South Australian Governments Child Protection Reform Program - Literature review Example

Social policy for an in-depth critical analysis of Keeping Them Safe; South Australian Government’s child protection reform program Bacchi (2009) has remarked that common place view to policy analysis needs to be challenged. This is because governments, while devising policies, seem to be going by the conventional method of identifying a fixed problem and providing policies in reaction to these problems. Normally these problems do not fall within the purview of the policy process. In other words the policies normally surround fixing the policy problems themselves instead of reaching plausible solutions to WPR or ‘what the problems represent’ to be. WPR, on the contrary, offers a different approach to how problems must be looked into and how appropriate policies need to be formulated around them. When policies are a reaction to a particular sort of problems, the resulting policies give rise to more problems instead. This leads to a re-creation of another set of problems, which are a direct consequence of policies themselves. Bacchi has enumerated this in context of an example. He says if on reports of child abuse police is sent into Aboriginal communities, the actual problem attains the hue of a law and order problem. This dilutes the essence of the problem for which police was sent out. This changes the very essence of how the problem is perceived and that, in turn, changes the very approach to how it is dealt with. How the problem is portrayed matters for how the solution is reached at it. Each problem has a character and any alteration in that character tends to alter the policy that is made to address it. Bacchi has further remarked that all social problems have social constructions. The point in question is how public policy would fit into the construct of solving a social problem. In order to propose an alternative framework, according to Althaus, Bridgman and Davis (2012), the issue is faced with more difficulty. It is not an issue that is only centred around policy vs. politics, or one that is related to evidence-based approach, rational-comprehensive undertaken by independent policy makers vs. culture of incrementalism, subordination or elite bargaining prevailing politically; it has a lot to do with the community expectations. It has also to see how the conflicting goals can better be avoided so that safeguarding individual rights, particularly in the wake of South Australian government's Keeping Them Safe initiative on children becomes a potential reality by being effective. Althaus et al. (2007) have stated in Australian Policy Handbook that various stages have to be followed when planning a policy and implementing it. This has been further corroborated by Colebatch (2006) who has mentioned that policy making is not a one-stop solution to the problems faced by the communities; instead in every policy there are diverse players, diverse interests and diverse agendas. Policies are supposed to be intersection of all these agendas, and not simply a goal-setting exercise, which is normally the case with public policies. Policy implementation, as recommended by Althaus, has not been a favourite topic either in research or public administration until long ago. It has gained some level of recognition in the recent past and is being heard loud and clear. But because of being more complex than what it generally seems, it is held that it needs new skills and better management tools. Furthermore, it also needs level of analysis which is exacting and planning for implementation, which is fool-proof. Recent "botched reforms' (the term coined by media) have triggered a challenge faced by public sector implementation. This century is redefining how policies must be formulated and implemented since they are meant to tackle interrelated, intractable and complex issues (Wanna et al 2010; Scott and Baehler 2010), just like the Keeping Them Safe initiative. Lindquist (2006) has argued that the key drivers of an issue need to have a sharpened focus so that policy implementation is successful. Under this background, the Keeping Them Safe initiative needs development of an analytical language and framework, which can deal with delivery preferences in as much as it does deal with implementation design, contingencies and option. Wanna (2007) states that 'implementation should not be taken as an afterthought; instead it should be interwoven somewhere between operational and policy design stages; both in conjunction with tools and systems of project management. It is important that policy developed on an initiative like this first and foremost fits into its context. Successful implementation, caution Bell and Hindmoor (2009) and Bourgon (2010) is not always a straightforward act with simply a top-down approach. There is more to a policy than the roles of a provider, funder, owner, regulator or even purchaser. In other words it is more challenging and more layered than thought to be. Australian policy cycle's dimensions have always been debated, particularly in public administration professional learning. It is considered as an entry point to how to formulate a policy. What is needed is an entry point that could show way to better design and policy analysis. In Australia child protection has been a vexed area, and there is no doubt that in the past 10 years Labor Government has