Academic literature on the topic 'Commonwealth Government Departments'

The arrival of the First Fleet in Port Jackson in 1788, and the subsequent establishment of the colony of NSW began the history of the Australian public health system. Prior to Federation each state dealt with their own public health issues and much of the microbiological analysis was performed in the early hospitals and medical school departments of universities. Today, as there is no central Laboratory for the Commonwealth of Australia, each Australian state is responsible for the microbiological testing relevant to public health. However, because of various Commonwealth of Australia Department of Health initiatives, the Australian Government Department of Health is responsible for the overall public health of Australians.

Research that is directed towards conservation in Australia is largely carried out by staff in State or Commonwealth departments, in CSIRO and in universities. The findings are generally put into practice by other branches of the same government departments, by bushcare and landcare groups, by non-government organization (NCO) community groups, and by consultants. The latter often provide contractual services to the practitioners of conservation.

Abstract Government agencies and departments are considered as a collectively owned body and therefore they can be assumed as a reflection of the whole society. But the current research, Muslim Employment in Commonwealth Government Departments and Agencies in the Context of Access and Equity, suggests that migrants face a greater exclusion of Australia from government department in general but Muslim community is bearing the extensive brunt. In this research the exclusion was examined at three different sphere, at national employment level, national government department’s level and managerial levels of government employment. In each sphere it was found that the Muslim community was two times less inclusive thus making it six times excluded from the society overall. After collecting these results and combining them with an academically defined state of inclusion, it yielded new conditions for Harmony as: access and equal opportunities for all Australians while having a sense of being equally valued and have the opportunity of full participation with redistribution of power for the powerless. Abstrak Instansi pemerintah dan departemen dianggap sebagai badan yang dimiliki secara kolektif dan karena itu mereka dapat diasumsikan sebagai refleksi dari seluruh masyarakat. Tetapi penelitian saat ini, Pekerjaan Muslim di Departemen Pemerintah Persemakmuran dan Instansi dalam Konteks Akses dan Kesetaraan, menunjukkan bahwa migran secara umum menghadapi pengucilan lebih besar dari Australia dari departemen pemerintah di masyarakat tetapi Muslim terpaksa menanggung beban yang luas. Dalam penelitian ini pengucilan diselidiki pada tiga bidang yang berbeda, di tingkat kerja nasional, tingkat departemen pemerintah nasional dan tingkat manajerial kerja pemerintah. Dalam setiap lingkup ditemukan bahwa komunitas Muslim dua kali lebih inklusif sehingga membuatnya enam kali dikucilkan dari masyarakat secara keseluruhan. Setelah mengumpulkan hasil-hasil dan menggabungkannya dengan negara inklusi yang didefinisikan akademis, itu menghasilkan kondisi baru untuk Harmony sebagai: akses dan kesempatan yang sama bagi semua warga Australia sementara memiliki rasa yang sama-sama dihargai dan memiliki kesempatan berpartisipasi penuh dengan redistribusi kekuasaan untuk ketberdayaan. How to Cite : Amin, U. B. (2016). Muslim Employment In Commonwealth Government Departments And Agencies In The Context Of Access And Equity. TARBIYA: Journal Of Education In Muslim Society, 3(1), 1-19. doi:10.15408/tjems.v3i1.3485. Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/tjems.v3i1.3485

This report looked at the important, but contentious issue of alternative assessment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people studying at the tertiary level. Presented below, its findings give expression to the views of 47 respondents, chosen from Indigenous communities, Commonwealth and State Government departments, the tertiary education sector and business.

Since all resources are limited, their most judicious and efficient use can only be achieved through forethought and planning. Such resource allocation decisions are predominantly made by government. When this function is spread across three levels of government each with their own departments of state and other agencies this task is made more difficult. Integrated planning involves the coordinated delivery of Commonwealth, State, Local Government and private sector investment to implement an agreed plan. The level of government in both Canada and Australia best placed to initiate, formulate and guide the implementation of such integrated plans is local government. This is despite the fact that it has no constitutional recognition and, in both revenue raising and expenditure terms, it remains very much the third tier of government.

