experiences in 2013 if we move to 15 hours then and also we may see the loss of 3 year old programs. We’ve said we’ll lobby the Federal Government for additional investment in infrastructure, we also want to see them fully fund the additional five hours so that parents don’t have big additional costs in order to cover those five hours. We want the Federal Government to also contribute to the training of those teachers. I think what we need is more flexibility in that timeline for delivery; services that can deliver now and who are delivering it now, that’s terrific, but for services that aren’t able to, we don’t want to see hundreds of children miss out on kindergarten experience, so we need to have some flexibility around the timeline for the implementation of that policy.

We will also participate in the COAG process for the national equality agenda and continue to play the lead role in the implementation of the national equality agenda for early childhood education and care services.

Cath Smith: You provided us a thoughtful response to our Community Sector Sustainability questionnaire recently. One of the big ticket items this election for our sector is the commitment from the (Labor) Government which was matched in media comments by the Coalition to support the national pay case for community service workers by funding the outcomes where state programs are impacted. Can you tell us more detail about this commitment?

Mary Wooldridge: We’re very conscious that the group we’ve talking about through this pay case is largely women, underpaid relative to public sector equivalents, and respect of their work is not necessarily reflected in the pay they take home on weekly basis. We fully support the pay equity case, we will support the decisions of Fair Work Australia and we will be passing them through in our funding arrangement. So we are very clear that we believe this needs to happen and we’ll be funding the outcome.

Cath Smith: In recent days, the Commonwealth Government has written a submission to Fair Work Australia which seems to allude to a less than generous approach towards funding the outcomes or towards capacity to pay for outcomes. How would a Baillieu Government deal with these issues and how would you be able to see building workforce if we had very constrained outcomes to this case?

Mary Wooldridge: The constrained outcomes would need to come from Fair Work Australia because we’re going to support that decision and I do think it was interesting that the Federal Government’s submission was quite qualifying and suggesting that would be a very constrained decision. I think the other thing that is interesting was in last 24 hours, revealed through the Department of Human Services (and) their modelling that the first year cost would be $450 million if the full claim is supported. Now John Brumby rejects that, he rejects the modelling, saying the $50 million he announced is really enough and he expects that to be maintained. So I think there’s a real lack of understanding about what the implications may be and perhaps some equivocation…I know VCOSS has said it thinks it will be much more than $50 million, and the ASU (Australian Services Union) and (other) unions have said that as well. I think there’s some real concern in the Labor side of things about what’s happening. We’ve been very clear: we’ll be making financial commitments in our policies in relation to supporting that claim and, if it’s more than that, then we will be funding and supporting it. So we don’t see any decision, we won’t be backing down from supporting that decision.

I think there are broader issues for the workforce as well and, for most people I talk to, pay is important, it reflects the respect and importance we pay to their roles, but there’s also a lot about how we retain workforce, how we support them, whether we’ve got the management structures around them and, particularly I’m thinking of the child protection workforce as a good example, where retention levels are very low, 28 per cent of the child protection frontline workers are leaving every year and that makes it very hard to deliver really important and critical services in the frontline. We’ll be committing to a community service workforce review, not just narrow in relation to each of the areas, because many people cross between different aspects of the community sector. So we’ll be looking at the community sector workforce as a whole, which will sit nicely beside the pay decision, about what other supports we can put around the workforce, wether it be management, whether it be training, to make sure that workforce is both attractive to students making decisions about their futures, but also they can be successful in those roles, they can see career progression which is also a big issue as well, they can be trained, they can be supported and they decide to stay in the system which highly values the skills they have…

Cath Smith: Many of our members recall a grim period in the 1990s where the government of that day cut a lot of services and programs. To what extent is the Coalition offering a different approach to that time?

Mary Wooldridge: I think it’s a different circumstance. We are very clearly and both Ted Baillieu and Kim Wells as Shadow Treasurer have said very clearly that we won’t be taking on additional debt and will be leaving a surplus so there is a buffer and all our policies are costed in that context. They are absolutely do-able, absolutely achievable and later this week further information will come out in relation to all of that. The world is different from when Jeff Kennett was coming in, in 1992. We see these commitments that we are making are high impact, will achieve the outcomes we want to achieve, are good investments, and are absolutely do-able within the budget context. There won’t be cutbacks to other areas. As we’ve said, we committed to retaining the packages that are there in relation to Fairer Victoria and investing on top of them, not walking away. We believe the things that can be done better are some of the big infrastructure projects, for example, we won’t be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Myki or over-runs of roads and infrastructure and other things. So by managing the money better, we can actually have a much higher impact…

Cath Smith: We do note some big ticket items in Coalition policy for stamp duty cuts and unspecified commitments to build new prisons. If funding gets tight, what cuts to community services to vulnerable Victorians are you able to rule out?

