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This report was published by the former Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA).
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5. Conclusions and recommendations



5.1 Recalling the terms of reference

The background to this study is that the Indigenous housing sector is a sector in crisis, with a very high proportion of substandard housing, overcrowding, resource and capacity constraints, remoteness from mainstream services and systems of governance, and the most socially disadvantaged population in Australia. In this environment, basic housing asset management systems in Indigenous communities are unevenly applied across the country and in many instances are absent. Consequently the incidence of substandard 'health hardware' in dwellings is very high-with serious health consequences.

The FHBH Projects have evolved over four generations as a tool to:

Secondary objectives relate to the carrying out of the 'survey-fix' process and include:

The terms of reference (TOR) for this study required investigation of the following aspects of the FHBH Program:

  1. Program context and development
  2. Program design
  3. Program implementation
  4. Program outcomes
  5. Program costs
  6. Program cost-effectiveness
  7. Program change.

The study involved the following tasks:

The conclusions of the study relate to the areas where change may be contemplated and are discussed under the follow headings:

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5.2 Achievement of program objectives

In mainstream Australian society, substandard housing and poor dwelling conditions have not been tolerated for over a century. These recognised risks to health have been legislated against, originally by a suite of public health legislation, supplemented these days by a wide range of laws that relate to matters such as building design and construction standards; landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities; the number of people who are permitted to live in a dwelling; and asset management.

However, in Indigenous communities, dwelling conditions often fall to levels well below minimum standards set and enforced by such laws, with obvious adverse health outcomes for occupants. It is well understood that adverse health outcomes are a significant cause of low social, cultural and economic achievement in any community. This can in turn lead to social exclusion, and ultimately generate wide spread despondency. In parts of Australia's Indigenous community, this cycle has had profound intergenerational effects, which are compounding. Thus, improving the condition of dwellings occupied by Indigenous people must be a key element in breaking this cycle.

The essential steps towards improving dwelling conditions are to objectively assess the physical condition of dwellings, set priorities for repairing faults, and carry out the necessary repairs.

Ideally, the task of continuously assessing dwelling conditions and repairing faults would be carried out at the community and/or regional level with assistance from the states and territories. However, the ability to achieve this is inconsistent across the nation due to the complex context of competing priorities, resource constraints, and a lack of governance and management capacity in certain cases. Communities, regions, states and territories have struggled with these factors and have attempted a range of policies and systems to improve these circumstances. Notwithstanding these attempts, the management of Indigenous housing is failing to deliver adequate standards.

Given the ongoing critical nature of this situation, the Australian Government's provision of resources towards an independent, practical and objective method of improving the physical standard of Indigenous homes for better health outcomes via the FHBH Projects-which have the primary objective of fixing the most critical health hardware items in Indigenous homes-is endorsed by this evaluation.

The FHBH Projects' other primary objective of compiling a comprehensive database on the condition of Indigenous housing is also endorsed by this evaluation as an essential element of the FHBH Projects. There is a significant amount of subjective, confusing and inconsistent data about the quality and status of Indigenous housing. This clouds the political debate about how to respond and hampers an objective, needs-based allocation of resources. It is essential that objective information such as that collected and analysed via the FHBH Projects be available to improve the opportunity for evidence-based planning of appropriate policies and programs for Indigenous housing.

The secondary objectives of the FHBH Projects, that is, those that relate to capacity building at the community level and developing federal partnerships with the states and territories, remain highly relevant and important. This evaluation has found that there are examples of success in these areas and these achievements need to be built upon.

However, it ought to be recognised that capacity and partnership building is a responsibility for the whole of government. While individual programs such as the FHBH Projects can play an important demonstration role in this regard, whole-of-government coordination of policies and programs aimed at capacity and partnership building is still essential to achieve satisfactory outcomes for Indigenous housing. For example, the Building a Better Future framework should be informed by the lessons of single programs such the FHBH Projects and should look to apply those lessons to other areas of policy aimed at achieving improvements in the delivery of the whole-of-government response.

Recommendation 1

That the success of the FHBH Projects in achieving the primary objectives of fixing the most critical health hardware deficiencies of dwellings located in participating communities and compiling a comprehensive database which records the 'point-in-time' condition of Indigenous housing be acknowledged and the FHBH Projects' primary objectives be strongly endorsed as a means of improving Indigenous housing outcomes.