Since the data necessary to make a formal quantitative analysis of Work for the Dole employment outcomes is not available to researchers who are independent of Commonwealth Government Departments, this article examines the (then) Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB) net impact report, finding in it a number of weaknesses. The combined effect of these is to inflate the estimated value for net impact but a corrected estimate is still higher than many consider likely. Any figure for the net impact estimate of an Australian labour market program can only be a broad indicator. This article argues that in the case of Work for the Dole the net impact is definitely positive and by more than a trivial amount.

The public administration principles characteristic of many Commonwealth countries served as the foundations for building the Hong Kong civil service. These have continued to operate in line with the `one country two systems' concept under which Hong Kong has been administered, since 1997, as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. Career employment, hierarchy and public service values combined to provide an overarching unity to a system that nevertheless has developed considerable differentiation over time. This article examines the developments that are currently modifying Hong Kong's public sector. The discussion draws on documentary sources and a recently completed qualitative study on the experiences and perspectives of senior Hong Kong managers working in a dozen government departments and agencies. The discussion addresses questions about whether greater differentiation across government departments, in combination with increasing differential within these organizations, will ultimately bring about the demise of the traditional civil service system.

After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 the Russian empire faced a problem of determining the social status of petty Polish nobles (szlachta) in imperial hierarchy. At the turn of the 19th century the Senate was the governmental body that had to resolve this issue. In April of 1800 Paul I approved the proposal of the Senates 3d department to confirm lesser szlachtas fiscal immunity and other privileges enjoyed by her under Rzecz Pospolita. Yet, in the same year the Senates 1st department when deliberating on a separate case of szlachtas tax status in Novorossiysk province, passed two resolutions that contradicted the legal norm adopted in April. This paper focuses on the analysis of circumstances under which the Senates departments came to different decisions on the same problem. Their resolutions reflected two approaches to the policy of petty szlachtas inclusion in the imperial nobility. The resolution of the 3d department, supported by Paul I, envisaged a co-optation of szlachta as a social group through legislative confirmation of its privileged status in the empire. The approach of the 1st department emphasized the necessity of szlachtas integration into imperial nobility on the individual basis (by submitting proofs of noble origin compliant to the Russian laws). As a result the imperial government gave preference to the second model of inclusion.

Policy issues have impacted on cropping since the earliest days of European colonial settlement. Following emigration to Australia, secure land titles were required, with the Torrens title system being progressively introduced from 1858. This provided the basis for landholders to be able to borrow to develop land. Closer settlement policies were adopted, underpinned by the development of transport infrastructure. The demand for education resulted in Agricultural Colleges in the colonies from the 1880s, with Departments of Agriculture soon afterwards. Federation of the colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia and the creation of the states resulted in a separation of powers, with the Commonwealth assuming responsibility for external powers including overseas marketing, import quarantine, health and quality standards of exports and credit and financial powers. Natural resource management matters and education were among those remaining with the states. Regular intergovernmental meetings were held to discuss research from 1927 and a broader range of agricultural issues from 1935. The Great Depression in the 1930s, poor commodity prices and serious land degradation led to government support for debt reconstruction and the introduction of soil conservation services. Realising the need for innovation to successfully compete on world markets, farmers, led by cereal growers, petitioned for the establishment of statutory research programs with joint grower/government funding from the 1950s. These have been remarkably successful, with the uptake of new technologies contributing to an average multifactor productivity growth of Australian grain farms by 3.3% per year between 1977–78 and 2001–02. With community and policy recognition of the need to conserve natural resources, the Commonwealth Government is playing an increasing role in this area. Farmers are required to meet standards for the use of agricultural chemicals and for occupational safety, welfare and environmental protection. The states have taken a conservative stand against the growing of genetically modified food crops in the name of protecting overseas markets. New water management regimes are coming into place with the separation of water titles from land. Market-based instruments are being introduced to encourage more sustainable production systems and saleable ecosystem services. Research and innovation along with complementary policy initiatives will continue to underpin farmers’ adaptive management skills to ensure dryland crop producers have sustainable production systems while remaining competitive in world markets.

