INTRODUCTION
3.1 The New South Wales State Network of Young People in and ex Care (SNYPIC) was contracted by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission (the “Law Reform Commission”) to undertake consultations with young people currently and recently residing in residential care services. The consultations were part of the wider consultative process undertaken by the Law Reform Commission as part of its review of the Community Services (Complaints, Appeals and Monitoring) Act 1993 (NSW). As the consumer organisation for young people in care, SNYPIC is in a strong position to connect young people into this process.
3.2 The following report and recommendations focus on discussions by the young people who participated in the four consultations. All of the consultations followed a very similar structure and focused on the following main areas:
- awareness of the Community Services Commission;
- awareness of Community Visitors;
- awareness of the Community Services Commission’s complaints mechanism; and
- awareness of the Community Services Commission’s review function.
3.3 It must be noted that the purpose of the consultations was to obtain feedback from young people, not to provide education about the Community Services Commission.
Demographic Data
3.4 In planning the consultations SNYPIC organised to visit a range of services in the Sydney area. All of the services visited were run by different non-government service providers with Government funded placements, and were located in different Department of Community Services (DOCS) areas. Two of the services were long-term and one was a short-term crisis unit. One of the services was a medium intensity unit (Model 2), while the other two were high intensity units (Model 3). There was one consultation held in the SNYPIC office for young people ex care.
3.5 A total of twelve young people participated in the consultations; eight young men and four young women. Their ages ranged between 9 and 20.
Consultation One (Visit to Residential Care Service)
Three young men aged between 9 and 14 living at a residential care service in the Cumberland Prospect DOCS area.
Consultation Two (Visit to Residential Care Service)
Three young men aged between 15 and 18 and two young women aged 13 living at a residential care service in the South West Sydney DOCS area.
Consultation Three (Visit to Residential Care Service)
One young woman aged 9 and one young man aged 13 in the Inner West Sydney DOCS area.
Consultation Four (Young people ex care, SNYPIC Office)
One young man aged 19 and one young women aged 20.
Awareness of the Community Services Commission
“Do they take complaints about Community Visitors?”
3.6 In Consultation One, the young people were aware of the Community Services Commission and some of its functions, including the complaints mechanism and the Community Visitor Scheme.
3.7 None of the young people who participated in Consultation Two had any awareness of the Community Services Commission.
3.8 None of the young people in Consultation Three had heard of the Community Services Commission.
3.9 In Consultation Four, one participant described the Community Services Commission as the organisation that receives “consumer complaints of people in care or ex care.” The other participant was aware of the name but unsure exactly what the Community Services Commission does.
3.10 There is an apparent lack of awareness of the Community Services Commission amongst young people in care, with two-thirds of participants being uninformed about the Commission. The name is not inviting to young people and, when asked what the name Community Services Commission made them think of, the lack of suggestions implied it means little to them. In SNYPIC’s experience, confusion can occur for young people when the acronym CSC is used for the Commission, as this is the same acronym used by the Department of Community Services Community Service Centres.
Facilitator’s Comments
The Community Services Commission needs to examine strategies to increase information dissemination to all young people in the out-of-home care system.
An option for improving awareness of the Community Services Commission with young people in care, is to establish a section of the Commission which is youth specific. This section would have an appropriate inclusive name and young people could access information and services offered by the Community Services Commission.
Promotion of Community Services Commission
There should be “more community awareness. You’ve been in care for seventeen years and don’t know more than the name.”
(One participant to another participant)
3.11 In Consultation One, no participant had seen any of the Community Services Commission’s brochures. After looking closely at the brochures they suggested that they were boring and should be made more colourful and put into a comic format like Streetwise Magazine. They accessed the Streetwise Magazine at school and suggested they should be able to see the brochures everywhere, including school.
3.12 The older age group found the Community Services Commission brochures “easy to read, catch my eye but I don’t know if I’d pick it up or not.” The brochures were described as “old” but “easy to understand” by another young person. The most often recognised brochure of the Community Services Commission that young people had seen was the Community Visitors brochure, possibly because these pamphlets were distributed by the Community Visitors. It must be noted that the young people did not always link the Community Visitors with the Community Services Commission.