Recommendation 2

That the FHBH Project delivery method be acknowledged and endorsed as a successful means of program delivery, particularly with regard to good resource planning and achieving practical outcomes in relation to 'on-the-spot' fixing of health hardware deficiencies. It is a conceptually straightforward methodology which accords with best practice asset management principles, and which can be successfully applied by FHBH Project managers and participating communities. It has been shown to be appropriate and adaptable to its circumstances and to provide an objective 'evidence-based' means of assessing the status of Indigenous housing.

Recommendation 3

That the demonstration role of the FHBH Projects in capacity and partnership building be built upon, but with explicit regard for the limits to what this role can achieve, and with a recognition of the pressures inter-program coordination can place upon local project managers. High-level whole-of-government policy and program coordination (such as the Building a Better Future framework) should continue to be promoted as the primary means of improving the context in which the FHBH Projects operate, and should seek to leverage the demonstrated benefits that the projects provide.

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5.3 Potential for improvements

It is important to record that, notwithstanding suggestions for methodological change and alterations to funding and planning arrangements, the FHBH Projects are acclaimed as a successful method of improving the physical condition of housing by repairing health hardware, by all stakeholders consulted, including housing tenants, community housing organisations and Australian Government, state and territory agency personnel. The FHBH Projects deliver urgently needed relief for critical housing problems, gather useful data and involve community members. None of the respondents with whom the evaluation has consulted suggested that the FHBH Projects were not useful. Most were enthusiastic for the program to continue and to be expanded. Communities that had hosted a FHBH Project were generally enthusiastic for a FHBH Project to return in future.

This is a stand out result for a program of this type. Many funding programs delivered to Indigenous communities are perceived at the community level as limited in their scope and/or burdensome in their compliance requirements. Some communities tolerate them because they have no alternative while other communities reject them if they have the capacity to make other arrangements.

A number of respondents praised the design of the FHBH Projects so as to include the participation of community members as a very successful way of engaging Indigenous communities in program delivery. Respondents praised the energy of the program delivery method and the enthusiasm that is generated during the Survey/Fix phases.

Recommendation 4

That the FHBH Projects be acknowledged for widely applauded success in providing critically required practical improvements for housing, collecting useful information about housing conditions, actively engaging communities in project delivery, and winning the support and enthusiasm of community members in particular.

Nevertheless, some areas have been identified where improvements might be made.

Budget setting

Currently per-house budgets are set in advance of detailed survey-based housing assessments. The per-house budget is also nationally averaged, to provide equity across jurisdictions. This means that the per-house budget is fixed before functionality per house is determined, and functionality can vary significantly between houses and communities. The evaluation's findings, using limited data, suggested that, in many cases, at least double the current budget of $5,000 per house would be required to achieve 100 per cent OK for all HLPs. On this basis, there is a case to support some flexibility in budget setting. Ideally, after Survey Fix 1 has been conducted, the database would be interrogated and a relationship established between Survey Fix 1 scores achieved per house and the funds required to reach a satisfactory level of outcome per house for that particular FHBH Project.

However, it is also the case that Survey Fix 1 would still need to be resourced by a minimum average budget per house, to facilitate the carrying out of the survey and performing 'on-the-spot' fix and repair work.

State and territory agencies raised the problem of the short-term nature of FHBH funding which can cause the loss of skilled staff at the end of projects. If longer-term funding (three to five years) was available agencies could commit resources to training dedicated staff in agencies and communities, as well as plan and achieve more efficient articulation of FHBH Projects with state and territory programs.

Recommendation 5

That, once there is sufficient information available, a program-wide evaluation of financial data be undertaken to investigate the relationship between 'average' critical health hardware function at Survey Fix 1 and the resources required to achieve 100 per cent OK for health hardware, as a means of establishing an effective average budget per house for the FHBH Projects.

Recommendation 6

That the principle of introducing flexibility in budget setting post-Survey Fix 1 be adopted, and that research be undertaken into developing a budget-setting formula based on scores achieved in the initial survey. This could produce two stages for setting budgets for FHBH Projects:

Recommendation 7

That the funding for FHBH Projects in each state and territory be based on a multi-year budgetary cycle, of three to five years.