This study has three major purposes: to describe systematically the practice of librarianship in Australian Commonwealth Government departments and agencies from the perspective of librarians employed in that environment; to relate the characteristics of government librarianship to librarians' perceptions of and attitudes to their work; and to assess the extent to which the work of Commonwealth Government librarians needs to be redesigned to improve the level of job satisfaction they experience. A subsidiary purpose is to test the job characteristics theory of work motivation on a population of librarians. Information was gathered by a survey questionnaire on a range of variables relating to librarians and their perceptions of different aspects of their jobs. The primary instrument for gathering data on perceptions was the complete form of the Job Diagnostic Survey. The population under investigation comprised those Commonwealth Government department and agency librarians employed on a full-time, permanent basis under the Public Service Act 1922. and located in Canberra. Because the population was small but diverse, it was decided to survey the total population rather than a random or stratified sample. One hundred and eight usable responses were received which represented a response rate of 83 percent. The results of the survey were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Frequency distributions and Pearson's Product-Moment Correlations were calculated to determine the percentage of respondents who selected each option and the strength of relationships between pairs of variables. The study found that Commonwealth Government department and agency librarians in Australia are highly satisfied with their work generally, and with the environment in which it is performed. None of the null hypotheses relating to Commonwealth Government librarians and job satisfaction were rejected. All but one of the null hypotheses retating to the application of the job characteristics model to Commonwealth Government librarians are rejected. The study concludes by identifying issues and areas for further research in public sector librarianship.

The present study attempted to measure the overlap of tasks being performed by Librarians Class One and Library Technicians Grades Two and Three in special libraries located in Commonwealth Government Departments and Statutory Authorities in the ACT. Overlap was also measured between the two groups in libraries with six or more staff, since size of library could have affected the results; and between graduates (those employees with university or college of advanced education degrees or graduate diplomas in library and information science), and nongraduates (those without such qualifications). To measure the overlap, a task list questionnaire was devised based on task lists utilised in other research studies or which had been the outcome of professional workshops. Work level guidelines and position classification standards developed by pertinent Australian employing authorities and the Library Association of Australia were also used. Results suggested that there may be considerable overlap in work being performed by Librarians Class One and Library Technicians Grades Two and Three in the nominated libraries. Of the eight functional areas of library work into which the task list questionnaire was divided, only two areas, Reference, and Current Awareness and User Services, resulted in proportions of the groups tested being assigned the tasks in significantly different proportions. For the six other functional areas, representing 125 of the 160 tasks Librarians Class One and Library Technicians Grades Two and Three performed the same tasks in similar proportions. Testing for size of library and qualifications of respondents made very little difference to these results. Conclusions drawn from the present study are limited because the questionnaire ignored the level of importance and the time occupied in completing these tasks. Other constraints occurred in relation to conclusions which could be made. The questionnaire methodology as utilised by the present study is more likely to evoke responses to what is there; and it does not identify what should be done or how well tasks are performed. The study is limited to special libraries within Commonwealth Government Departments and Statutory Authorities and is confined to three levels of staff only, Librarians Class One and Library Technicians Grades Two and Three. Despite these limitations, it seems clear that the levels of staff included in the present study are often assigned tasks on the basis of what tasks have to be done, rather than with regard to matching level of task to level of position within the boundaries of the work level guidelines; and this situation is also true of the larger libraries with six or more staff. These results have implications for those involved in educating professional librarians and library technicians, for the interpretation given by the profession to the meaning of professionalism and for staff relations between librarians and library technicians. Debate by the profession concerning the roles of librarians and library technicians is an issue demanding urgent attention.

The Commonwealth departmental machinery of government is changed by using Orders in Council to create, abolish or change the name of departments. Since 1906 governments have utilised a particular form of Order in Council, the Administrative Arrangements Order (AAO), as the means to reallocate functions between departments for administration. After 1928 successive governments from Scullin to Fraser gradually streamlined and increasingly used the formal processes for the executive to change departmental arrangements and the practical role of Parliament, in the process of change, virtually disappeared. From 1929 to 1982, 105 separate departments were brought into being, as new departments or through merger, and 91 were abolished, following the merger of their functions in one way or another with other departments. These figures exclude 6 situations where the change was simply that of name alone. Several hundred less substantial transfers of responsibilities were also made between departments. This dissertation describes, documents and analyses all these changes. The above changes can be distilled down to 79 events termed primary decisions. Measures of the magnitude of change arising from the decisions are developed with 157.25 units of change identified as occurring during the period, most being in the Whitlam and Fraser periods. The reasons for the changes were assessed and classified as occurring for reasons of policy, administrative logic or cabinet comfort. 47.2% of the units of change were attributed to policy, 34.9% to administrative logic, 17% to cabinet comfort. Further conclusions are drawn from more detailed analysis of the change and the reasons for the changes.