Mary Wooldridge: We have no plan to cut services to community services at all. Our plan is costed, it’s do-able within existing budgets, while maintaining a small surplus and not taking on additional debt. Kim Wells, our (Shadow) Treasurer, has spent a huge amount of work making sure those numbers work …and we are very confident we can run this Government in a way that makes sure that we don’t have cost over-runs, we don’t have blow outs and the money and commitments we have made will be absolutely delivered with as high an impact as can be achieved.

Cath Smith: The majority of low income households in Victoria live in rental housing, often paying more than 30 per cent of their income on rent. What would a Baillieu Government do for renters?

Wendy Lovell: I think what we have to realise is that, in this state, we have a crisis at all levels of housing. We have a shortage of housing for home ownership, we have a severely restricted private rental market and that, in turn, is putting pressure on the public and community housing sector and what should be an important safety net, public housing in this state, well, the safety net is full of holes and people are falling through that into homelessness. We think what we have to have is a holistic approach to housing in this state and part of our commitment, to halve the stamp duty for first home buyers, will assist in making housing more afford for people in the home ownership market. We also have quite a comprehensive planning policy that is designed to speed up the planning processes to make sure there’s enough land out there that’s released to make sure we can keep up with the demand for housing in the home ownership market.

We are known as the good economic managers and we will manage the economy better so we can encourage investment into investment housing that then goes into the private rental market as well. Of course we realise the importance of continuing to invest in both public housing and community housing and also to invest in the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) that puts houses into the market at only 80 per cent of market rent to assist low income families to get into private rental. So we’re committed to solving the housing crisis in this state and to supporting low income families to make sure they can be housed with reasonable rents.

We’re also committed to modernise the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) because there are some problems with that. It’s an Act that’s 13 years old. Normally you would say the market sets the price, but when you have a failed market as we have after 11 years of the failed housing policies that we’ve seen from this (Labor) Government, we also need to ensure that regulatory legislative framework is right …so we’ll be having a look at the RTA with a view to modernising that and make sure it does provide safety for tenants around things like minimum standards and around Section 40 of the Act which prevents people charging more than a month’s rent in advance, except if your rent is in excess of $350. How out of date is that? You’d be struggling to find somewhere, particularly in the city, for that. When that Act was written, that was at the high end of the market, now it’s probably at the lower end, so there are a few things to be looked at...

Cath Smith: Would a Baillieu Government support the outcomes of the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into public housing, in particular support for minimum rental standards, and investment in social housing stock to reach the national average of 5 per cent?

Wendy Lovell: I think there have been a number of recommendations from that inquiry that need to be looked at. Yes, we do only have 3.8 per cent of our housing in Victoria that is public and community housing, compared to an average of about 5 per cent (nationally) so we need to look at why that is and how we can improve that percentage. We also need to look at the management practices of housing in this state, I think housing can be far better managed to ensure we can house families sooner. What we’ve seen in this state in the last 11 years, the average waiting time for people on the early housing waiting list, as you know for people who are at risk of recurring homelessness, has blown out from 2.8 months in 1999 to 8.5 months this year and that’s just an average time. I speak to people all the time who are in the Segment 1 list but are being told they’ll be waiting for 4 years, so it does depend which area you’re in and your circumstances. We want to see that waiting time brought back. We also know Victoria has more vacant public housing than any other state, noted in the Australian Institute of Housing Welfare report, that showed that, despite New South Wales having double the amount of public housing than we have here, Victoria had more vacant public housing properties at any point in time. The Auditor General identified not once but twice that that maintenance backlog of the Office of Housing is enormous in this state and, I think, with better management practices we can actually turn those vacant properties around sooner and get people housed and solve their housing problems.