Housing standard assessment

The current system applied by Healthabitat is to identify the critical 'Healthy Living Practice (HLP)' elements of a household and to link each of these HLPs to an assessment of critical health hardware in a house required to achieve the HLP. For each component there is a test derived from the survey form as to whether a health hardware component is 'OK'. If any one of the critical components of health hardware for a particular HLP is not 'OK' the HLP is 'failed'. Failed HLPs are deemed to pose a continuing real threat to the health and/or safety of house occupants, and this deemed threat is supported by the evaluation's observations.

This last point is not widely understood and hence is open to challenge. It would be useful to make the implications of this assessment method more transparent and to provide support for the link between assessment ratings and health outcomes.

Recommendation 8

That HLP ratings of health hardware function are validated by an independent verification of the assessment method and the relationship between HLP assessments and health risks. This verification would, as a minimum, have regard for mainstream benchmarks for housing standards that demonstrate a connection to health outcomes.

As discussed in the evaluation's findings, the FHBH Projects are less able to achieve outcomes for poorly performing HLP elements of dwellings that would require large-scale changes to the structure and design of a house for improvement, for example, fire risks. This is because FHBH Project resources are not intended to cover the large expense that might be required to make these changes.

Recommendation 9

That the housing condition assessments undertaken by FHBH Projects should continue to collect information about elements of critical health hardware that would require major structural changes to dwellings to achieve better outcomes (so as to inform other responses such as improvements in housing design). However, the success of a FHBH Project in improving HLPs in this category should be assessed with resource limitations understood.

Data management and use

The management of data associated with the FHBH Projects has undergone many changes throughout the evolution of the FHBH Projects. The resultant system has a number of positive features:

This evaluation did have difficulty accessing consolidated and consistent data relevant to financial analysis and also the 'count of jobs' at Survey Fix 1 and Survey Fix 2. However, it is understood that proposed future changes to the data collection and storage systems will see these components more easily incorporated into the consolidated database.

There is a recognised need for a better national understanding of the condition of Indigenous housing that is consistent and objective. The FHBH Projects database has large potential to provide such an understanding, if it is resourced to do so. The general public should then have access to nationally aggregated FHBH data to advance the knowledge of those policies, programs and research efforts looking to improve housing outcomes for Indigenous communities. However, access to the database should be regulated so as to protect the integrity of the data and to ensure that it is used primarily for constructive purposes.

FHBH Project data are already being used in other ways (for example, there have been over 80 studies conducted in the health field using FHBH Project data). As such, there is evidence that the FHBH Projects are already considered to be a very important data source for other users. Therefore, maintaining this database over the long term has good potential to enhance the influence and contribution of the FHBH Projects to Indigenous housing and health, and other policies, programs and studies.

Recommendation 10

That changes to the FHBH information system be implemented so as to enable project-by-project financial information to be incorporated, and that all available financial information previously gathered be integrated into this system.

Recommendation 11

That, for the benefit of advancing the national understanding of the condition of Indigenous housing, nationally aggregated FHBH Project data be held by and accessible via a suitable public or non-profit body, which would regulate the use of the data under a suitable public licence and monitor access.

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5.4 Sustainability of outcomes and relationship to other housing and environmental health programs

Sustainability of outcomes

The relationship between the capacity of communities and their governance/administration, and the sustainability of FHBH Project outcomes is intuitively predictable. This is borne out by the evaluation's field observations and the experience of the stakeholders consulted. Notwithstanding the fact that the FHBH Projects have helped communities to address urgent housing maintenance issues, the high risk of a lack of sustainability of these outcomes is widely regarded as a major concern. Although FHBH participants may develop some housing assessment and maintenance skills during a project, if such skills are not incorporated into an ongoing, well resourced and managed housing maintenance program that continues to apply the fundamental principles of the FHBH approach, these skills are unlikely to be used.

A number of communities, particularly small remote communities, struggle with a myriad of infrastructure and community priorities of which housing maintenance is but one. Some small communities do not have the required 'critical mass' of skills and funding to support a regular, reliable maintenance program, and, in these cases, maintenance issues accumulate to crisis point until external help can be engaged.

