On 30 April 2018, the Premier of Queensland announced the State Government’s commitment to participating in the National Redress Scheme, developed in response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The task of operationalising and coordinating Queensland Government’s participation in the scheme was assigned to the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women, who sought the assistance of GWI to implement an ICT system that would support this important work.
Delivery included two key components – the implementation itself and an enhancement program to ensure continual improvement, effective reporting capabilities and ultimately, responsive support, with stage two involving the integration of a new system to manage Direct Personal Responses and coordinate access to counselling and psychological care services.
Working with staff to strengthen outcomes
To begin, we worked closely with internal groups to better understand existing processes, identify areas for improvement and prioritise change initiatives. This enabled us to focus on the right tasks at the right time and to proactively plan for any challenges that naturally come with change.
Throughout the process, complementary business requirements were also captured with all insights used to inform the selection of the ICT system.
Creating an accessible system that understands sensitivities
The National Redress Scheme provides access to:
- a Redress payment
- up to 20 hours of counselling and psychological care (and more if required), and
- the option to receive a Direct Personal Response, for example an apology, from the responsible institution.
Developing supporting processes for each, required the team to not only analyse and assess function, but to think deeply about potential barriers to accessing support. We needed to ensure that engagement with the Queensland Government would not create further distress for people who had already suffered significant trauma.
We worked extensively with the department and mental health clinicians – including psychologists, social workers and case managers – to better understand the complexities and refine our approach.
The Direct Personal Response system needed to be particularly responsive to sensitivities that could arise. We had to account for circumstances where survivors, for example, may not at first feel comfortable providing their personal details. And yet, we also needed to ensure information captured would help facilitate the best possible service – information like individual wishes around the apology, who they would like to bring to an apology and how they would prefer it take place.
A sensitive and streamlined approach
GWI created extensive documentation to support staff training and the change process, with the end result a sensitive and streamlined approach to the operational delivery of Queensland Government’s participation in the National Redress Scheme.
Beyond developing robust business processes, practices and reporting mechanisms, our approach enabled us to deliver a system responsive to the needs of those who have experienced trauma and one that supports Queensland Government staff to provide the best possible service.