Cath Smith: Elizabeth McGarry, on behalf of the Inclusive Education Network says: Many community organisations and countless families are so alarmed by the huge educational barriers still existing for children with additional needs, that they are calling for the Victorian Ombudsman to hold an independent inquiry to determine the causes and identify solutions. VCOSS asks – what would a Baillieu Government do, ideally to avert the need for such an Inquiry and respond to this pressing issue?

Martin Dixon: It’s a very broad question because you have students with additional learning needs, physical needs, social physical needs and that number seems to increasing, even though in our government schools the numbers aren’t increasing to a large extent, but there’s been a huge increase in non-government schools so we’ve got to look at all children, not just in government schools. We feel as far as programs go for students with disability, it’s just been a bandaid job, which is not coping with the reality of what actually happening within our schools. There are far more complex cases, increasing numbers of children with autism, and there’s a whole range of behaviours that they show when they come to school and we’re just not coping with that in schools. It not only affects them and their teachers but it does affect the other students in the school as well. A lot of money that is available in these programs is not getting to the child, it’s being caught up in the bureaucracy. We feel there must be better ways of getting that money to the coalface or the ‘chalkface’ as we say in education, to look at how we better use the money, new ways of organising that money, networking with other schools and other systems, and just giving our schools more autonomy. There are some very, very creative solutions that some schools are using in their schools, also in networks, and it should be the job of the Department not to put a blockage there, but to actually encourage that and allow schools and networks of schools to make better use of the money that‘s there in the first place.

…I think we need to work with the Federal Government on this as well, to see what is working in other states, what models, what is the role of the federal government, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and where this fits in. so there are a lot of big questions out there and, instead of just another bandaid solution, people need to get back to the start and, work on that together.

Putting that aside, we have students with everyday social needs, they’re bringing quite complex problems to schools. We’ve announced additional welfare officers. We actually found out that government funding for the welfare officer program, which is very useful and popular in schools, is going to run out next year, (but) we’re going to put on another 150 welfare officers to go into roughly 300 schools. They go into schools that are most in need too, so we’re broadening the net of schools which would have access to those welfare officers. Also we have huge bureaucratic delays in getting the SSSOs psychologists and speech therapists into schools – the (Labor) government came up with the bright idea where, like a triage model, schools fill out an 8 page form, send it to central office, weeks down the track they’ll get someone to come out to school, who might not have been there before. We would abolish that, we would have a system where schools get the money, they can network together, they can use it themselves with their own resources in the way that suits the students in their care. It’s very important that schools develop relationships with psychologists and specialists, so teachers get to know the specialists and visa versa, also that students and their families are comfortable with them. That’s best done at a local level, at a neighbourhood level, at the network level…

Cath Smith: One of the big issues for students and families is affordability of education, we still see a very strong correlation between the income of a family and their educational outcomes. So how will a Baillieu Government break that link between low income and lower outcomes.

Martin Dixon: There is actually a loading for schools for lower socio-economic areas. We would continue that but I think it needs to be better targeted and, once again, go straight to chalkface, to the schools, programs to reduce costs or to add the services that would best meet the needs of the school community; for example, a low socioeconomic school in the country is very different to one from the western suburbs and I think we need to allow the schools to address their needs better with that extra money and extra resources they are receiving. There’s also the National Partnerships money between the federal and state government; again a lot of that is going through the Department, and a program is handed down….it should be the other way around, coming from the bottom up, schools saying ‘we’ve got a program we think is best for the needs of our students’ and applying for that National Partnerships money to do that. So there are already some existing resources there that can be far better used.

Some schools are demanding payments from parents for programs to try to keep up with other schools or sometimes for materials…..I think schools have to get in the position where the lack of funding is not going to force them to do that, but I think our schools always have to be very realistic about the community they’re serving and what they can demand from the community.

Cath Smith: We’ve got a specific question about this issue from Jacquie Lynch…please could you ask the Liberals how they intend to tackle funding for disadvantaged state schools – will there be more or less money?

Martin Dixon: First of all, there’ll be more money that actually reaches the coalface to start with, with the National Partnerships programs, the extra loading that’s put on these schools that will be better used by the schools. ….so there’ll be more flexibility for schools with that. The welfare officers, by their nature, tend to go to those sorts of schools; we’re not only maintaining the welfare officer program in primary schools, we’re actually going to add to that as well. We have a lack of teachers in some subject areas, that also tends to be in the western suburbs, poorer areas, country areas. We’re offering hundreds of scholarships for teachers to take up languages other than English, maths, science. We want them to go to schools that have not had a good maths or science teacher or Language other than English for a long while. A lot of our programs are going to going to be these schools with high needs. I’ve taught in those sorts of schools and I know what schools are putting up with…it’s been a little while ago but it’s still there.

