The Department of Communities is set to make changes which will see officers from various agencies work together to take a regional approach to issues.
The government department is responsible for dealing with child protection and family services, disability services, housing and youth justice.
The department’s director general Graham Searle was in Bunbury last week to announce the changes as part of a South West tour.
Mr Searle met with staff to talk about the future direction of the department which was about getting effective regional decision-making within government.
“WA is a very complex state, you think you can have one set of policies that work everywhere, and guess what? They don't,” he said.
“We have to get to the stage where we are making decisions based on the place and the people rather than roll out policies everywhere hoping they will work, because evidence tells us that is not true.”
Mr Searle said while regions in WA experienced similar issues the solutions were not going to be the same because of the services, infrastructure and facilities which were available in each town.
He said there was hardly a place in WA that did not experience challenges with young people who were disengaged from the school system or had nothing to do.
“You see it everywhere, it exists in Kununurra, it exists in Katanning and it exists in Albany, but the solutions will not be the same,” he said.
“Getting local communities to talk about what their problem is and what their solution is will give the department different pathways.
“What we are trying to do with the department and district leadership groups is get local solutions for local problems rather than impose solutions for elsewhere.”
Mr Searle said it was a huge bureaucratic change for the department that dealt with complex social issues, which were all fundamentally about people.
“We pretend drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, poverty, homelessness, child neglect and family and domestic violence are in independent events and they are not.
“It is a matter of how many of them co-exist within a family.
“Treating them as though they are separate makes no sense at all so this is all about how we work together to create pathways that enable individual and community well-being.”
Mr Searle said too many people in society felt disconnected from their own lives and had no control or authority to help themselves.
He said the changes was about helping those people to recognise they could take control of their lives and determine the direction they go.
“It is not rocket science, we want children to be safe, we want diverse and accessible communities and want everyone to play a role, strong families and a place to call home,” he said.
Mr Searle said while homelessness was often talked about, when you looked at the numbers over 90 per cent of people who were homeless had either a substance abuse or mental health problem.
He said the main issue was not homelessness, it was substance abuse or mental health, and if you put those people in a house they would be homeless again in three months.
“You are not actually dealing with a problem, you are dealing with it with a band-aid. What we are about is how we help people change the trajectory of their lives,” he said.
Up until recently the Department of Housing were mainly invested in the tenancy, waiting lists and maintenance of its properties.
The department now takes a more holistic and human focused approach where its brings different agencies together to make decisions.
Mr Searle said rather than look at a priority list they now considered the driver and urgency of a person’s situation.
“Is it someone who just wants cheaper rent or is it a woman and her children trying to escape a domestic violence situation?
“We are trying to encourage our staff not to be blind followers of rules but what makes sense and use commonsense to make decisions on the circumstances before them rather than a set of criteria.”
Mr Searle will be back in Bunbury on Friday, October 5, for the Homelessness Strategy Consultation.