3.13 After being shown the range of Community Services Commission’s pamphlets, one of the young people pointed out that they had seen the brochure “in my DO’s1 office and (local youth centre) Worker’s Office”. The young people stated that they would see their local Youth Drop-in Centre and Youth Health Centre, and DOCS offices, as appropriate places for the brochure to be available. Many participants pointed out that the service providers should be displaying this information:
“The service should give out pamphlets. What’s the point of having pamphlets if people they are reaching out to don’t even get them.”
3.14 The younger age group had a number of problems with the Community Services Commission brochures. When asked whether they would pick up one of the brochures the young people gave the following opinions:
“Can’t read …”
“If bored enough …”
“Pictures look boring.”
3.15 A worker pointed out that many of the young people who use their service have low or limited literacy skills which make the Community Services Commission brochures inaccessible.
Suggestions for promotion of the Community Services Commission
3.16 The young people suggested a cartoon format or a Rap tune on a CD giving the information, or even postcards. Another idea was a bright poster with the phone number in large writing.
Facilitator’s Comments
The Community Services Commission needs to provide more appropriate promotional material that directly targets young people and takes into account age range and literacy levels. This promotional material should be distributed to residential care service providers at all levels, including Youth Centres and Youth Health Centres, Department of School Education substitute care teachers and mainstream teachers, Police Services Child Protection teams and DOCS.
Awareness and use of Community Visitors
3.17 In Consultation One, all three participants had made complaints to the Community Visitors. Complaints included “getting hit” and “early bed”.
3.18 In Consultation Two, young people were aware of the Community Visitor but none had made use of the service.
3.19 Neither of the two young people at Consultation Three had any awareness of the Community Visitor Scheme. Although this service was a crisis service one resident had been there for 12 months and had not seen a Community Visitor in that time. Staff verified after the consultation that no Community Visitors had visited the service for almost three years.
3.20 In Consultation Four, both ex care participants were aware of the Community Visitor Scheme. One participant had considerable experience while the other had no experience or contact with a Community Visitor:
“Don’t remember them coming around.”
3.21 For the young people who were consulted regarding the Community Visitor Scheme, it is not working for them. Despite nine of the twelve consultation participants being aware of Community Visitors, only four had ever complained to them. All four of these were dissatisfied about the outcomes. Their views were that nothing had happened, nothing had changed.
Role of Community Visitors
3.22 The majority of young people who participated in the consultations were very unclear about the role of Community Visitors. Only one of the ex care was able to describe in a general sense the objectives of the Community Visitor Scheme:
Their role was described as “come around and monitor living conditions and see if there are any problems, complaints or needs that are not being provided.”
The Community Visitors are “willing to help … shoulder to cry on ... someone to talk to.”
“I would have known who to call if I needed help.”
Community Visitors should tell the Minister ... “What the (young people thought the) good and bad things are and what we would liked changed.”
3.23 In two of the consultations, participants knew who their Community Visitor was but not their complete role. They were seen as persons to whom young people could bring a complaint and who could deal with the complaint on their behalf. The more holistic role of Community Visitors in monitoring services, instigating reviews, and providing feedback to services on behalf of young people, as well as receiving complaints, is not clear.
Complaining to Community Visitors
3.24 An ex care participant offered the following comments:
“When they do come around nothing much ever comes out of what we said to them. Nothing ever got back to me about what happened.”
3.25 One young person’s experience was that Community Visitors were hard to contact:
“They were out of the office, never got back to me.”
Complaining about Community Visitors
“Don’t want him going through our stuff, if we did it
to him he wouldn’t like it.”
3.26 Participants in Consultation Two had made no complaints to the Community Visitor, but had a large number of complaints about the Community Visitor. Complaints included that the Community Visitor would:
- Go through files without asking permission.
- “Look at the girls funny.”
- Want to know everything.
- Arrive 8am Sunday morning, without ringing and giving warning.
- Make false accusations of a young person being under the influence of either drugs or alcohol and this information being written in their file by the Community Visitor.
