REDWatch Monthly Meeting - Roundtable "Mind the Gaps" 6pm 1 May

As background to the question of how to address the gaps, below we have provided an overview of what REDWatch and others have been trying to broker on human services integration in Redfern Waterloo and where it is currently up to. It is what you might call the air gap!

REDWatch has always had a concern about human service integration problems in Redfern and Waterloo – it comes up at almost every meeting. In the last couple of years we have been trying to get human service agencies to come together again to address the issues. Our plan was not an RWA senior officers group working in isolation from the community, but rather a model where human services bodies met to address the issues experienced at the grass roots by front-line workers (both Govt and NGO) and residents who experience everyday where the systems work and fail. This is similar to what actually happened around Waterloo Green during the time of the RWA HSMAC when, to have any credibility that they were trying to coordinate human services, the RWA had to address the issues thrown up by the lack of agency co-operation on the Green.

REDWatch pushed in 2012 to get relevant agencies around the table on such a model but this was side-tracked to focus only on drug related issues and then became a Government only body to which community representatives were occasionally invited. Part of this seemed to be driven by Police wanting to concentrate on what they see as their core business and not seeing a role for police on broader human services issues that often draw on police time. It was made clear to us last year that those meetings were not about broader human service co-ordination but that if we wanted to set something up with other interested government agencies then we would be welcome to do it. We argued that with the drug focus that the new body was covering much the same ground as Redfern Waterloo Community Drug Action Team (CDAT) and that its members may have been the best community representatives on drug issues. Ironically this year as police have cut back on participating in community initiated meetings, they have now totally withdrawn from CDAT which in our view will increase the air gap between what is happening at the Government agency level and at the grass roots.

Late last year, following discussion among community reps, we provided a critique on the process to the government agencies. The model did not work for NGOs and the community representatives, and as we have not been invited to any further meetings of the group this year, we guess the community representative model is not currently working for government agencies also! The air gap we were concerned about was highlighted by the Govt agencies holding their own public housing event in Waterloo just after Summer on the Green because they did not realise that Summer on the Green had been set up to provide such an avenue for government agencies – a fundamental mistake that would have been avoided if community people were in the room when the decision had been made!

So it is time for REDWatch to explore other options to work on the service gaps and on the growing air gap between government agencies, NGOs and those that rely on the service system working. From the grass roots people just want the problems they experience fixed. How this happens is not of great concern but if there is not a good feedback loop to those that make the decisions it is difficult to see the problems being fixed. Thursday is about creating some feedback.