Thus, a lack of community capacity to keep up the housing maintenance effort after a FHBH Project has finished is seen as a major impediment to achieving the objective of the sustainable transfer of maintenance skills and systems to communities. Addressing this problem calls for a better understanding of the influence of community capacity, governance structures, skills shortages and other issues at the community level that can dictate the achievement of sustained outcomes.

Recommendation 12

That regionally-based delivery of FHBH Projects and subsequent routine maintenance programs be investigated as an option for servicing smaller remote communities with limited capacities; and that the feasibility of using Shared Responsibility Agreements as a means of supporting the sustainability of FHBH Project outcomes be investigated further. When investigating these options, regard should be given to the risks associated with the potential collapse of regional delivery systems and agreement-based approaches, which could leave individual communities stranded without the skills and support necessary to manage housing.

Relationship with other programs

The Indigenous housing sector has suffered from a fragmented, uncoordinated response to issues for many years. There have been deficiencies in:

In many communities, governance systems are also program-focused with service delivery emanating from 'silos'. There exist only a limited number of examples of a holistic approach being applied in practice.

Programs such as NAHS and CHIP are intended to be more comprehensive in their scope and resource allocation than the FHBH Projects and ideally these responses could work in with FHBH. A FHBH Project provides a baseline objective assessment of a community's housing conditions that could be used for structuring the specific responses of programs such as NAHS for particular communities. The Survey Fix 2 phase of a FHBH Project could then provide a detailed and objective review of outcomes achieved by all programs targeted at improving housing conditions. Adoption and use of the FHBH Project's Survey Fix 1 assessment of housing condition to inform a program's response could be made a condition of funding under these and other programs targeting the improvement of dwelling standard and condition.

The capture and maintenance of longitudinal data about Indigenous housing conditions is a necessary requirement for objectively measuring the success or failure of all program responses.

Recommendation 13

All housing-related programs should be preceded by a standardised and comprehensive 'planning assessment' of community conditions. This planning assessment would identify and assess opportunities for the implementation of housing programs and threats to the sustainability of housing program outcomes. The planning assessment would assess areas such as governance, human resources, asset management capability and the influence of remoteness. The planning assessment would also identify or prescribe the need for other non-housing programs, such as community capacity-building programs, to operate ahead of or alongside housing programs.

The planning assessment would inform all subsequent strategic planning for a coordinated program response at the community level.

Recommendation 14

To maximise the FHBH Project's value as a resource planning and outcomes evaluation tool:

That consideration is given to adopting Survey Fix 1 as a standard, comprehensive baseline assessment of individual dwelling condition in all communities. This baseline assessment of dwelling condition would then inform the allocation of resources from all housing and infrastructure programs towards the repair and provision of housing and housing-related infrastructure

and

That Survey Fix 2 is conducted on a periodic basis as a tool for evaluating progress and the sustainability of outcomes for all housing and infrastructure programs.

Recommendation 15

That the data collected via standardised Survey Fix 1 and Survey Fix 2 assessments be used to maintain the national FHBH Project database as the definitive measure of Indigenous housing condition, so as to facilitate nationally consistent longitudinal monitoring and assessment of housing standards, and to coordinate program responses over the long term.

Other factors that can affect healthy housing outcomes

While the presence of functioning health hardware items is a critical factor in better health outcomes for housing occupants, there are other causes of health risks in dwellings, particularly in remote communities. Householders may struggle to maintain healthy living environments because of factors such as:

These factors can limit the effective achievement of a consistent housing maintenance effort over time.

The expansion of the FHBH Projects to directly address the area of behaviour-related environmental health issues would, however, be highly problematic. There is a danger of losing focus on what the FHBH Projects achieves best (fixing health hardware) and of having resources spread too thinly across an onerous scope of tasks.

However, the commencement of a FHBH Project in a community could be complemented by the commencement of a separate special purpose household environmental health and capacity-building program for communities, where the need for such a program has been identified. The identification of this need could be achieved during the planning assessment process referred to previously. Where state or territory environmental health programs already exist, these would ideally interact with and work alongside the FHBH Projects.

Recommendation 16

That consideration be given to, where required, supporting FHBH Projects with a complementary household environmental health and capacity-building program which could be mobilised during or subsequent to a FHBH project, with the aim of contributing to and sustaining better healthy housing outcomes.

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Appendix A - Case study reports

4. Analysis and findings