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Annual Report 06–07
Output 2: Child Support Agency—General Manager's review
This was both a challenging and successful year for the Child Support Agency (CSA) and for the separated families CSA works hard to support.
Consistent with the Australian Government’s four-year reform agenda announced in 2005–06, CSA successfully delivered key elements of the Child Support Scheme reforms and the Building a Better CSA change agenda.
CSA continued to perform strongly across all business areas, despite the challenges of simultaneously implementing major reforms and maintaining and improving ongoing activities. Separated parents and their children benefited from these efforts, in terms of the immediate improvement to outcomes and the progress made towards effective completion of the reform agenda.
Cooperation with portfolio partners and the commitment of CSA staff were vital contributors to these outcomes.
In April 2007, CSA hosted the 2007 International Child Support Heads of Agencies Conference in Melbourne. As in previous years, delegates from Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States met with their Australian counterparts to share best practice and contemporary understanding of international child support. Delegates were particularly interested to learn more of Australia’s reform initiatives in the areas of family law, child support, and improving the effectiveness and connectedness of CSA, particularly through Building a Better CSA. CSA remains highly regarded internationally in terms of its cost-effective transfer of child support.
Matt Miller
Improving our service and support for parents
During 2006–07, reflecting Building a Better CSA’s emphasis on customer service, CSA developed new service options for parents with complex circumstances or who seek face-to-face service and continued to build a customer-focused culture to underpin other service delivery improvements. CSA was able to better support parents through the provision of advice, targeted referrals to other service providers and significantly increased provision of support programmes and products. Cooperative partnerships with providers such as the new Family Relationship Centres and Family Law Advice Line were particularly important. As a result of these service improvements, high levels of customer satisfaction were raised further, and numbers of complaints dropped significantly.
Improving collection
CSA increased its focus on compliance activities directed to establishing the right amount of child support payable and obtaining payments from those seeking to avoid their responsibilities. The increased focus was applied to both paying and receiving parents. As a result, $2.68 billion was transferred between parents during 2006–07, an increase compared with $2.56 billion in 2005–06, and a clear signal was sent to those parents seeking to avoid their responsibilities that CSA would be pursuing outstanding amounts.
Improving communication
CSA recognises that it is important for separated parents and the broader community to have a good understanding of child support, to promote shared parental responsibility and confidence in the system.
During 2006–07, CSA expanded outreach activities to build improved awareness and understanding. A new information bulletin for separated parents, Child Support Matters, was launched, and proactive media activity increased. Information was extended to separated families through partnerships with organisations such as beyondblue, the Australian General Practice Network and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. This resulted in significantly greater positive media coverage and customer and community understanding of child support.
Improving capability and capacity
CSA developed and implemented strategies to ensure strong organisational capability and sufficient resources during the year. In particular, the implementation of the reform agenda involves substantially increasing CSA staffing (by approximately 30 per cent). Through robust workforce planning, CSA was successful in recruiting the planned 617 staff it sought. Attendance rates improved significantly during 2006–07, thereby creating additional frontline capacity to support the delivery of business outcomes.
Despite consciously increasing staffing levels to buffer the impact of the reforms’ implementation on business-as-usual capacity, CSA’s ability to sustain business performance outcomes has come under challenge. The loss of experienced staff to develop and implement the reforms, combined with the relatively lower productivity of new staff, has created greater service delivery pressures than originally envisaged. This has reinforced the importance of more sophisticated workforce planning and workload management capabilities and of effective staff engagement.
Implementing the new scheme
Because of the extent and complexity of the Child Support Scheme reforms, they are being implemented in three stages over two years. In 2006–07, CSA successfully implemented Stage 1 and Stage 2, and prepared for the implementation of Stage 3. The feedback from separated parents on CSA’s implementation of the first two stages has been positive.
Looking ahead
The year ahead will present more challenges as 1 July 2008 approaches, the date on which the final and most complex stage of the Child Support Scheme reforms comes into effect.
CSA will focus in 2007-08 on successfully implementing the most complex stages of the Child Support Scheme reforms and the balance of the Building a Better CSA agenda, while maintaining services and support for CSA’s 1.4 million customers. It will be important to carefully manage the impacts of this transition on business as usual performance, as the agency approaches the end of this significant journey of reform.
The outcomes achieved during 2006–07 clearly show that CSA is heading in the right direction. I look forward to working with my colleagues and our portfolio partners, stakeholders and customers to achieve the goals we share in 2007–08.