Evaluation of the Bringing them home and Indigenous mental health programs

7.1 Management by OATSIH

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7.1.1 National office
7.1.2 State/territory offices

7.1.1 National office

The national office of OATSIH is responsible for overall management of the programs. This includes, for example, developing and administering the standard contracts for the Programs, determining the broad policy directions for the program, and organising some national forums for staff of the programs such as annual SEWB RC and Link-Up Forums. As discussed below, the State/Territory offices have responsibility for day-to-day management and administration of the programs.

There was very little feedback on the national OATSIH office by the stakeholders consulted. The funded services have generally had no or very little contact with the Office, since the State/Territory offices are responsible for day-to-day management. (The national office does however organise the annual Link-Up and SEWB RC Forums.) No major issues were raised by the State or Territory offices about the National Office.

However, as discussed in chapter 6, a major limitation of the programs is the lack of national consistency in service delivery. This is associated with considerable variation in the understanding of and implementation of the programs by the funded services, and the fact there are no national guidelines for the programs other than Link-Up. The need for national guidelines was felt to be particularly critical for the BTH services and SEWB RCs.

Further guidance by the national OATSIH office in terms of the contractual conditions for funding, national guidelines for each program, and promoting sharing, documenting and dissemination of good practice and funding opportunities would strengthen the operation of each of these programs.

7.1.2 State/territory offices

As noted above, the State/Territory OATSIH offices have responsibility for day-to-day management of the programs. Overall, this management has worked moderately well. However, the relationships that OATSIH State office staff develop with service staff appear to be critical to the effectiveness of service delivery, and the quality of such relationships (and the frequency of contact) varies from one location to another.

In some States, there is regular communication between OATSIH and the funded services, a good working knowledge of the services by OATSIH, and trusting relationships. For example in the last 18 months the Victorian OATSIH office has participated in all the Regional Forums coordinated by the SEWB RC, and has a standing item on the agenda for each Forum.

In other States, little contact takes places between OATSIH and the funded services, and misunderstandings have developed on both sides. In certain States, relationships between OATSIH and some services is best described as antagonistic, a situation which has affected both the quality of services delivered and OATSIH’s ability to monitor services’ performance.

Many State OATSIH offices have adopted quite a ‘hands off’ approach where they do not necessarily have a close knowledge of the services, or a close monitoring role much beyond receipt of the annual reports by the services. Generally the State offices have only tended to intervene more actively when they have been fulfilling a ‘trouble-shooting’ role to resolve problems a service is experiencing – in the small number of instances identified, this has concerned major governance problems by the auspice organisation.

None of the services consulted felt that OATSIH had not given them enough freedom to implement the program in the way they thought best and to tailor it to suit their local conditions and communities. Nonetheless, a number of services would like to see more proactive guidance from OATSIH in terms of program guidelines, promoting sharing, documenting and dissemination of good practice etc as discussed above.

From Urbis Keys Young’s experience evaluating many government programs, the largely ‘hands off’/trouble-shooting approach taken by OATSIH is common to that taken by many government funders towards program management. Whereas this can often work well for programs that are well-established, it is not uncommon for programs that are in a relatively early stage of implementation, or in under-developed sectors such as the Aboriginal SEWB field, to desire some further proactive guidance by government funders.

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