Cath Smith: For students who fall through the net, young people who leave school early, not just children from out-of-home care….what future do you see for alternative education, or flexible learning options to assist young people?

This is an area of great need, but I’m excited about the potential actually because there are some great programs out there. Some are offered by schools, some are offered internally, other specialist schools are out there, outside agencies…I don’t think we should be putting all our eggs in our baskets for Year 9. There are great programs out there, what we need to have, first of all, is that the student funding that students attract should go with those students, so if they leave the school to go to a school that going to offer programs, they need to take the money with them. I think there’s some great potential out there, we’ve announced some money to pilot some, but I think we need to expose the broader education community to what we can do in this area and …I’ve seen some great examples and I think we can actually do this.

Mary Wooldridge: I think that ties in with the broader context of how important this area is and how it’s all interlinked. If you look at who are in the youth justice system, if you look at numbers from last year, nearly half were suspended or expelled from school. So there’s a very direct connection between these kids having trouble in the existing school system and what then happens in terms of where they go onto and what happens in the broader community context…I think that obvious link and relationship ties into other things like mental health, child protection, drug and alcohol, family violence…you have to tackle it at all those different points to try to stop the issues down the track.

Cath Smith: We’ve had a number of questions from different VCOSS members about areas and programs that tend to be under-funded or where demand has grown dramatically. We’ve heard from disability services, disability housing, support for mental health carers, support for alcohol and drug treatment and family violence services...etc. We’ll start with disability services…Bruce Atherton says: Disability Support Services in Victoria are underfunded by $70 million a year. Will the Coalition give a firm commitment to rectify underfunding of disability services in the next budget if elected?

Mary Wooldridge: This is something I’ve been working on with NDS (National Disability Service) for a long time, and the only reason the PriceWaterhouse Cooper review of unit pricing came to light is we ended up demanding it through the Upper House and that is the only reason the (Labor) Government released it so not even the sector had the information even though it was the sector that provided the information to the consultants in the first place. I’ve been very clear with NDS and I’m very happy to be clear broadly (in saying that) in Opposition we don’t have that detail. We understand the issues, we’ve been an advocate for the sector, but we’re not in position to make any commitments in relation to it till we can get in and see what the (detail) actually says, what is the detail, how much is it, is that true? Even as recently as today the review of day services is being questioned as to whether the most basic information is there to make these sorts of decisions. We are totally committed to having a look at this unit pricing because we can’t continue to ask sectors across the board -- not just disability, it’s also drug and alcohol and others -- to keep doing more for less and we’d be having a look at that immediately if we are in the position to do so in government to appropriately fund the services that these important services deliver.

Cath Smith: Maria Bohan says…Many caring families want better access to housing and support to secure the future of their family member living with mental illness. What would a Coalition Government do to ensure that people with a mental illness have access to the stable housing and ongoing formal support they need to make community living a reality?

Mary Wooldridge: Housing is so far and away the major issue that I hear from for carers and families about their loved one who need that sort of assistance. That’s why we initiated the review of supported accommodation for people with mental illness and a disability through the Upper House so we could highlight those issues and give carers and families of individuals in those situations a voice in the process and know what the reality is. We’ve already made commitments in our mental health policy that housing is going to be much more integrally linked. In addition to significant investments in community based care for mental illness, which will mean people could get help earlier and not end up in acute hospital care situations, we are committed to piloting a program where we put housing officers, along with employment and education officers, alongside those acute services and community based services so that that transition out of hospital or out of community based care can happen more effectively into a housing situation. So you’ve got advocates alongside people with a mental illness who can help that transition, because too many people are exiting hospital or addressing their mental illness, but in unstable housing which does not contribute to their wellbeing and their recovery.