This thesis examines the history of Commonwealth Government higher education policy in Australia between 1958 and 1997 and its impact on the development of two groups of academic librarians: the Association of Librarians in Colleges in Advanced Education (ALCAE) and the Committee of Australian University Librarians (CAUL). Although university librarians had met occasionally since the late 1920s, it was only in 1965 that a more formal organisation, known as CAUL, was established to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. ALCAE was set up in 1969 and played an important role helping develop a special concept of library service peculiar to the newly formed College of Advanced Education (CAE) sector. As well as examining the impact of Commonwealth Government higher education policy on ALCAE and CAUL, the thesis also explores the influence of other factors on these two groups, including the range of personalities that comprised them, and their relationship with their parent institutions and with other professional groups and organisations. The study focuses on how higher education policy and these other external and internal factors shaped the functions, aspirations, and internal dynamics of these two groups and how this resulted in each group evolving differently. The author argues that, because of the greater attention given to the special educational role of libraries in the CAE curriculum, the group of college librarians had the opportunity to participate in, and have some influence on, Commonwealth Government statutory bodies responsible for the coordination of policy and the distribution of funding for the CAE sector. The link between ALCAE and formal policy-making processes resulted in a more dynamic group than CAUL, with the university librarians being discouraged by their Vice-Chancellors from having contact with university funding bodies because of the desire of the universities to maintain a greater level of control over their affairs and resist interference from government. The circumstances of each group underwent a reversal over time as ALCAE's effectiveness began to diminish as a result of changes to the CAE sector and as member interest was transferred to other groups and organisations. Conversely, CAUL gradually became a more active group during the 1980s and early 1990s as a result of changes to higher education, the efforts of some university librarians, and changes in membership. This study is based principally on primary source material, with the story of ALCAE and CAUL being told through the use of a combination of original documentation (including minutes of meetings and correspondence) and interviews with members of each group and other key figures.

Advances in medical technology have altered the need for certain types of surgery to be performed in traditional inpatient hospital settings. Less invasive surgical procedures allow a growing number of medical treatments to take place on an outpatient basis. Hospitals face growing competition from ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). The competitive threats posed by ASCs are important, given that inpatient surgery has been the cornerstone of hospital services for over a century. Additional research is needed to understand how surgical volume shifts between and within acute care general hospitals (ACGHs) and ASCs. This study investigates how medical technology within the hospital industry is changing medical services delivery. The main purposes of this study are to (1) test Clayton M. Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation in health care, and (2) examine the effects of disruptive innovation on appendectomy, cholecystectomy, and bariatric surgery (ACBS) utilization. Disruptive innovation theory contends that advanced technology combined with innovative business models—located outside of traditional product markets or delivery systems—will produce simplified, quality products and services at lower costs with broader accessibility. Consequently, new markets will emerge, and conventional industry leaders will experience a loss of market share to “non-traditional” new entrants into the marketplace. The underlying assumption of this work is that ASCs (innovative business models) have adopted laparoscopy (innovative technology) and their unification has initiated disruptive innovation within the hospital industry. The disruptive effects have spawned shifts in surgical volumes from open to laparoscopic procedures, from inpatient to ambulatory settings, and from hospitals to ASCs. The research hypothesizes that: (1) there will be larger increases in the percentage of laparoscopic ACBS performed than open ACBS procedures; (2) ambulatory ACBS will experience larger percent increases than inpatient ACBS procedures; and (3) ASCs will experience larger percent increases than ACGHs. The study tracks the utilization of open, laparoscopic, inpatient and ambulatory ACBS. The research questions that guide the inquiry are: 1. How has ACBS utilization changed over this time? 2. Do ACGHs and ASCs differ in the utilization of ACBS? 3. How do states differ in the utilization of ACBS? 4. Do study findings support disruptive innovation theory in the hospital industry? The quantitative study employs a panel design using hospital discharge data from 2004 and 2009. The unit of analysis is the facility. The sampling frame is comprised of ACGHs and ASCs in Florida and Wisconsin. The study employs exploratory and confirmatory data analysis. This work finds that disruptive innovation theory is an effective model for assessing the hospital industry. The model provides a useful framework for analyzing the interplay between ACGHs and ASCs. While study findings did not support the stated hypotheses, the impact of government interventions into the competitive marketplace supports the claims of disruptive innovation theory. Regulations that intervened in the hospital industry facilitated interactions between ASCs and ACGHs, reducing the number of ASCs performing ACBS and altering the trajectory of ACBS volume by shifting surgeries from ASCs to ACGHs.