- Not respect privacy, looking through rooms without permission.
Comments about Community Visitors
3.27 In Consultation Two there was a fair degree of animosity directed towards the Community Visitor and none of the five participants could list one thing that was good about the Community Visitor. Some of the negative comments from three consultations included:
“Never turn up on time …”
“Stuff up your day …”
“We only see them when we have problems …”
“Not do what they say they’re going to do …”
“They never come here …”
“We only see them once or twice a year …”
“Visits are sparse, infrequent …”
“I would be annoyed if they went through my files, it would be real personal.”
One young man thought that all Community Visitors were female.
Suggestions regarding Community Visitors
“They should ask us, we are mature enough to
tell them what’s going on.”
3.28 Participants were asked what suggestions they would make in relation to Community Visitors. The following comments were made:
“... should be told by workers about Community Visitors and given pamphlets.”
“More frequent visits, more Community Visitors.”
“I don’t think anyone should have to speak to Community Visitors if they don’t want to but the opportunity should be there.”
“I can accept certain circumstances but they should ask permission to look at files.”
“They have to be here not on the phone.”
3.29 They should:
“Do what we ask them to …”
“Stay away …”
“Turn up on time …”
“Always come out, once a month …”
Three hours is too long, “one hour would be a good time.”
3.30 Activities should be part of the visit:
“take us out, get us out of the house …”
3.31 The participants also stated that it would be good to get some material goods while speaking with the Community Visitors, that is, food, videos etc.
3.32 One suggestion to move away from the visits was to set up a “shop kind of thing, where Community Visitors are” and you can come and speak to them if you have a problem.
3.33 At one service all the participants complained about having no time alone with the Community Visitor and being unable to complain in private to them:
“Don’t like talking to them with people.”
Facilitator’s Comments
The youth client group SNYPIC consulted with is disenfranchised and distrustful of the Community Visitors. As a result the Community Visitors are unable to develop working relationships with the young people as the essential elements of respect, trust and continuity are not present.
The Community Visitors should respect young people by including them in all decisions that are made about them.
The Community Visitor Scheme should be provided with additional funding that allows for more comprehensive service provision. This will result in increased opportunities for regular visits to all services in order to build healthier relationships with young people and provide for more extensive and ongoing training of Community Visitors.
The Community Services Commission needs to set more accountable structures in place to ensure that all residential care services are visited and all young people have access to a Community Visitor and time alone with the Community Visitor if they wish.
The Community Visitor scheme needs to work actively towards raising the profile and gaining credibility with the youth consumers. Part of this process is coming to an agreement with residents about what the visits may look like.
Consumer consultation needs to take place to establish a structured Community Visitor complaint mechanism. Part of this should include a jointly negotiated response agreement, that is, a complaint is made, and discussion should then take place between the complainant and the Community Visitor on what action they would like to occur. Within two weeks of the complaint, the young person should be contacted and informed of what is happening with the complaint. At this point it should be negotiated with the young person how often they should be contacted and updated about the complaint until the matter is resolved.
If the complaint is about the service provider, with a young person’s permission, the Community Visitor should follow up the complaint with the service provider to make sure the service is aware of the situation. The Community Visitor, in collaboration with the service provider and the young people, would come up with strategies for trying to ensure that the issue is resolved.
Issues for young people in Foster Care and Community Visitors
3.34 Some participants suggested that the Community Visitor Scheme should cover children in foster care:
“Foster care kids should access this [the Community Visitor Scheme] by making a phone call and then organise a visit.”
When in foster care ... “I didn’t know who to talk to or who to complain to.”
Foster care ... “is still a child living away from home and getting care that is supposed to be done by the state. If you are monitoring one why not the other.”
Facilitator’s Comments
While the Community Visitor Scheme provides a safety net for young people living in residential care services, there appears to be a gap for young people in foster care. A number of young people suggest that Community Visitors should be able to visit young people in foster care as well as residential care. Consultation would need to take place with stakeholders on how this could work effectively.
Complaining
What does complaining mean to you?
“If you’re not happy with a service or product you have received you can make a complaint, written or verbal.”
