Reference no: EM133716528

HOPEFUL HORIZONS

State Government is concerned about inequalities and intergenerational deprivation that is particularly evident in some regional and rural districts in the State. Specifically, they are concerned about the long-term impacts on children who grow up in households that may be affected by one or more of the follow issues:

• Low socio-economic status

• Long term unemployment of one or both parents

• Welfare dependency

• High rates of suicide in local communities

• Family breakdown

• Unstable/unsuitable accommodation

• Domestic violence

• Drug and/or alcohol dependency

• Limited work opportunities

• Limited access to education resources

• Limited recreational and sporting facilities

The "HOPEFUL HORIZONS" initiative is an attempt to reduce inequalities and improve lifelong outcomes for children living in rural and regional areas in State, and aspires to ensure that all young people avoid the poverty trap and develop to reach their full potential, becoming successful, confident and responsible adults.

Its aims include:

• Holistic focus on the child within the family, based on achieving a shared understanding of "child well- being"

• Facilitating information sharing amongst diverse professionals and agencies, while ensuring privacy and security of sensitive data

• Involvement of child and family in assessment, planning and intervention

• Coordinated inter-professional and unified approach to identifying concerns, assessing needs, agreeing actions and outcomes supporting achievement of appropriate well-being metrics

• Cooperation, joint working and communication amongst involved professionals, agencies and the family

• Appointing a "Kid's Counsel" for each child and family, to coordinate and monitor activity, and ensure needs and risks are addressed

A small pilot study was supported in 2016-17 geared towards child-centred, integrated holistic service provision and solutions, and the results have been somewhat mixed. While there were a number of successes with individual children involved in the pilot, feedback from some of the professionals involved suggests that there are complexities in achieving successful collaboration and information sharing in programs involving inter-professional work and expertise, and inter-agency cooperation. Several Kid's Counsels were especially concerned at the difficulty of keeping track of relevant documents, and coordinating multiple interventions to ensure good outcomes for children. An initial report into the pilot has been prepared and recommendations endorsed by State Government.

Amongst the recommendations, there was a recognition of the immediate need to ensure better team work and communication amongst the diverse professionals involved in service provision to the children and their families. Coordinating the activities of paediatricians, general practitioners, paramedical and allied health professionals, child psychologists, social workers, teachers, school principals, after-school care providers, and police had provided at times insurmountable challenge for the Kid's Counsels. Greater clarity was required in determining structures and responsibilities for the team assigned to each case. The exact status of the Kid's Counsel member was contentious, and concerns expressed about the nature of the relationship between practitioner and client being under threat if reporting needed to be done via the Kid's Counsel member. Some families were also reportedly unhappy about the Kid's Counsel concept, seeing this as greater State intrusion into their family and privacy: one parent described it as akin to State surveillance of their family.

Information sharing was another major problem that resulted in a number of recommendations in the initial report. Many of the professionals were deeply concerned about issues relating to privacy and data protection and security. For the HOPEFUL HORIZONS program to work successfully, information needed to be disclosed, and shared, and there was little agreement on what and how this would be accomplished.

The Kid's Counsels emphasised the importance of "well-being" in the aims of HOPEFUL HORIZONS, and argued that information needed to be shared in the interests of well-being. Others, especially the police, felt that information sharing without consent was justified only to prevent significant harm or in crisis situations. It was recognised in the report that in fact there had been no shared understanding ever reached as to the working definition of "well- being", and another recommendation was that all team members needed to agree how this was to be defined and operationalised. All professionals involved had supported the recommendation for existing State and federal legislation to be clarified to provide reassurance that decisions made in good-faith to share information would not put them in breach of privacy laws. A consultant ethicist had raised their concerns about gathering and collating multiple pieces of information, and the manner in which these data would be stored securely, shared, utilised and accessed by practitioners in multiple agencies.

The report also noted the need to urgently review resource allocation and the diverse performance measures that were applied to the professionals involved in this program. In general, professionals had noted that resourcing was often associated with reactive allocations following investigative responses to unsatisfactory behaviours and achievements of children, rather than on early stage, preventative allocations. This applied particularly in policing and the school sector. Police resources were more often allocated to 'catch and punish' initiatives than they were to early interventions to reduce the likelihood of minor misdemeanours escalating into criminal activity, and it needs to be noted that in the main, those within the police force saw this as a necessary and appropriate allocation in the interests of public safety.

In the school sector, schools (and school principals) were typically rewarded for excellent performance on public examinations and national tests of literacy and numeracy, and thus often allocated resources to the achievement of good outcomes in those tests, rather than on preventative, diagnostic activities resulting in early interventions with children struggling to keep up with their peers and exhibiting learning disabilities. School principals frequently mentioned their dilemma, claiming that the school's reputation was built on performance, and not on how good it was in supporting children with learning difficulties.

In addition, there was acknowledgement that a new system (to be called the HopeLink System (HLS)) would be needed to support the program. The HLS would provide secure access to the information and functionality required by the inter-professional team members, with the report recommending the following as a minimum:

• demographic, child assessment and planning data for each case (child),

• document management for professionals within and across agency boundaries,

• work flow, goal setting, achievement measures,

• data analysis to demonstrate the efficacy of such a program.

As these social challenges are not specific to State, the State Government has appealed to the Federal Government for additional support to extend this program, & have achieved in principle support for a preliminary limited roll-out of the program, contingent upon explicit efforts being made to endorse and implement all recommendations of the initial report. In addition, funding has been allocated for a detailed analysis and specification for the HLS, and a commitment that provided key stakeholders (especially the inter- professional team members) supported the specification and the business case could demonstrate a solid return on investment, funds for the full development and implementation of the HLS would be made available.

Your group has been appointed as Business Analysts to support the analysis, specification and aspects of the business case.

A: Your Tasks (Tasks 1 and 2) require you to focus on the broader problem context)

1. Conduct an analysis of the problem(s) presented in the HOPEFUL HORIZONS case. Identify the main objectives, business requirements and user requirements for the HLS. (Please document any assumptions you make in this process.) Provide a solution document (requirements specification) for the HLS system.

2. Define performance measures for acceptance testing, based on the solution document for the HLS outlined in 1 above. You need to demonstrate how your suggested performance measures will assure managers that the business problem has been 'solved' and value delivered to stakeholders of the HLS system.