You may have missed it when the ACT Budget was delivered this year but an additional $20 million was provided to the non-government sector for homelessness services.
The investment is in addition to ongoing funding for the sector and was directly informed by the homelessness commissioning cycle as well as advocacy and submissions.
The additional funding responds to needs identified through multiple workshops that evidenced the sector capacity challenges as well as the increasing demand at Ainslie Lodge, MacKillop House, Axial Housing and the Early Morning Centre, and food service centres.
The calls for greater funding flexibility and for a boost to support complex clients were also met.
Commissioning provides validated evidence about needs. And evidence can inform investment decisions by government to increasing funding, to reallocate or redirect funding, or to provide critical sustainability funding through indexation or training investment.
When this evidence is developed by experts, sector partners, frontline workers and people with lived experience, Commissioners then have a valuable foundation on which to shape a budget case and guide long-term investment in the sector.
We are only in our second year of active commissioning and second budget cycle with several years to go before the full benefits of the reform are realised by 2030.
While government and non-government organisations continue to learn about what works and what doesn’t when undertaking commissioning, we can now point to the first benefits of commissioning where evidence and insights are informing budget decision-making.
Find out more about 2022-23 ACT Budget
; Budget initiatives target homelessness services; connecting commissioning cycles to the bigger picture
To receive the Commissioning Conversations newsletter subscribe to receive the next edition
Page updated: 28 Feb 2024
