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Oversight or Overkill?
The challenges of maintaining and
developing an integrated, holistic and
responsive approach to the drugs issue in
our communities with current funding
requirements and oversight.
November 2015
Community drug projects have
been dealing with:
• Significant budget cuts
• A concurrent increase in the volume and complexity of
paperwork and compliance requirements
• As well as contract related documents, projects are
required to engage with NDRIC protocols, QUADS, ENCASS,
Logic Model Frameworks etc.
A lot of the focus is on numbers…. sometimes
the valuable work isn't valued.
Funding of Community Drug Projects
• Projects are funded by multiple agencies
• An coherent interagency approach which had
been valued and noted in successive National
Drug Strategies and continues to underpin the
implementation of the current strategy, has never
been properly implemented.
• Current funding mechanism do not reflect the
interagency approach.
• Community drug projects have expressed serious
concerns about the increasing obstacles they are
experiencing in trying to deliver an integrated
holistic drugs service in the community.
This Research
• The concern is that these changes are creating
and increasing obstacles to projects who are
attempting to deliver an integrated holistic
drug service in the community
• Therefore, Citywide commissioned research to
identify and highlight these obstacles and to
look at what changes are needed to support
this approach.
Methodology
• A survey was sent to all community drug
projects on the CityWide data base.
• In depth interviews with nine projects.
• Desktop research on the context of the
situation.
• Feedback from the presentation of the initial
findings of the research at the workshop
(today)
Respondents
• A total of 38 community drug projects
completed the survey and nine projects
were interviewed.
• Interviews: 3 GDP, 3 DRP and 3 both.
• To protect the confidentiality of the
respondents, no comment or feedback is
being individually attributed to an
organisation and /or individual.
What type of organisation
responded to the survey?
Drug Rehabilitation
Project (CE)
28.9%
28.9%
42.1%
General Drug Poject
Both Drug Rehabilitation
Project (CE) & General
Drug Poject
Who are the core funders of the organisation?
How many funders do you have?
One quarter of the respondents had one primary funder the other 75% had at
least two or more funders. Of those with more than one funding source the
average was three funders per organisation.
3%
3% 3%
One
11%
24%
Two
Three
Four
24%
Five
Six
32%
More than six
Time that the organisation spends on the
administrative / monitoring work
7%
10%
3% 3%
13%
10%
20%
30%
40%
13%
50%
37%
13%
60%
More than 60%
Couldn't give an estimate
43% of the organisations felt that they spent
more than 40% of their time on administrative /
monitoring elements of their work.
Answer
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
More than 60%
Couldn't give an estimate
Percent
3%
13%
37%
13%
13%
10%
7%
Count
1
4
11
4
4
3
2
3%
1
answered question
30
General Issues
There is no overall cohesion between the funders and
requirements that projects are required to adhere to.
Although funders are aware of each other, there is no
coordination between the funders at any strategic
level.
This affects projects in a number of ways:
• Quite simply it adds unnecessarily to work load
• Different funders are interested in different elements
of the information, which means it is difficult to
present the holistic picture in any format that is
being requested.
General Issues
• There are governance issues in relation
to how projects are funded.
• What is required over the course of a
year is often not clear at the start of the
year
• Terms and conditions of staff, within the
one organisation, differ due the rules of
the funders.
Do these requirements have resource
implications for your organisation?
Impacts on the type of
work the organisation
is doing
26.7%
73.3%
Limits the work that
the organisation and/or
specific workers can do
Does the organisation feel 'on top,' of
all of the requirements?
7%
Yes
7% 10%
Yes, by and large
Sometimes yes, sometimes no
37%
40%
At times, no
No
Half of the organisations felt that there were on top of the requirements, primarily by
and large, but half felt that at least some of the time they were not.
Does the organisation see the value of the
funding/monitoring requirements?
Yes, all funding/monitoring
requirements
3%
30%
67%
Some funding/monitoring
requirements yes, some no
No, none of the
funding/monitoring
requirements are fit for
purpose
General Issues
The changes in funding, cut
backs and the fact that this is
complex and at times difficult
work, means that staff morale
is affected.
HSE Funding and Requirements
and Issues Arising
5%
Yes
No
95%
HSE
• There is no one monitoring system in place
• The requirements that projects have to adhere
to vary by project, by area, by task force and,
it appears, by the HSE liaison person
• There is also some confusion about the TF role
in relation to the monitoring of HSE monies.
• Projects do not know from the start of the
year what will be required of them in the
course of the year.
