CHAPTER 5Challenges in complaint handling

Community engagement and public awareness

Community engagement and public awareness menu: Service delivery to Indigenous Australians | Outreach to regional and rural areas | Awareness survey | Outreach activities

Service delivery to Indigenous Australians

In 2005–06 we reported on the establishment of an Indigenous Working Group (IWG) in the Ombudsman’s office. The aim of the IWG is to develop a program of consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, organisations and communities, with a dual focus on improving our services and identifying key issues that arise in the delivery of government services to Indigenous people and communities.

The IWG prepared an interim report in mid-2006 outlining a range of initiatives, including:

• refining the consultation process: identifying and testing consultation options that can be used by specific teams in the office, as part of a broader office planning and reporting process
  
  
• own motion investigations: identifying and undertaking own motion investigations in areas of specific concern to Indigenous people and communities
  
  
• Indigenous employment strategy: building an effective secondment program in the office, as a step in developing an Indigenous recruitment strategy
  
  
• partnerships with existing contact networks in Indigenous communities: establishing direct contact points between investigation officers and Indigenous communities, that can facilitate complaint handling and training
  
  
• targeted outreach: through radio and print media, and direct consultation
  
  
• internal management: improve data capture within the office about approaches from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and provide training in Indigenous cultural awareness for all staff.

The Ombudsman endorsed the findings and recommendations of the IWG interim report. Implementation of the recommendations began in 2007, although progress has been slower than we would have hoped. A key step towards implementation has been our commitment to developing a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). We are currently working with Reconciliation Australia on our draft RAP, which embodies many of the initiatives outlined above. We hope to launch the RAP later in 2007.

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Outreach to regional and rural areas

The office has an active program of outreach to regional and rural Australia. A main objective of the program is to target key stakeholders so that services provided by the Ombudsman’s office are better known and used.

Awareness survey

In 2006 we contracted a market research company to survey people in regional and rural Australia, to establish a benchmark for the level of public awareness of the office. The survey was repeated in 2007.

The 2007 survey showed that people’s unprompted awareness of ‘the Ombudsman’ had increased from 27% to 33%, and ‘the Ombudsman’ was now their most commonly preferred choice for dealing with complaints about an Australian Government department or agency. There was a lower level of prompted awareness of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, with 64% indicating they have heard of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, compared to 74% in 2006. As found in the last survey, many people appeared to have difficulty distinguishing between the roles of various Ombudsman offices.

The results of this awareness survey will be used in the coming year to better target our outreach activities and communication.

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Outreach activities

In 2006–07 we conducted 116 outreach activities across all states and territories, continuing our aim of conducting or participating in an average of at least one focused outreach activity each week during the year.

We continued to target community information ‘gatekeepers’ in rural and regional Australia, to inform them of our role and to listen to their concerns and observations about government service delivery. In recognition of the role played by local members in resolving complaints about Australian Government agencies, we placed a particular emphasis in 2006–07 on engaging with federal parliamentarians and their staff. Information sessions for electorate staff of state and federal members of parliament were held in all states during the year.

‘... we conducted 116 outreach activities across all states and territories ...’

In our Immigration Ombudsman role, we conducted roundtable discussions with migration agents, community groups and other immigration stakeholders in all state capital cities.

Other highlights included a visit by senior staff to Indigenous communities in the Western Cape York area of North Queensland and around Darwin, and visits to the regional centres of Alice Springs, Cowra, Dalby, Dubbo, Nowra, Port Augusta, Toowoomba, Wollongong, and Young, as well as to smaller communities on the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland.

In June 2007 we undertook a major outreach visit to Tasmania, attending functions coordinated by the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Hobart Community Legal Centre in Hobart, Launceston and Burnie. Although the number of people attending some functions was not high, feedback indicates that our visit was appreciated by the participants. From our perspective, the opportunity to engage with both the business and community sectors was valuable.

Towards the end of the financial year we undertook limited targeted advertising in 117 regional and rural newspapers to support our outreach activities. The small advertisements promoted our contact details. We are analysing the results of this advertising in order to help better target our outreach activities in future.

Areas visited during outreach activities in 2004 to 2007


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