AbstractThis chapter examines how British child migration policy became caught up in the political sensitivities of post-war assisted migration. By 1950, officials in the Commonwealth Relations Office were becoming increasingly doubtful about the strategic and economic value of assisted migration, but also concerned about adverse political reaction in Australia to any scaling back of this work. An agreement was reached between the Commonwealth Relations and Home Office in 1954 to continue child migration on the basis of encouraging gradual reform of standards in Australia. In 1956, a UK Government Fact-Finding Mission in 1956 recommended more urgent controls over child migration, but this was rejected by an inter-departmental review in view of these wider political sensitivities. Despite introducing more limited monitoring, British policy-makers struggled to reconcile their knowledge of failings in some Australian institutions with the political challenge of trying to address these in the absence of co-operation from the Australian Government.

Australia is a nation of 20 million citizens occupying approximately the same land mass as the continental U.S. More than 80% of the population lives in the state capitals where the majority of state and federal government offices and employees are based. The heavily populated areas on the Eastern seaboard, including all of the six state capitals have advanced ICT capability and infrastructure and Australians readily adopt new technologies. However, there is recognition of a digital divide which corresponds with the “great dividing” mountain range separating the sparsely populated arid interior from the populated coastal regions (Trebeck, 2000). A common theme in political commentary is that Australians are “over-governed” with three levels of government, federal, state, and local. Many of the citizens living in isolated regions would say “over-governed” and “underserviced.” Most of the state and local governments, “… have experienced difficulties in managing the relative dis-economies of scale associated with their small and often scattered populations.” Rural and isolated regions are the first to suffer cutbacks in government services in periods of economic stringency. (O’Faircheallaigh, Wanna, & Weller, 1999, p. 98). Australia has, in addition to the Commonwealth government in Canberra, two territory governments, six state governments, and about 700 local governments. All three levels of government, federal, state, and local, have employed ICTs to address the “tyranny of distance” (Blainey, 1967), a term modified and used for nearly 40 years to describe the isolation and disadvantage experienced by residents in remote and regional Australia. While the three levels of Australian governments have been working co-operatively since federation in 1901 with the federal government progressively increasing its power over that time, their agencies and departments generally maintain high levels of separation; the Queensland Government Agent Program is the exception.

The philosophy of research in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program expanded what I learned in graduate school from H. T. Odum by providing an approach for a holistic understanding of ecological processes in the tropics. Participation in the LTER program enabled collaborations with many talented people from many parts of the world and enabled the mentoring and education of a new cadre of tropical natural and social sciences students. By expanding the opportunities for research and analysis at larger scales, the LTER program allowed me to address tropical ecosystem responses to such phenomena as hurricanes, floods, landslides, and past land uses and to do so at the appropriate scales of time and space. Paradigms of tropical forest resilience and adaptability in the Anthropocene emerged from research at the Luquillo (LUQ) LTER site. I first became aware of the LTER program in 1978 as I walked by the White House in Washington, DC, with Sandra Brown, then an intern on the President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and Wayne Swank, a US Forest Service employee on detail with the National Science Foundation (NSF). I was a staff member at CEQ, and W. Swank explained to us a new long-term ecological research program that he was helping develop at the NSF. Although the first cadre of sites appeared to have been selected, I was immediately captured by the concept and expressed my interest in developing a proposal for a tropical site in Puerto Rico. Little did I know at the time that my whole scientific career was about to change, in part because of the LTER program, but also because I was to become a US Forest Service scientist. The first 30 years of my US Forest Service career would be heavily influenced by the LTER program and the people I worked with while developing a new way of thinking about tropical forest ecosystems. I am an ecologist trained at the Universities of Puerto Rico and North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My experience before becoming part of the LTER program involved (1) teaching at the University of Florida at Gainesville and (2) government work at the Commonwealth (Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources) and federal (President’s Council on Environmental Quality) levels.

