| Strategic Perspective: Resource Management |
 |
 |
 |
| About Us |
|
Here you will find a snapshot of a number of achievements to our commitments under the Resource Management strategic perspective for the 2010 – 2011 period. Commitment to Efficient Systems and Effective Stewardship of Resources Commitment to Efficient Systems and Effective Stewardship of Resources.The fifth of the values that underpin the Mission of Centacare is: Efficient Organisational Systems and Stewardship
Holy fire in his soul ‘Born to conquer the dark’ brings to mind the words of Cardinal Bernadine who said our healing ministries have only one objective – and that is to give hope. Members of the Centacare group are meant to bring this hope to all with whom they work, other members of staff, as well as clients. In taking people as the first and most important resource - ‘effective stewardship of resources’ means bringing hope into the workplace, whether with workmates or clients. It is written in Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones. Hope does not ignore the problems of the day. It helps us to look forward with expectation. There is also the stewardship that relates to service delivery and stewardship in this area is about professionalism and accountability. This applies to both roles in service delivery and accountability for the finance and other equipment that help the organisation achieve its goals. While looking to improve productivity, there is a need to always look at more efficient ways to do things but not at a cost to the wellbeing of clients. This demands collective creativity. Efficient Organisational Systems – Social Return
This year we engaged in looking at how the social return on an investment of providing a service is carried out. The process began with figuring out the boundaries of the social return we were trying to determine and who the stakeholders are in contributing to the outcome. The stakeholders assisted with determining the outcomes, using a mapping process that showed the relationship between inputs, outputs and outcomes. The next stage was to gather evidence for outcomes and put a value on these outcomes, then making some judgements on whether the changes observed may have happened if the service or intervention wasn’t provided. When we think about what it takes to achieve an outcome, we can come up with a list of factors – the ‘inputs’ that result in an ‘outcome’:
Each of these can be valued – the simplest one is the money spent to provide the service, as this can be by the hourly rate of the staff member, the cost of the output as determined in the program agreement or the overall dollar investment in the program, depending on what boundaries we determined for our Social Return On Investment (SROI) analysis.
Sometimes, the work we do has unintended outcomes. These can be positive or negative, and need to be taken into account when determining SROI. For instance, one of the effects of providing a young person with a disability with ten (10) hours of after school activities, is that it frees up time for her parent or other unpaid carer. This results in a ‘respite effect’ for the carer. While the aim may have been to provide learning and development opportunities for the young person, the value to the parent or carer is equivalent to 10 hours of respite. This impact can be represented by what it would cost to provide 10 hours of respite. Similarly, an unintended outcome of teaching the young person to catch the local bus in order to increase their independence could be that the local taxi company loses a daily fare. This loss would be equivalent to the cost of the fare. Once we’ve gathered the information on direct investment (i.e. dollars spent) and proxy values (i.e. the value the input or consequence has to us) we have the information we need to determine the overall value of the outcome. The next step is to determine which, if any, of the outcomes or unintended consequences may have happened anyway – in some instances, we could ‘claim’ a percentage of the impact, in some cases none. Once this ‘deadweight’ is calculated and removed from the equation, it’s time to add up the benefits, subtract the value of any negative impacts and compare the total with the dollars invested. For instance, if we invest $100,000 in a program and we calculate the outcomes to be worth $300,000, the social return on the investment of that $100,000 is $3:$1 – for every dollar invested, the program created $3 worth of outcomes. It’s challenging to implement an evaluation that wasn’t built into a project at inception, but opportunities to do this do exist. For example, a program in Bundaberg to teach blind clients to cook in their own kitchens and while the project has already been running for some time, by gathering information via conversations with stakeholders (the clients, their families, the workers, contacts in Disability Services) it’s possible to assess some of the value of this program.
Other outcomes from the project to be given proxies may be reduction in reliance on takeaways or home delivered meals, including health benefits; increased socialisation due to social groups created around participation in cooking; and the reduced cost of meals. In other cases, we can embed the gathering of relevant information as part of the evaluation component of new projects. This will require some resources to be committed, particularly in the early stages, but will provide us with clear and valid evidence of the value of the outcomes that result from projects. In the medium and long term, we can use information gathered through CSNet, coupled with qualitative information gathered as part of our networking, collaboration and partnering processes, to develop a clear picture of the value to the community of the work carried out by Centacare. In our Strategic Plan 2011-2014 we aim to be able to articulate the SROI of the work we do. |
The second part of the statement is striking because the greatest resource that Centacare has is the people within the organisation. So what is meant by effective stewardship in this context?
So what about the first statement? Efficient organisational systems are for the most part caught up with government funding. Relying on funding in this way can lead us into economic rationalism if a creative view on how we can develop systems is not take. Sustainable income does not always apply with Government funding, so there is an ongoing challenge within Centacare to reach out to the ‘new’ social situations that may need the organisation to intervene on their behalf. The goodwill within Centacare will work into the future with creative planning and developmental processes for addressing rising needs.
The others may not be so simple. Access to local facilities for example – if the local council provides use of a swimming pool “free of charge”, the value is not zero dollars. The value can be represented by a ‘proxy’ – if we had to pay for daily usage of a swimming pool, what would it cost? Although we’ve not had to pay for that, the use of the pool has value to us in achieving the outcome, and so can be represented by what it would have cost if we’d had to pay for it.
Information may include the time the client’s family no longer needs to spend cooking for the client – in the instance where the parent of an adult client has previously allocated time to cooking for their adult child, and now find they no longer need to, this may be regarded as “respite effect”. That is, although the parent isn’t receiving a respite service, the time they no longer need to spend cooking for their adult child is effectively respite. If the parent estimates previously spending eight hours per week cooking and preparing food for the adult child, and this is now reduced to two hours, the proxy value would be the value of six hours of respite. The task is then to source what six hours of respite would cost that parent.
