Strengthening Queensland Government’s delivery of the National Redress Scheme

The task of operationalising and coordinating Queensland Government’s participation in the scheme was assigned to the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women, who sought the assistance of Evinact to implement a system that would support this important work.

Delivery included two key components – the system implementation itself and an enhancement program to ensure continual improvement, effective reporting capabilities and ultimately, responsive support, with stage two involving the integration of a new system to manage Direct Personal Responses and coordinate access to counselling and psychological care services.

To begin, we worked closely with internal groups to better understand existing processes, identify areas for improvement and prioritise change initiatives. This enabled us to focus on the right tasks at the right time and to proactively plan for any challenges that naturally come with change.

Throughout the process, complementary business requirements were also captured with all insights used to inform the selection of the ICT system.

Creating an accessible system that understands sensitivities

The National Redress Scheme provides access to:

• a Redress payment
• up to 20 hours of counselling and psychological care (and more if required), and
• the option to receive a Direct Personal Response, for example an apology, from the responsible institution.

Developing supporting processes for each, required the team to not only analyse and assess function, but to think deeply about potential barriers to accessing support. We needed to ensure that engagement with the Queensland Government would not create further distress for people who had already suffered significant trauma.

We worked extensively with the department and mental health clinicians – including psychologists, social workers and case managers – to better understand the complexities and refine our approach.

The Direct Personal Response system needed to be particularly responsive to sensitivities that could arise. We had to account for circumstances where survivors, for example, may not at first feel comfortable providing their personal details. And yet, we also needed to ensure information captured would help facilitate the best possible service  – information like individual wishes around the apology, who they would like to bring to an apology and how they would prefer it take place.

Queensland Government strengthened its ability to deliver the National Redress Scheme through consistent, trauma-informed and efficient operational practices. Staff were equipped with the processes, guidance and capability required to support survivors with greater confidence, sensitivity and responsiveness, improving both service delivery and participant experience.

This engagement was originally completed as GWI.