HSE
• The HSE funding is seen to be the most
responsive to the holistic nature of the
projects.
• They appear to one of the main funders
that does not see the funding in silos.
• The HSE are aware of the multiple
funding streams that come into projects
and how that funding is interdependent.
HSE
• The HSE and TF are asking for the same information
• Where does the information go?
• There is a sense that although the HSE are the best in
relation to looking for more detailed information, the
best of a bad lot in terms of what information is
being sought that all that is valued is numbers and
despite the fact that the HSE value and recognise a
holistic response the monitoring requirements still
focus on the ticking of boxes and quantitative
outcomes rather than proving the case for a
qualitative presentation of the key issues.
HSE
The issue remains that there
is not enough HSE funding, it
has been significantly cut in
recent years.
DSP
45%
Yes
55%
No
DSP
• The DSP criteria is very rigid the primary
difficulty being that CE was not designed with
DRPs in mind
• The CE model is underpinned by a manual,
which was developed for generic CE projects:
• Impact on Staff
• Management
• Clients
DRP Issues
• Previously, FAS treated funding ‘as a grant
towards wages,’ Changed with DSP; Now
acting as shadow employer.
• What is seen as a supervisor’s role is being
restricted and challenged.
• ‘Silos’ and only deal with CE clients on specific
CE
• There are restrictions (trying to enforce
restrictions) on staff’s terms and conditions
when DSP funded.
DSP
• The relationship between the project and
their contact in DSP is critical.
• This relationship determines how the manual
is interpreted and how visible the special
nature of the DRP is within the structure.
You can’t pick up any document that tells you
what a DRP is. Is exisits in practice and not
policy, we are in space of functional ambiguity.
We just get on with it.
DSP
• What you can spend the money on in terms of
activities and training is very restricted.
• There is also a huge amount of time spent
dealing with or negotiating with DSP re
permission and to seek approval for things
• Specific questions are not answered, and
projects described a general frustration trying
to get or gather information about anything
that is slightly different to the norm
Impact of the changes in the Social
Welfare Act 2012.
• Clients
group
has
changed
fundamentally, instead of an older group
of mixed gender, most now have young
men involved.
• The participants on a DRP are classed as
employees!
It’s
is
a
recovery
programme! This causes problems as
they only get seven days’ sick leave.
DSP
• DSP are not participating in task forces.
• Projects are often monitored on the basis of
fraud, or fraud prevention. All of that trouble
in FAS years ago (where they were done for
fraud) has caused all of this tension and it
rolled down hill.
• At times projects have been told they will only
talk to or deal with CE supervisor, or the
sponsor of the project.
Quotes /Feedback
• Some requirements seem excessive and are micro
management.
• Applying the principles as required by our funders
for example, value for money, duplication of work
etc there is no recognition of the practicalities of
compliance across multi stream funding. If we were
to be completely compliant we would in fact be
reporting outcomes without ever having the time to
actually do the work we have agreed to.
• Funders constant tone is of not wanting to work
with the community voluntary sector.
Quotes /Feedback
• The lack of understanding of community drug
projects.
• There is also a lot of information that is not
captured
• It is difficult to plan strategically when you are
relying on funding from year to year only
• Most of the monitoring exercises are reduced to
number crunching and quantitative outputs and do
not capture early intervention and preventative
work.
Quotes /Feedback
• Hidden voices get lost in stats
• Reporting of softer outcomes are not requested and
the reporting itself lend you to feel that the
accumulation of certificates is the key outcome that
marks out a successful intervention
• Complexity of the cases presenting in case
management/counselling etc is not reflected in any
forms
Positives
• They serve to keep us on track with our aims
and objectives
• Support the organisation to make effective
and efficient use of the resources available.
• Requirements provide a benchmark and
encourage us to keep our work in line with
strategic and policy developments, while
hopefully not limiting the capacity to respond
to emerging needs.
Positives
• The introduction of the Logic Model is very
helpful in guiding us through the process of
ensuring complete clarity of outcomes and
purpose of the programme
• We can see the amount of work that has
been done compared to the funding we
received
Recommendations
We urgently require one channel of funding,
from an organisation that has at least some
understanding, empathy and passion for the
essential nature of our work (and the nature of
interagency work)
• How can projects be supported to govern
the organisations?
• How can projects be supported to deliver an
interagency approach?
• Our sector is sinking in administration with
no two funders requirements similar, an
accepted requirement for public funding,
must be developed and managed to consume
minimum resources in small tightly-staffed
organisations.