Orange Papers
Zakumi is an experienced organisation. We have worked with hundreds of organisations their communities, and the people they serve. We believe in reflecting on our work and the Orange Paper Series is a testament to that discipline. Through sharing our experiences, ideas and insights we aim to help build critical thinking across Australia’s care sectors; we like to collect the evidence that helps us make sense of the complex “health and social care”. This terrific sector that is focussed on solving Australia’s wicked social problems. Please feel free to share this Orange Paper, and more importantly, let us know what you think.
Gary, Marika and the Zakumi Team
Community Care in Australia: 2022 and Beyond
Since the 1980’s policy shifts have progressively attempted to shift government funded-and- provided congregate (institutional) care, to community care. These “de-institutionalisation” policies have continued to evolve over the past forty years, to a place that we (Zakumi) now call the “commarketisation” of care.
It is not all evil, but for people needing care there is a new way. For their providers, there will be different ways to access people that need care (customers), and the way services will be delivered will be different. This means the sector will, undoubtedly look and act differently.
The State of Aged Care in Australia: Are we heading back to the United Kingdom?
We hear a lot about the model of social care in the United Kingdom and how what we have in Australia mirrors that model. There are certainly many other areas that if we track back will notice that they too are based on historical policies emanating from the United Kingdom so it seems like a good place to start. The paper will attempt to assess the differences and/or similarities between the UK and Australian model of aged care.The governing act in the United Kingdom in the Care Act (2014), which followed on from a series of reviews and reforms, replacing a number of previous laws. The purpose was to provide a coherent approach to social care in the United Kingdom (UK). The first part of the reforms were introduced in April 2015 and the second part was due for introduction in July 2015, however this has been delayed until 2020
Is a customer just a client with a longer name?
Over the past twelve months, perhaps ,longer, there has been endless talk about customers, marketing, value propositions and the like and the general assumption is that, notwithstanding that everyone is one themselves, somehow those in the social care sector, really don’t get the whole notion of a customer. It is true that for years we have referred to people as consumers, clients, residents, service users and the various others, the question that we are often asked is, does it really make a difference?
Reframing Identity: A changing Social Care Sector
Over the past five or so years, we have heard increasingly more about the ‘’different’’ types of organisations in the social care sector. Initially we were all not-for-profits and somewhat differentiated from ‘’others’’ by virtue of the fact that the ‘’objectives’’ of the enterprise were different; they were not established to make a profit whereas those in the for-profit world, were so.
What we do know is that the “independent” sector has influenced social policy, which has in turn influenced the look and positioning of organisations in the business of social care.