Start: 2014-05-01T22:00:00
End: 2014-05-02T00:00:00
Location: The Factory Community Centre, 67 Raglan Street, Waterloo NSW 2017
As background to the question
of how to address the gaps, below we have provided an overview of what
REDWatch and others have been trying to broker on human services integration in
Redfern Waterloo and where it is currently up to. It is what you might call the
air gap!
REDWatch has always had a
concern about human service integration problems in Redfern and Waterloo – it
comes up at almost every meeting. In the last couple of years we have been
trying to get human service agencies to come together again to address the
issues. Our plan was not an RWA senior officers group working in isolation from
the community, but rather a model where human services bodies met to address
the issues experienced at the grass roots by front-line workers (both Govt and
NGO) and residents who experience everyday where the systems work and fail.
This is similar to what actually happened around Waterloo Green during the time
of the RWA HSMAC when, to have any credibility that they were trying to
coordinate human services, the RWA had to address the issues thrown up by the
lack of agency co-operation on the Green.
REDWatch pushed in 2012 to get
relevant agencies around the table on such a model but this was side-tracked to
focus only on drug related issues and then became a Government only body to
which community representatives were occasionally invited. Part of this seemed
to be driven by Police wanting to concentrate on what they see as their core
business and not seeing a role for police on broader human services issues that
often draw on police time. It was made clear to us last year that those
meetings were not about broader human service co-ordination but that if we
wanted to set something up with other interested government agencies then we
would be welcome to do it. We argued that with the drug focus that the new body
was covering much the same ground as Redfern Waterloo Community Drug Action
Team (CDAT) and that its members may have been the best community
representatives on drug issues. Ironically this year as police have cut back on
participating in community initiated meetings, they have now totally withdrawn
from CDAT which in our view will increase the air gap between what is happening
at the Government agency level and at the grass roots.
Late last year, following discussion
among community reps, we provided a critique on the process to the government
agencies. The model did not work for NGOs and the community representatives,
and as we have not been invited to any further meetings of the group this year,
we guess the community representative model is not currently working for
government agencies also! The air gap we were concerned about was highlighted
by the Govt agencies holding their own public housing event in Waterloo just
after Summer on the Green because they did not realise that Summer on the Green
had been set up to provide such an avenue for government agencies – a
fundamental mistake that would have been avoided if community people were in
the room when the decision had been made!
So it is time for REDWatch to
explore other options to work on the service gaps and on the growing air gap
between government agencies, NGOs and those that rely on the service system
working. From the grass roots people just want the problems they experience
fixed. How this happens is not of great concern but if there is not a good
feedback loop to those that make the decisions it is difficult to see the
problems being fixed. Thursday is about creating some feedback.