WA Community Housing Conference Maintaining quality outcomes in a changing environment

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WA Community Housing ConferenceMaintaining
quality outcomes in a changing environment

• Adam Farrar

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Outline

• Context a changing environment
• What is quality?
• Our quality aspirations
• Quality assurance - taking a rigorous approach
• Growth quality strengthening or limiting
• Quality and regulation

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Changing environment

• National housing affordability crisis
• National framework for affordable housing driven
  by administrators
• Focus on growth organisations across all
  jurisdictions
• Focus on alternative financing

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Changing environment

• A growing non-government housing sector
  residualised public housing
• NGOs will soon be working across housing markets
  and delivering housing plus in communities

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Changing environment

• Some possible impacts on quality
• Some quality outcomes might be harder to achieve
  in large organisations eg. focus on tenants
• Conversely, some quality outcomes might be
  essential for effective growth
• Financial imperatives might undermine quality
• Regulation to protect government interests may
  replace quality systems

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What is quality?

• Systematic focus on quality is relatively
  recent last 50 years
• Quality is more than outcomes per se includes
  sustainability, how not just what
• Quality is systematic
• Relates to culture a learning culture,
  continuous quality improvement, values

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Our quality aspirations

• Quality has been at the heart of community
  housing at least in some sense
• It was built to respond to the gaps in the
  housing system of the 70s 80s particularly
  exclusions of some groups so was client focused
• Had a strong commitment to tenant participation

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Our quality aspirations

• When the standards were being developed the
  sector outlined its aims
• They included quality of housing services to
  tenants
• They included values like respect, fairness,
  responsiveness

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Quality assurance

• National Community Housing Standards are a QA
  system
• Two strands in the quality movement
• - manufacturing (Deeming) post-War TQM
• - health welfare (1980s) (Donabedian)
• External bodies maintain standards and accredit
  organisations
• - ISO9000 JAS-ANZ
• - Quality Improvement Council The Australian
  Council on Healthcare Standards

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Quality assurance

• Human service quality systems focus on
• Structure the finances, staffing etc that
  influence quality outcomes
• Process the quality of the service delivery
  process
• Outcomes goal setting, monitoring, continuous
  improvement

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Growth quality

• In NSW CHOs have been accredited against the
  standards for the past 9 years
• They report that they have been essential in
  building the professionalism and robustness of
  providers
• They provide the only inspection based focus on
  how tenants and the wider community are treated
• They provide the framework for ongoing quality
  enhancement

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Growth quality

• Quality, in all three respects, is key to
  managing effective growth
• Growth can provide better capacity to deliver
  quality
• Private financiers rely on providers to deliver
  quality social outcomes
• The largest associations report that they will
  have to purchase their own QA systems if
  accreditation isnt available

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Quality regulation

• National trend to regulate the sector
• A draft national regulatory framework
• There are 4 approaches to regulation
• - Compliance minimum standards
• - Black letter regulation very detailed
• - That identifies risk in order to intervene
• - Quality systems

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Quality regulation

• Community housing needs both regulation of risk
  AND quality assurance
• The national framework appears to have fallen
  between stools
• It regulates against risk in three areas
• - outcomes for taxpayers the community
• - outcomes for tenants community
• - outcomes for the industry

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Quality regulation

• But it doesnt regulate the overall
  sustainability of the organisation
• And it doesnt aim to ensure the quality systems
  that underpin the outcomes for tenants and the
  community sustainability
• In NSW we have come full circle
• As we take on the new national regulatory
  approach, funding of accreditation of quality
  systems is being cut back

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The future?

• The need for substantial sector growth and new
  sources of finance to support it have led to a
  focus on large providers
• Regulation of the government interest in these
  providers has moved to centre stage
• But we wont have a strong effective sector to
  play a wider role across housing markets unless
  we build on and strengthen our quality focus as
  well.