Social inclusion: a service delivery dilemma
Gordon McCormick
Department of Family and Community Services
Contact Email:   Gordon.Mccormickfacs.gov.au

Following two decades of public sector and welfare sector reform, the service delivery environment has become more complex. Traditional public provision of social welfare at the federal, state and territory levels has shifted to engage others such as NGO’s, the private sector and more commercially orientated government owned enterprises in its delivery. It can be hard to distinguish the lines of responsibility between public sector welfare delivery and that which is passed into the hands of the private and NGO sectors.

In this devolved environment the dilemma for the Commonwealth is to have in place a system of service delivery that assures it that its providers are delivering the intended (and funded) outcomes for the community, and, at the same time, have a system model that supports inclusion and does not further marginalise disadvantaged groups.

The paper will explore options for the way forward and will consider issues such as identifying service delivery gaps, aligning service delivery capacity to needs, engaging individuals, families and communities, integrating service delivery, and exploring mechanisms for service delivery accountability.

Paper Download Information (if available):

Paper229.pdf

Copyright © 2003 Social Policy Research Centre.