Developing a plan for families: listening to the community

Those of us working in government recognise how often public consultation forms a final rather than initial step in public policy development, after the policy direction and much of the detail has already been developed. Since the community is generally the major stakeholder in social policy, this seems a curious state of affairs.

Government has a responsibility, which it does not always find easy to meet, to seek input from consumers of government services and from the wider community and to apply the results to service development. Kate Silburn in Victoria recently conducted a review of consultation approaches with a wide range of consumer groups previously marginalised from contributing to health service development. She concluded that, in this area, specific strategies targeting particular special-needs groups yield valuable feedback about how to provide services that are accessible and meet the needs of these diverse groups. However, the obstacle seemed to be in ensuring that health-care planners use the feedback.

Another critical factor may be timing. At what stage of the policy development process is consumer input sought? Frequently, the public policy consultation phase is used for checking or confirming the general thrust of proposed changes, or even simply to be able to say that consultation has taken place. Unfortunately, at this stage the general community may not fully understand the framework in which policy changes have been formulated. Public views then may appear irrelevant, off-target or generally negative, because they may question basic assumptions.

On the other hand, peak organisations representing groups of stakeholders often do understand these legislative and other frameworks, and can ensure that they couch their input within these terms, helping to ensure they are consulted again in future. However, time and other resource constraints may limit the ability of the professional employees of stakeholder organisations to consult widely with their constituents.

Background

In June 1999 in Western Australia, a new Family & Children’s Policy Office (FCPO) was established with a brief to develop strategies that improve the quality of life and promote the interests of Western Australian families and children.

Its first major initiative is the development of a Five-Year Plan based on a State-wide consultation with families and children. The plan was to be cross-sectoral and direct consultation with families and children was to be central to the policy framework. Families, young people and children were to be involved directly in setting the agenda for the newly established office and the Family & Children's Advisory Council to be involved in the process of seeking the views of the community. The consultation process needed to engage – or at least connect with – as many households in WA as possible.

To complement the Five-Year Plan, an innovative business strategy was to be developed to promote a positive response to families by the government, business and community sectors. The FamilyOne Business Strategy acknowledges improvement in the family-friendliness of workplace policies and practices and of customer services, across business, government, non-government sectors. This strategy also has a research base; it is informed by market research conducted by the FCPO involving business, government and community organisations.

This paper describes the consultation phase, which concluded in May this year. The report of this consultation was released in May 2000, six months after the consultation phase was launched.

Role of Theory

On our side was the imperative that the public consultation was to be central to the Plan. Politics, ideology, and theory were not. This did not mean that family research could not play a part.

The purpose of the policy research was to discover the views of families and children about ways to strengthen families, rather than to inform theory-building about families or to measure family strengths. By taking a qualitative, rather than a quantitative approach, the actual words of families and children can more directly inform policy development.

The consultation paper asked a series of open-ended questions about

• what strengthened families,
• what strengthened families’ links with communities, and
• what government and business could do to be more family friendly.

The consultation paper was distributed widely to families, as well as to government and community organisations and can be viewed from the FamilyOne website.

Western Australia – a Profile

Nearly three quarters of WA’s 1.8 million population live in Perth. There are 628,000 WA households and 446 000 families, 284 000 of which include children. Three per cent of WA’s population identify themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Most ATSI families comprise a couple with children under 15, and nearly a third of WA’s children have at least one parent born overseas. Only nine Statistical Local Areas outside Perth have populations greater than 10 000 and their distances from Perth range from 74 km (Mandurah) to 2 200 km (Broome).

An accessible consultation process would clearly involve much travel!

The Consultation Process

It was expected that many government and peak organisations would want to make submissions to the consultation. However, the consultation was essentially a process to hear directly from family members, rather than hear their voices filtered through the agencies and organisations with which they have contact. By listening directly, the FCPO also expected to hear from families from a somewhat wider range of backgrounds.

The first challenge was to engage as many families as possible, both by informing them about the consultation process and at the same time sending a message about the importance of families.

People could hear about the consultation in a range of ways:

• A pamphlet outlining the purpose and processes of the consultation was delivered to almost every household in Western Australia.
• Hundreds of government, local government and community organisations received information packages, and many of these were followed up by telephone.
• Posters were displayed in community venues.
• Media releases targeted community newspapers and sometimes led to feature stories.
• Radio advertisements and unpaid publicity interviews were broadcast over local and regional radio stations.

To ensure as inclusive a process as possible many alternative ways of participating were offered.

• General community forums that operated in a similar way to facilitated focus groups, addressing the key questions posed in the consultation paper. Twenty-eight of these were held in the metropolitan area and 23 in the country.
• Special focus groups were conducted for Aboriginal people, new migrant groups, university students, for children and young people ranging from 3 to 15, including homeless youth in a refuge, for families with a member with a disability or a mental illness. It was expected that the general community forums would attract women particularly so special discussion groups were held for men only.
• Individual responses were sent by mail, email, over the website or by phone.
• A group of young people responded to some of the questions over the Kids Helpline (if their call did not require counselling and with their consent)
• A talkback television forum was held for those who could not get to a community forum venue.
• Many organisations made submissions and some peak organisations were interviewed.

Participation

More than 1000 people took part in one of the general or special community forums that took place in 22 metropolitan and 16 country locations throughout WA. More than 400 individuals and organisations sent submissions. In all, a total of 1496 people or groups contributed to the consultation, less than one per cent of WA’s population.

At all the general community forums structured participant feedback was invited. Satisfaction levels were high though many would have liked more time. The issues were considered relevant and people felt they were listened to. Demographic details collected at the same time suggested that those who took part in the general community forums were somewhat older than the general population, and, as expected, women were over-represented (74 per cent).