3.35 Complaining is “a big whinge about something”, you’re ... “mad and you want to tell something and you have a problem.”
Who do you complain to?
3.36 Before SNYPIC facilitated Consultation Three, the young people were shown the service provider’s internal complaints brochure that is kept on the general noticeboard. This brochure has the Community Services Commission’s freecall number at the end for when people are dissatisfied about the outcome of their internal complaint.
3.37 Young people said they would complain to:
- Police.
- Co-ordinator, caseworker, receptionist.
- Co-ordinator’s boss: “keep going up the ladder till everyone knows.”
- “Don’t fucking know.”
- “I’d break rules rather than complain if it’s an unfair rule or unreasonable.”
- “Complain to anyone and everyone in ear shot.”
- “Community Services Commission if I knew who to go to ... connections.”
- “Complain to someone nice”.
3.38 Overwhelmingly the young people were more likely to complain to peers than to anyone else, but they may eventually turn to the service co-ordinator. If the complaint was very significant, they indicated that they would complain to DOCS, neighbours or the police. The police were only an option for complaints if “it is real serious” although it was stated, “police don’t believe [you]”. Another common refrain was that it is a “waste of time complaining to DO’s,2 can never get hold of them.”
3.39 To make a complaint most participants said that they would prefer to complain in person, rather than through telephone contact. However, the older participants appreciated the opportunity to choose the way they complained:
3.40 Telling someone face-to-face was definitely the only option for the younger age group.
What should happen when you make a complaint?
3.41 Responses to this question included:
“We expect to have something done about it …”
“Action to be taken, someone take the time …”
“Let us know (after the complaint has been made about what is being done) what’s the point of doing something and not letting us know.”
“Expect it to be addressed, someone to get back to me to speak about it and for them to tell me or ask me what I want to be done.”
“Compensation …”
“Fixed really fast …”
“Tell you it’s been fixed.”
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Barriers to complaining?
3.42 Young people gave the following reasons for not making complaints:
“Nothing ever comes out of it.”
“... genuinely care but (the complaint) gets lost in the paper trail.”
Workers.
No access to the phone.
“Other things” (the young person chose not to discuss this further).
Not having Community Services Commission phone number any more.
3.43 One of the strongest ideas that was continually presented by young people was the negative way in which complaints were handled by Residential Care workers, District Officers and Community Visitors. Repeatedly, the young people who did complain were dismissed, not taken seriously, unable to reach the right people who took their concerns earnestly or found nothing changed after complaining. In the end they gave up. Young people are not empowered to make complaints and regularly have the system working against them when they do. There needs to be a change in service providers’ culture to see complaints as a positive learning experience rather than a negative one.
3.44 The number of complaints that young people living within residential care services have and how their complaints are treated was highlighted. The young people were well aware that “it’s our right [to complain]”, as one young person summed up. To inform themselves about their rights, young people read publications including the “Law Handbook”. Two young people received the Law Handbook from relatives. Participants pointed to DOCS and the police as other sources of information on their rights. Despite being equipped with this information, the reality is that young people rarely see any benefit in making a complaint.
Facilitator’s Comments
The Community Services Commission needs to expand its educational focus by developing a protocol for complaints handling by residential care service providers. This education and training needs to take place at all levels of the hierarchy from direct workers to managers. Given the nature and funding restrictions on service providers it is highly desirable that this education and training take place on site.
The Community Services Commission should also work collaboratively with DOCS to ensure adequate complaints handling mechanisms are put in place by service providers as part of the funding agreement. These mechanisms should be developed with consumer involvement and be accessible to current and future residents. DOCS and the Community Services Commission should work together to ensure that there is adequate support and training for these organisations to fulfil this requirement.
Awareness and use of the Community Services Commission Complaints Mechanism
3.45 In Consultation One, a young man had complained directly to the Community Services Commission after confiding in a teacher who provided him with the number. The Commission stepped in providing active intervention and the outcome was positive changes and everything “worked out fine, perfect”.
3.46 In Consultation Two, the participants were not aware of the Community Services Commission and therefore were unaware of the Community Services Commission complaints mechanism.
