1. 1 Early Intervention Funding Model NSW Department of Community Services Ben Smith Senior Economist 4-5 October 2005

2. 2 Early Intervention Program  By 2008 $48m p.a. worth of new early intervention services will be purchased for at-risk families.  The aim is to stop at-risk families entering the child protection system by preventing child abuse and neglect earlier.  Research has shown improved child outcomes from these types of services.

3. 3 Service Needs  Families are classified as low, medium or high needs.  Higher need families need more intensive services for a longer time. 1. Casework 2. Home Visiting 3. Child Care 4. Parenting Programs

4. 4 Allocating Funding  Funding needs to be allocated across geographic areas and to different types of services.  Each area’s percentage of child protection reports of abuse and neglect for 0 to 8 year olds is used to allocated geographically.  Splitting the funding into service types meant projecting the services families need and their unit costs.

5. 5 Policy Development  Higher service intensity and duration means less families can be served.  Increasing one service can be offset by reducing another.  The model projects the trade-offs, allowing decision-makers to make informed policy choices.

6. 6 Sensitivity Testing Sensitivity testing was used to show which service parameters generated the biggest trade-offs. Variable No. of Families Change (%) 1. Reduce caseworker caseload to 1/12 from 1/20 (70% increase in hours of casework per family)-18.6% 2. Reduce EI program duration by 1 year9.6% 3. Hours of casework per family-2.7% 4. % of caseworkers that are DoCS caseworkers2.7% 5. Hours per home visit-1.4% 6. Frequency of home visit-1.4% 7. Average days of child care per week-7.1% 8. Hours per parenting program session-0.9% 9. No. of parenting program sessions-1.1% 10. No. of families per parenting program session1.0% 11. Brokerage $ available-1.4%

7. 7 Tailoring to Local Needs  Travel time differences  Number of children per family  Interpreter services  Mix of high, medium and low needs

8. 8 Results For each planning area, the model provides p.a. estimates of:  the number of families that can be serviced  quantities of each service to be funded (eg. 6000 counselling sessions)  the total level of funding for each service type

9. 9 Implementation  Model service specifications are broad averages.  Actual specifications will match individual family needs.  Expressions of interest from service providers are compared to the model.

10. 10 Future Development  Future refinements to service specifications will be incorporated into the model.  Based partly on the model output, the future impacts of the early intervention services can be estimated.