Finding the Gaps in Social Services
Many organisations deliver social services such as Women’s Refuge, Salvation Army, Out of school Care (OSCAR) programmes, etc. These organisations work nationwide, operating on a mix of government contracts, grants, subsidies and charitable donations.
The work that social service providers do for their communities includes child care services, mental health services, drug and alcohol services, domestic violence services and reintegration services for people who are leaving prison.
With so many different services delivered across New Zealand by different providers it’s a very real challenge to gain an overarching view of the social sector and where there are gaps, e.g. what services are being provided in an area.
One of the big challenges with understanding social services is while two services can look identical on paper; in reality they are completely different. This could be due to services being delivered by different providers, or that different funders describe services differently. Speaking the same language can be difficult.
A decision is only as good the quality of the information available. Poor data means that being able to make the right decision is difficult and getting good data on services (funded or not funded by government) is crucial to answering the bigger questions.
The New Zealand government has made a commitment to tackle New Zealand’s mental health crisis and is reviewing mental health and addiction services. To be able to do this the New Zealand government needs to know what services there are, where they are being delivered, and that services are effective and safe.
This is not easy and is a time consuming task.
Introducing Service Tagging
Matching data on client needs to NGO services and then to government contracts is a Sisyphean task in the current social sector data environment. Furthermore surveying non-government funded services, which don’t have a contracting description, is currently near impossible. Yet getting good data is crucial to answering the bigger questions:
“Is there a lack of X services in X location? Are any demographics that are under-served?”
“If a young parent in Hamilton East is looking for mental health support — what service is closest their home and is this a quality service?”
“How many mental health services are there in Christchurch?”
“How much is spent in Lower Hutt on delivering Family Violence services?”
“What services are the most effective?”
Currently government labels social services with ‘service-types’ — these help define and sort services. At the moment, each government agency uses a different set of service-types for each of their different processes and systems, making working across government difficult.
We’ve developed a provider-led tagging system to ask for specific information on services which enables providers to represent their services in a user-friendly way which also works for government agencies.
Service Tagging in Accreditron
When providers submit their information for review on Accreditron they can tag their services by selecting existing tags or create a new tag to best represent their service(s).
Our tag-based system has a number of benefits:
- Providers are guided into considering popular service tags first. This prevents the service definitions from exploding in complexity.
- A great experience for providers. Services can be described and tagged by providers in their own words.
- Users are guided to choose the most relevant tags for their service. By limiting the number of tags for a service, users are incentivised to choose the most relevant tags.
- Supports government-funded and charitably-funded services. A large portion of social services are funded by donations and volunteer time. Government agencies don’t accurately record this information about these services — government has an information gap about the social sector.
- Optimised for searching and understanding. Tags can help accurately describe what a service provides and for whom. While two identical services can be described differently they can be tagged very similarly. We use tag synonyms to link related concepts (e.g. housing & accommodation). This means that different people can still find the service that will help them.
- Services are also linked to the provider’s location. This means that any service gaps can be addressed
Accreditron is a web-based platform that enables providers to spend less time on paperwork, save time, gain key insights and helps keep New Zealanders more safe.