We are also committing to trialling, with the Mental Illness Fellowship, an innovative pilot about how to utilise the private rental market for people with a mental illness, and wrapping alongside, using the Commonwealth Rental Assistance, putting in some additional rental assistance ourselves and wrapping services around that. And the MIF will pilot this as a demonstration program over the next 3 years. We’re really excited about being more creative with how we look at the housing issue that is absolutely integral to recovery and has to be alongside the people with a mental illness. For people with a disability, we’ll be having more to say, but we’ll be putting in more supported accommodation beds, but I think what we say clearly again is we need a more flexible model, we need some innovative and new ideas, not just continuing to build CRUs (community residential units) all around the country. It’s a very inflexible model that the (Labor) Government has and it’s not what we’re hearing that families and carers want and not necessarily what individuals with a disability need. We are very much of the view that in the long term we must have a National Disability Insurance Scheme, we’re not going to deal with these broader funding issues for disability generally and accommodation is such an important part of that, but in the shorter term, definitely more accommodation but in a flexible way that reflects the needs of the individual disability. It might be more contribution from family members, some families are in situation to be able to do that, but they are not allowed to under current law. It might be different configurations, more people together or less, more clustering. So we need innovation to try to address these issues so we have a flexible approach that supports the individual with a disability and their family and carers.

Cath Smith: While we’re on disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme that’s been proposed, could you speak about the Coalition’s support for that and what the Baillieu Government might do about trying to bring it about?

Mary Wooldridge: Ted is very strongly in favour of recognising the system is broken and it’s not going to be able to be fixed with more of the same. The coalition has committed to not a passive role but a proactive role in relation to the achieving the outcomes of the NDIS. …We want to establish a secretariat in the Department of Premier and Cabinet to drive the change, we will commission research, when the interim draft report comes down from Productivity Commission in February we will convene a meeting of Ministers and will have done the work so we’re ready to hit the ground running when we get those ideas from the Productivity Commission. When the final report comes down in the middle of the year, we’re going to be very equipped to take that up. What families and carers of people with disabilities don’t need is a decision to go forward that takes another 10 years to be achieved. We need to be able to grapple with the very big issues we will be facing through the recommendations, but be prepared to do that, ready to do that and equipped to do that so a scheme can be implemented in a short a time as possible.

Cath Smith: Sandra Hills, CEO of Benetas says that with an increasing number of older Victorians living in their own homes for longer, we are also witnessing an increasing number of older Victorians who are socially isolated. How will the Liberal party tackle this issue and can you outline a social inclusion policy specifically for older Victorians? I would add too that VCOSS has warmly welcomed one element of the Labor Government’s social inclusion policy for older Victorians in terms of accessible housing regulations.

Mary Wooldridge: (noted that the Shadow Minister for Ageing was not on the panel to talk in detail about these issues). There is strong recognition (by the Coalition) of the implications of social isolation for anyone and particularly for older Victorians and that addressing those issues can be so fundamental to wellbeing and health that it will be part of what we need to make sure happens. There are some wonderful models happening in communities; in my own community, we have a women’s friendship group that regularly gets a couple of hundred women together every month from CALD backgrounds, and I think having mechanisms to support that sort of activity from within communities, grassroots to communities, people solving their own issues in relation to the needs they have, will be a very positive part of what we will be doing, as well as broader agendas to recognise this issue.

Cath Smith: A number of the questions that came in from members for this discussion really relate to our approach on ‘cause, not consequence’ around violence in the community. One, for example, from Danny Blay from No to Violence talks about the significant focus by the Victorian Government on the prevention of family violence and violence against women over the last few years, however there has been a gross underestimate of the impact of spiralling demand for services. The bulk of Victoria’s Men’s Behaviour Change Programs are unable to cope with the current demand, and in Melbourne’s north-west region all six DHS funded Men’s Behaviour Change Programs are full. What would the Baillieu Government do to greatly enhance the capacity of family violence organisations, those around behaviour change but also for the victims of family violence?

(In response to that), we’ve got a great mental health policy that intervenes early, supports young people and tries to do community based care to stop people getting into acute hospital situations and acute episodes; we’re going to have some very proactive drug and alcohol policies with more treatment focusing on some of those growth areas where people can’t (now) access services; we’ve got more welfare officers in schools with positive initiatives about how keep young people connected into schools if the school system doesn’t work…I think across a whole range of areas we’ve got a very strong preventative agenda, but the reality is that’s going to take some years to work through the system, so that’s why we’ve got this dual approach. We have to address the law and order issues we have now, we have to make sure there are very clear messages that violence is not acceptable and to support the community to feel safer…but in the longer term we’ll be investing immediately for longer term outcomes…

Just on child protection, a lot of the policies, commitments we’ve made, particularly around the transition, supporting people in out-of-home care to independent living, will once again have a huge impact on people entering youth justice and we know that once they’re in youth justice, recidivism rates are very high. If we can support that transition to effective and independent living with employability skills and jobs, that will have a huge impact as well.