This fortnightly Covid-19 (C19), Conflict, and Governance Evidence Summary aims to signpost the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and other UK government departments to the latest evidence and opinions on C19, to inform and support their responses. Based on the feedback given in a recent survey, and analysis by the Xcept project, this summary is now focussing more on C19 policy responses. This summary features resources on: how youth empowerment programmes have reduced violence against girls during C19 (in Bolivia); why we need to embrace incertitude in disease preparedness responses; and how Latin American countries have been addressing widening gender inequality during C19. It also includes papers on other important themes: the role of female leadership during C19; and understanding policy responses in Africa to C19 The summary uses two main sections – (1) literature: – this includes policy papers, academic articles, and long-form articles that go deeper than the typical blog; and (2) blogs & news articles. It is the result of one day of work, and is thus indicative but not comprehensive of all issues or publications.

The fortnightly Covid-19, Conflict, and Governance Evidence Summary aim to signpost the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) and other UK government departments to the latest evidence and opinions on Covid-19 (C19), to inform and support their responses. This summary features resources on C19’s unequal impacts and policy responses; responses to build long-term resilience to both conflict and pandemics; responses to support forcibly displaced people in Africa and the Middle East; and the implications of C19 for international development cooperation in 2021. Many of the core C19 themes continue to be covered this week, including C19 increasing gender-based violence; whether regime type shapes effective C19 responses; and whether and how C19 is shaping conflict contexts. The summary uses two main sections – (1) literature: – this includes policy papers, academic articles, and long-form articles that go deeper than the typical blog; and (2) blogs & news articles. It is the result of one day of work and is thus indicative but not comprehensive of all issues or publications.

This fortnightly Covid-19, Conflict, and Governance Evidence Summary aims to signpost the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and other UK government departments to the latest evidence and opinions on Covid-19 (C19), to inform and support their responses. Based on feedback from the recent survey, and analysis by the Xcept project, this edition, as a trial, focusses less on the challenges that C19 poses, and more on more on the policy responses to these challenges. The below summary features resources on legislative leadership during the C19 crisis; and the heightening of risks emanating from C19’s indirect impacts – including non-C19 healthcare, economy and food security, and women and girls and unrest and instability. Many of the core C19 themes continue to be covered this week, including anti-corruption approaches; and whether and how C19 is shaping conflict dynamics (this time with articles focussing on Northwestern Nigeria, Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and the Middle East). The summary uses two main sections – (1) literature: – this includes policy papers, academic articles, and long-form articles that go deeper than the typical blog; and (2) blogs & news articles. It is the result of one day of work and is thus indicative but not comprehensive of all issues or publications.