Data Collection and Analysis

At an early stage it was decided to take a qualitative approach to data analysis, aided by the computer content analysis tool developed in Melbourne and known as NUD*IST. This approach enabled the best use of the different sources of information provided by the individual responses and the forum discussions. This approach to data analysis required the transcription of 400 individual responses and 105 records taken at the discussion groups – a huge undertaking.

Data analysis using NUD*IST yielded more than 170 codes and these were reduced to 25 major themes that have clear policy implications. The use of NUD*IST made the reporting process easier and enabled it to keep close links with what people actually said – a sense of the raw data in all its richness. NUD*IST was invaluable in identifying pertinent direct quotes from families, which could be used liberally in the written report of the consultation to add to or illustrate the broad themes.

Reporting

The summary report of the consultation, entitled, Listening to Families and Children in the New Millennium, can be downloaded from the FamilyOne website. Hard copy versions have been distributed to participants and to government agencies and community organisations.

The report was structured around eight areas, each of which flows directly from the open-ended questions used in the consultation:

Table 2: The 8 areas of interest

1. Family Relationships
2. Fathers and Families
3. Children’s Learning & Families
4. Families, Neighbourhoods and Communities
5. Communities: the Physical Environment
6. Work and Families
7. Services and Families
8. Coordination of Services

For each area, three or four of the main suggestions made by families that would strengthen families and their links with communities and improve the family friendliness of services, according to families and children, were identified from the coding.

To strengthen individual families

• Value family relationships
• Promote male help-seeking & meet these service needs
• Prevent family breakdown
• Stimulate early childhood learning in the home
• Services to help in a crisis
• Develop partnerships between school and family
• Value the importance of fathers
• Make the most of technology in children’s learning
• Preparation for fatherhood

"It doesn’t matter how you define a family, what matters is good relationships"

- Northam forum

To strengthen links between family & community

• Be neighbourly
• Make it easier to get around
• Create lively supportive communities
• Address issues of job insecurity
• Respond to young people’s needs
• Make it easier to balance work and family
• Safer home environments
• Child care at work
• Improve community facilities

"Sense of community is a connection of like minded people… Community gives a sense of belonging." -

Fremantle forum

More family-friendly services

• Family friendly approach
• Better planning
• Provide more information about services
• Improved communication
• Improve access to services
• Provide services locally
• Adopt a cross government approach

"We feel that a whole-of-government approach is essential if Western Australian families are to feel more secure in their relationships, their work, their homes and their communities." -

Mail response, Beechboro

Young people’s views were practical, positive and often went to the heart of the issue. For example, 15-year-olds in a south-west town said:

"What strengthens families is commitment, having a family pet, laughter and having fun, watching a sunrise together, having morals and rules to obey but not too strict, gossiping with your parents, teaching them modern day stuff."

"Kids need to know that they are loved in a family."

Though our report comprises the views of Western Australian families, it is likely that they are similar to the opinions of many others in reflecting family aspirations.

Families were also asked what they saw as the most important issues facing families into the new millennium. Although there was a wide diversity of responses to this question, the most commonly raised issues are listed.

Major issues faced by families, WA families & children, 2000

• Work
• Finance
• Education
• Safety
• Alcohol & drug abuse
• Relationship breakdown
• Health

Discussion

The community consultation has achieved a number of objectives for the FCPO. It has canvassed in a very inclusive way, the views of the wider community about matters of concern to families and children. While expending a lot of our energy over several months, the financial cost of this exercise has not been very great.

Though some of the messages from families and children in the consultation may, to some, seem rather obvious, the significant point is that families themselves, not organisations speaking on their behalf, have expressed these views.

The FCPO now has a large database comprising the views of community participants on a wide range of issues and this can be updated. There is perhaps a realistic expectation in the community that their views on family matters will continue to be sought. The process, including the FamilyOne web presence, has created an expectation of interactivity in a Government-community relationship.

While not strictly representative of the community at large, our participants are probably more representative of the wider community than the usual government consultation strategy. The shortcomings of the general community forums were addressed by supplementing these with special forums targeting particular groups likely to be under-represented.

Although Western Australian government policy encourages the use of the Internet by the wider community, it is too early to rely too heavily on Internet and web-based solutions for community consultation. The views obtained that way are likely to be even less representative until Internet use is as common and as accessible as telephones.

To complement the qualitative approach described here a large-sample telephone survey was carried out recently to measure family opinions of the family-friendliness of workplaces and customer services, as well as to assess indicators of the strength of connection to family and to community. These indicators will form a baseline against which future measures can be compared as family policies are implemented over the scope of the Five-Year Plan. The data from this survey has only been available in the past month or so and will be the subject of a future report. However, it is likely that as the focus of the community shifts towards the family-friendliness of customer services and workplaces, the community’s expectations of family-friendliness may increase.

The FCPO has begun to develop partnerships with more than 40 State government agencies and a number of key community organisations to discuss the findings of the consultation that are of relevance to the organisation, and to identify current and planned initiatives, which address these issues. Feedback from the consultation is being used to guide planning so that particular family issues for services and workplaces can be addressed. Through this process the interests of families and children are being promoted in the government and community sectors.

Many participants commented on the proper role of government in strengthening and supporting families. Some felt strongly that governments should be less involved in family life. Others pointed to the needs of those families that seem to need help. For a range of reasons, many felt more comfortable if those services were actually delivered by the non-government sector. In fact, the FCPO's recent phone survey suggests that government services are rated as significantly less family-friendly than services delivered by local government, business or the community sector.

Government is frequently seen as the hands-on solver of problems. The FCPO is looking to develop better ways of working together. The FCPO aims to foster partnerships between government, business, the community sector and families themselves, which will contribute to the development of social capital both within families and within communities.