Cath Smith: Next big topic: the costs of living and utilities and the broader issue around climate change and the pressures on individuals and communities.

Mary Wooldridge: We’ve been very concerned about smart meters, the huge blowout of costs, all the functionality being removed. The benefits of them being implemented are actually not there and what every household is being left with is a massive cost of implementation…The (electricity) concessions are absolutely important, we’ve made a number of commitments to make sure low income households can continue to access support to reduce their electricity costs. We’ll continue the rollout of renovations of public housing to be more energy efficient, we will also be making sure people in low income households know where they can go to access what is a plethora of supports and grants and programs to be able to make those changes. What we’ve seen is there are lots of things about there but people don’t know where to start and how to go about it. We’re committed to aggregate that information and work along with low income households so they can know how to make the shifts they need to make and know how to access the diff programs and grants and funding to be able to then change their dual flush toilets or put in their insulation….(and know) what other things they can do, audits for households to work out how you can reduce energy costs…. We believe an aggregator, someone dedicated to work alongside low income households will make a huge difference to them being able to access support and know what to do.

In terms of the energy concessions, we’re still having a look in terms of the review…so we can actually know the lay of the land and where we can most effectively continue to invest so people can continue to afford to live in their homes…

Cath Smith: We’ve got through a lot of our specific questions, there’s an opportunity now for you to raise matters you think that VCOSS’ members will be interested in.

Martin Dixon: I just think in education, I have 15 years experience as a school principal, I think I know the sector pretty well. I’m very, very keen for communities to be really involved in schools because, I think, no matter what the needs of the community are, the constant there is the local school and the relationships they have and I think that’s a strong basis on which we can build; a broader community using the school, the school community reaching out and using the (broader) community, and lot of the social services we’ve talked about today, schools are a wonderful place to introduce them because there’s a high degree of trust. I think we should truly open our schools to the community and that doesn’t just mean opening the gym on an extra night a week, I mean the people and all the resources of the school being open to the community but also allowing the community to come in. That’s my vision, our schools being centres for the community…

Wendy Lovell: In terms of the early childhood agenda, the Liberal Party is very aware of the importance of the early years of a child’s life and investing in those years. We will start from before a child is born and Mary has a plan to start working with families that are at risk till (the child is) 4 years. We also want to work with local government to strengthen their early years plan and to ensure not only are they providing the services that are needed in their area, but they have policies that are child friendly in their city. We have in our early years policy an investment in breastfeeding to ensure mothers are supported …also a commitment to train more maternal child health nurses…who are vital to supporting young families, particularly families that are at risk. As well as investing in early childhood education and care services as we have outlined earlier.

And on housing, we want to see better management of public and community housing in Victoria and we will be placing a great emphasis on the importance of economic participation by public housing tenants so they can break out of the cycles of disadvantage…We want to see the schools that service those estates are resourced to ensure those children have opportunities in education and to break out of those cycles of disadvantage. I guess it’s about a more responsive management too, more responsive to the tenants’ needs and changes happening in the housing sector. We’ve seen the (Labor) Government very slow to act on changes in the rooming houses….we would act sooner to make sure those changes are addressed.

Mary Wooldridge: One area we have not touched on much here is carers… and respite, an absolutely desperate issue to support carers to do what they do. We will be investing in some more flexible respite so carers can access it, because they find it complex and hard to access; also after-school and school holiday respite for children which often parents are crying out for. We also think we should have carer recognition legislation in Victoria. The feds have just done it, every state but Victoria does it. We will be bringing forward a much stronger agenda in relation to carers, the role they play, the importance they have in terms of treatment, care and recovery of the person they care for and making sure they’re celebrated and supported in the roles they have.

Broadly, to wrap up, we have a very strong social agenda in relation to people accessing services when they need it, getting in early, getting support and making sure people, particularly families, can achieve their potential and are supported to do so.