Submissions

Clear and transparent funding contract timeframes, expectations and responsibilities are critical to ensure service continuity and planning and enable the best outcomes for our workforce and the communities they serve. Overall, QAMH believe that the Best Practice Industry Conditions for Social Services Procurement Industry Guidelines (the Guidelines) are a positive step towards improving stability, consistency, and quality in the social services sector. In particular, the steps that these Guidelines take to improve the consistency of terminology, presentation, language, and formatting across contracts is helpful in situations where service providers in the sector hold multiple contracts with multiple agencies.

While we welcome the intent and key principles of the Guidelines, greater clarity and flexibility may be required when determining performance measures as these may be outside the control of a service provider. We suggest that ideally, Government should seek to strengthen outcomes by intentionally partnering with local communities and Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector organisations to co-design funding agreements and desired outcome measures. We believe that this combination of upfront work to develop agreed deliverables combined with a solid contracts management relationship throughout the term of the contract is what’s needed to provide the best outcomes for organisations and the communities they serve.

The Guidelines are undeniably a positive step, however QAMH believes there is also a need to review the underlying cost model for funding in the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector. Current funding approaches often do not adequately reflect the true costs of service delivery, particularly considering variations between different cohorts and geographic areas. Further clarity is also needed on the proportion of contracts within the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Sector that five-year terms will apply to.