produced mounds of literature on child protection. The Children's Protection (Keeping Them Safe) Amendment Bill 2005 - Draft for Consultation is considered as a lexicon on the same. Despite that it was only in July this year that the government thought it poignant to enact one of child protection reviews key recommendations, which was the establishing a Commissioner for young people and children. What is seen as the loop-side is Labor government has not been able to successfully pull together different policies and agencies linked with this issue. In 2004, speaking on the Keeping Them Safe strategy, then Premier Mike Rann and Weatherill, then Families and Communities Minister, had remarked that they wanted to remove barrier to information exchange (one of them was misconception about legal constraints) and share information so that better integration of services could be achieved". The statement has further asserted that for agencies not being able to divulge information, confidentiality would not be accepted as an excuse in situations where children at risk need protection" (Washington, 2013). These statements clearly divert attention to at least two new aspects of the issue that have surfaced: legal constraints used as an excuse and lack of communication. As explained above, this has given rise to a new problem within an existing one, hence diluting the importance of the main issue which is child protection. Policies that were supposed to address children's safety issues have got mired into altogether controversies of a different sort; not even remotely relevant to any solution to the problem in hand. It is worth a mention here that it was Robyn Layton who produced a report on child protection for the government in 2003. Given that a decade later Jennifer Rankine, current Education Minister, remarks that the report was produced "in crisis" at a time when Labor came to power, turns attention back to Althaus' recommendations on how policies must be formed and implemented. With regard to Keeping Them Safe policy, it could be contended that no one in the government bothered to link the policy dots despite the fact that they were all there. Arguably it can be said that only a problem-solving paradigm has been chosen for Keeping Them Safe, which is fraught with orthodoxies related to evidence-based policy. The approach, instead, has to be problem-questioning and adhere to the WPR methodology as mentioned above. The problem needs to be looked into through the prism of key issues and key drivers. These are the children should have a safe and healthy start to life, must develop well and should be ready for school, must meet all educational and development milestones at school, their emotional, social and physical needs must be met by living in families, they should be safe from injury and harm, and children as well as their families should have access to responsive services that are appropriate. The greatest detriment of the initiative in evaluating it has been its complexity. It demands for continual improvements from tertiary downwards to the primary service systems, even as the overall objective of improvement in safety and wellbeing of children stays constant. This tends to shake the focus of the initiative as most of the energy on policy gets utilised on long- and short-term system outcomes in early intervention and statutory services like neglect notifications, child abuse, out of home care placements, substantiations and trajectories. Other improvement sectors to be thought about include implementation measures and indicators and analysis of cost-effectiveness. Even as the framework describes ways to evaluate overall implementation and impact of the initiative, it is bereft of any methodologies of local evaluations, since those have to be undertaken on an independent scale. It is here Bacchi's (2009) Foucauldian approach, which is grounded in theory that is post-structuralist. According to her problems are not given; instead they are social constructions. The problem has to be thought about differently. References Althaus, C., Bridgman, P. and Davis, G. (2007). The Australian Policy Handbook. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Althaus, C., Bridgman, P. and Davis, G. (2012), The Australian Policy Handbook, (5th edition), New South Wales, Allen & Unwin. Bacchi, C.L. (2009). Analysing Policy: What's the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson Education. Australia. Bell, S. and Hindmoor, A. (2009), Re thinking Governance: The Centrality of The State in Modern Society, Cambridge, Melbourne. Bourgon, J. (2010), „Serving Beyond the Predictable‟, Occasional Papers, ANZSOG-SSA Partnership Program. Colebatch, H. (2006). Beyond the Policy Cycle: The Policy Process in Australia. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, Lindquist, E. (2006), „Organising for Policy Implementation‟, in Wanna, J., Improving Implementation: Organisational Change and Project Management, p. 229-257. ANZSOG. Wasahington, D. (2013). Child protection: why didn’t Labor join the dots?. Available http://indaily.com.au/news/2013/07/15/child-protection-why-didnt-labor-join-the-dots/. Accessed September 12, 2013. Wanna, J., Butcher, J. and. Freyens, B. (2010), Policy in Action: The Challenge of Service Delivery, Sydney, UNSW Press. Wanna, J., ed (2007), Improving Implementation Organisational Change and Project Management ANU E Press, Canberra. Read More