What the SHS collection means for agencies

Shaun Kelly, ACT representative for the Homelessness Data Project Board

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(1 minute 21 seconds; 430KBps; 4.9MB FLV)

Transcript

Shaun Kelly can be seen sitting at a desk.

Shaun: If we can get the message across that this is about (agencies') client information—we’re actually not (just) contributing to a national data collection but measuring and capturing different bits of client information than we previously did…also different bits of information about the work that (agencies) do with their clients.

If agencies realise it’s actually privileging the work they do and the engagement they have with their clients, and using that to get a better and more effective story of homelessness and what works.

It’s about acknowledging the work that (agencies) already do, which is the case-management, face-to-face contact they’re already doing with their clients they would have been capturing in some way, already recording it, that’s the case management practice. But what we’re now asking is that a lot of the information which is now relevant to the national data collection is actually what takes place in that case management framework. So this is not an additional impost, this is bit about capturing different client information than we previously have.

The benefits of the new SHS collection

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(1 minute 17 seconds; 430KBps; 4.7MB)

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Shaun Kelly can be seen sitting at a desk.

Shaun: There’s been a long-standing acknowledgement that homelessness services needed to be positioned differently and to operate differently.

What the new collection captures really effectively is the other agencies that are involved in a client’s life. There’s a much stronger focus on pathways into homelessness so where have they come from before they were in your service, and one of the benefits of the monthly collection is people’s needs will change over time so if you’re working with someone who’s entered your service in absolute crisis, the first month or collection will absolutely be about that crisis.

But the support changes as people’s lives stabilise. The new collection will capture how that changes so I think we’ll get a much better sense nationally of what interventions are achieving outcomes and what aren’t, and that can only be a good thing for a sector that has traditionally been the sector of last resort.