3.47 Participants at Consultation Three had no awareness or experience.
3.48 At the consultation with young people ex care, one of the participants had made a complaint to the Community Services Commission but was dissatisfied with the outcome:
“I made a complaint to the Community Services Commission regarding stolen property. I saw a complaints mechanism form from this service and the number for the Community Services Commission was on the bottom.”
This form was found at the service reception area. A phone complaint was made and “nothing happened ... never heard nothing back about it.”
3.49 One young person suggested it would be good to have a form to fill out about complaints (similar to the Ombudsman complaint form) that was postage paid.
3.50 Two thirds of the participants were unaware of the Community Services Commission’s complaints mechanism. Only two of the twelve young people had experience of the Community Services Commission complaints mechanism. One was very satisfied with the results while the other was quite dissatisfied.
Facilitator’s Comments
The relationship between Community Visitors and the Community Services Commission should be continually promoted to young people.
Youth-specific promotional material should be produced and distributed by the Community Services Commission which clearly sets out what will happen when you make a complaint. This information should set out a number of ways in which young people can complain, including face-to-face contact, free call details and user-friendly complaints forms.
Awareness and use of the Community Services Commission Reviews
3.51 None of the young people in Consultation One were aware of the Commission’s power to conduct reviews.
3.52 The participants in the Consultation Two were completely unaware of the Community Services Commission’s review powers and were not aware of anyone who had had a review done.
3.53 In Consultation Three, the participants had no awareness or experience of the Commission’s review powers.
3.54 Of the two young people who have left care recently, neither of the participants were aware of the review mechanism or had had their own cases reviewed by the Community Services Commission. After reading the brochure they offered the following comments:
3.55 Given the number of reviews that are undertaken by the Community Services Commission, it was unlikely that any of the participants who took part in the consultations would have personal experience of being reviewed by the Community Services Commission. It is also evident that all twelve of the young people were completely unacquainted with the review function of the Commission or its powers when conducting a review.
Routine reviews
3.56 Participants were asked how they would feel about a system of routine reviews. Some of the responses included:
3.57 It should be borne in mind that the consultations were not educational in focus; in the following quote the young people did not understand what was involved in a review:
Reviews should be held “once a year or every six months” automatically but reviews should also take place when you make a complaint.
3.58 It is difficult to get a strong sense from the young people of their opinions of routine reviews. Participants had little comprehension of what was involved or how it would affect them.
Facilitator’s Comments
As this issue is very complex, it is recommended that more consultation take place on the effects of introducing routine reviews, and what benefits there would be for young people across all out-of-home care situations.
Conclusion
3.59 The general awareness of the Community Services Commission amongst the young people who participated in the consultation process was quite low. By undertaking a public relations campaign which incorporates strategies of effectively targeting young people, the Community Services Commission will become more accessible for young people living in care. As many of the young people were aware of the Community Services Commission through the Community Visitors, it can be conjectured that the young people in foster care and other forms of out of home care would be even less aware of the Community Services Commission and its functions.
3.60 The Community Visitor Scheme needs considerable changes to current practices to make it more effective. Until privacy is respected, permission sought to inspect personal documentation and agreement negotiated on how a Community Visitor will work with each service, the scheme will be deficient, unacknowledged for its potential to bring about positive change for residents and alienating to young people. By changing the resourcing of the scheme, providing training and development of the Community Visitors and putting accountable measures in place, this scheme can fulfil its roles of protecting and advocating for the interests of young people in care.
3.61 For the reasons set out in this report, young people are not empowered to make complaints to service providers, DOCS or the Community Services Commission. The Community Services Commission’s complaints mechanism is not of help to young people if they are not aware of its existence. Similarly the review process needs to be more widely promoted if it is to be considered an option by young people. Increasing awareness of the Community Services Commission among young people will empower them and provide support to them when facing serious issues.
3.62 All changes to the Community Services Commission should be made in partnership with all stakeholders including consumers.
FOOTNOTES
1. District Officer in DOCS.
2. District Officers in DOCS.