Emergency Relief (ER) is a Department of Social Services (DSS) funded program, delivered by 197 community organisations (ER Providers) across Australia, to assist people facing a financial crisis with financial/material aid and referrals to other support programs. ER has been playing this important role in Australian communities since 1979. Without ER, more people living in Australia who experience a financial crisis might face further harm such as crippling debt or homelessness. The Emergency Relief National Coordination Group (NCG) was established in April 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to advise the Minister for Families and Social Services on the implementation of ER. To inform its advice to the Minister, the NCG partnered with the Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra to conduct research to understand the issues and challenges faced by ER Providers and Service Users in local contexts across Australia. The research involved a desktop review of the existing literature on ER service provision, a large survey which all Commonwealth ER Providers were invited to participate in (and 122 responses were received), interviews with a purposive sample of 18 ER Providers, and the development of a program logic and theory of change for the Commonwealth ER program to assess progress. The surveys and interviews focussed on ER Provider perceptions of the strengths, weaknesses, future challenges, and areas of improvement for current ER provision. The trend of increasing case complexity, the effectiveness of ER service delivery models in achieving outcomes for Service Users, and the significance of volunteering in the sector were investigated. Separately, an evaluation of the performance of the NCG was conducted and a summary of the evaluation is provided as an appendix to this report. Several themes emerged from the review of the existing literature such as service delivery shortcomings in dealing with case complexity, the effectiveness of case management, and repeat requests for service. Interviews with ER workers and Service Users found that an uplift in workforce capability was required to deal with increasing case complexity, leading to recommendations for more training and service standards. Several service evaluations found that ER delivered with case management led to high Service User satisfaction, played an integral role in transforming the lives of people with complex needs, and lowered repeat requests for service. A large longitudinal quantitative study revealed that more time spent with participants substantially decreased the number of repeat requests for service; and, given that repeat requests for service can be an indicator of entrenched poverty, not accessing further services is likely to suggest improvement. The interviews identified the main strengths of ER to be the rapid response and flexible use of funds to stabilise crisis situations and connect people to other supports through strong local networks. Service Users trusted the system because of these strengths, and ER was often an access point to holistic support. There were three main weaknesses identified. First, funding contracts were too short and did not cover the full costs of the program—in particular, case management for complex cases. Second, many Service Users were dependent on ER which was inconsistent with the definition and intent of the program. Third, there was inconsistency in the level of service received by Service Users in different geographic locations. These weaknesses can be improved upon with a joined-up approach featuring co-design and collaborative governance, leading to the successful commissioning of social services. The survey confirmed that volunteers were significant for ER, making up 92% of all workers and 51% of all hours worked in respondent ER programs. Of the 122 respondents, volunteers amounted to 554 full-time equivalents, a contribution valued at $39.4 million. In total there were 8,316 volunteers working in the 122 respondent ER programs. The sector can support and upskill these volunteers (and employees in addition) by developing scalable training solutions such as online training modules, updating ER service standards, and engaging in collaborative learning arrangements where large and small ER Providers share resources. More engagement with peak bodies such as Volunteering Australia might also assist the sector to improve the focus on volunteer engagement. Integrated services achieve better outcomes for complex ER cases—97% of survey respondents either agreed or strongly agreed this was the case. The research identified the dimensions of service integration most relevant to ER Providers to be case management, referrals, the breadth of services offered internally, co-location with interrelated service providers, an established network of support, workforce capability, and Service User engagement. Providers can individually focus on increasing the level of service integration for their ER program to improve their ability to deal with complex cases, which are clearly on the rise. At the system level, a more joined-up approach can also improve service integration across Australia. The key dimensions of this finding are discussed next in more detail. Case management is key for achieving Service User outcomes for complex cases—89% of survey respondents either agreed or strongly agreed this was the case. Interviewees most frequently said they would provide more case management if they could change their service model. Case management allows for more time spent with the Service User, follow up with referral partners, and a higher level of expertise in service delivery to support complex cases. Of course, it is a costly model and not currently funded for all Service Users through ER. Where case management is not available as part of ER, it might be available through a related service that is part of a network of support. Where possible, ER Providers should facilitate access to case management for Service Users who would benefit. At a system level, ER models with a greater component of case management could be implemented as test cases. Referral systems are also key for achieving Service User outcomes, which is reflected in the ER Program Logic presented on page 31. The survey and interview data show that referrals within an integrated service (internal) or in a service hub (co-located) are most effective. Where this is not possible, warm referrals within a trusted network of support are more effective than cold referrals leading to higher take-up and beneficial Service User outcomes. However, cold referrals are most common, pointing to a weakness in ER referral systems. This is because ER Providers do not operate or co-locate with interrelated services in many cases, nor do they have the case management capacity to provide warm referrals in many other cases. For mental illness support, which interviewees identified as one of the most difficult issues to deal with, ER Providers offer an integrated service only 23% of the time, warm referrals 34% of the time, and cold referrals 43% of the time. A focus on referral systems at the individual ER Provider level, and system level through a joined-up approach, might lead to better outcomes for Service Users. The program logic and theory of change for ER have been documented with input from the research findings and included in Section 4.3 on page 31. These show that ER helps people facing a financial crisis to meet their immediate needs, avoid further harm, and access a path to recovery. The research demonstrates that ER is fundamental to supporting vulnerable people in Australia and should therefore continue to be funded by government.