As a charitable organisation operating in the social services and aged-care sectors, it is hard not to be concerned about the future for our most vulnerable.
We have always operated with financial headwinds, and in many ways, over the years these headwinds have helped build resilience and minimise inefficiency. However, in recent times, the headwinds are feeling more like unrelenting cyclones that continue to batter our sails.
It’s no secret that as a nation, demographics and data tell us that the pressure on the social services and aged-care sectors will continue to grow over the coming decades, so it’s critical we find a way to operate and sustainably support our community into the future.
Our Family Works Directorate has proudly served vulnerable children and families in Southland for more than 100 years. Over the past few decades, we have received government funding to deliver social services contracts.
Just as importantly, with the help of numerous and generous community funders, we’ve been able to provide a range of additional programmes and services for children and families focusing on prevention rather than intervention.
Recent cuts to Oranga Tamariki’s budget have resulted in significant contract funding reductions up and down the country, which mean either the consolidation or removal of services, affecting us and many other local service providers. This is concerning and disheartening when now more than ever, our waiting lists are growing with families and young people requiring support.
Our residential aged-care services are largely reliant on government funding to be able to continue to provide critical services. Government funding comes in the form of subsidies on the monthly fees residents pay once their savings fall below the prescribed threshold.
In recent years there have been a multitude of reports commissioned showing that the residential aged-care sector is in crisis because of significant underfunding.
Comparatively, Southland is one of the more underfunded regions across the country. Demographics tell us that the demand for aged-care services will increase significantly over the coming decades, particularly for hospital and dementia care.
As Southland’s sole provider of psychogeriatric dementia care through our Enliven Directorate, our ability to meet future demand is concerning.
So what does the future look like for both social services and aged care in Southland? It is clear that with multiple competing funding priorities nationally, an environment of increasing demand and the increasing complexity of client and resident needs, we won’t be able to cost-cut our way into the future using the same approach to service provision that has got us to this point.
Our aged-care residents and Family Works clients - so often the most at-risk people in our community - must not be forgotten.
An approach that emphasises information-sharing and streamlining resident/client movement across service providers needs to be a focus. While ensuring quality service provision and the necessary protections for residents and clients are important, in many ways we seem to have become too risk averse.
This has made our administrative and compliance burden too onerous and costly, with significant duplication.
Irrespective of where you sit on the political spectrum, for the sake of supporting and assisting those in our community who need us the most, we need to figure out how to best prioritise funding trade-offs, whether for health, education, infrastructure, welfare or any of the many competing expectations we value as a developed society.
Southland’s capacity to work together as a community and support each other is a reassurance which cannot be overstated.
However, it’s hard to imagine a solution that doesn’t involve a transformational approach to these sectors into the future.
- Matt Russell is chief executive of Presbyterian Support Southland.
