New partnership opportunities

• We understand that there are differences in outcomes based on place of birth and form of migration. We welcome proposals that aim to support sub-cohorts with different needs.

• This includes proposals targeting those who identify as part of the CALD community but were not themselves born in a non-English speaking country, e.g. parents born overseas, if data shows there are barriers to employment.

We are not being prescriptive and expect it will differ across proposals, however a few things to note from our prior experience:

• Small cohorts raise difficulties for statistical significance and outliers with resulting volatility in performance payments.

• It will partially depend on how vulnerable the cohort is, and the cost of service delivery per person, as well as the evidence on the effectiveness of the program.

• To deliver avoided costs, the program could be delivered to more people who are less vulnerable, or less people who are more vulnerable.

• The more vulnerable cohorts often use more services – if the program is effective, there is a larger opportunity for positive outcomes and reduced acute service use in future.
• The same avoided costs could be achieved with a larger cohort and a smaller change.

Previous PADs have supported at least 140 people.

• This will be an iterative process. For the response to the RFP, we suggest proponents use their knowledge of the cohort and the program and publicly available or internal data to estimate expected service use reduction. This can then be used with the unit cost data provided in the SOI Appendix C, which were derived from publicly available sources.

• During the Joint Development Phase with the selected proponent, DTF’s avoided cost modelling expertise will be used to refine the expected avoided costs.

In the Client Pathways report, we used the Government’s de-identified linked data to understand actual historic government service usage, not assumptions, of:

• all the young people living in the 8 LGAs

• the 3,172 young people who first sought AOD treatment and support in 2019.

While this is not the ‘individual’ person’s needs, it gives insight into common needs and service use for these cohorts.

• We will select one proposal through the RFP process. There is potential for unsuccessful proposals to reapply, or for a different cohort to be selected for a future PAD.

• We are seeking a partnership between the Victorian Government, a service provider, and investors.

• In future, a partnership with the Commonwealth could be a good opportunity, given the expected shared benefits.

• Consider factors like changes to employment and/or welfare. If the person is moving to employment, they are likely to have a personal financial benefit, and the Commonwealth will pay less in welfare and receive more in income tax.

• The aim is to get a holistic understanding of the benefits of a program, however benefits to the Commonwealth will not count as avoided costs to the Victorian Government.

• More PAD program participants have been based in urban areas in line with where most Victorians live, though COMPASS and Side by Side delivered services in both urban and regional areas.

• We are not prescriptive on LGAs. The eight metro LGAs in the Client Pathways report were selected based on a combination of the number of young multicultural people living in those LGAs, socioeconomic disadvantage, and higher youth unemployment, indicating both a need and an adequate number of recipients.

• Appendix B.3 contains information regarding evaluation criteria for the proposals, including the experience, capability, and capacity of the members of your team.

• The PAD aims to complement existing programs and services, for people who could benefit from the intervention.

• The PAD funding is not intended to be a substitute for funding provided by the Victorian Government, or other tiers of government. PADs could involve trialling a new innovative approach, which may have evidence from elsewhere, or could involve building on an existing program that is achieving positive results.

• The PADs are intended to provide innovative solutions to complex social issues. A core part of PADs is understanding what works and the transparency provided by PADs gives government good insight into this.

• Evidence of program impact has enabled previous PADs a pathway to continue beyond the life of the PAD contract, through additional funding as part of the State Government budget process. It is important to note that there is no guarantee this will be the case for future PADs.

• Even where this doesn’t occur, there have been important program learnings to help inform government on best practice. Evaluations of past PADs can be found on the Current PADs(opens in a new window) page.

• Each of these PADs has also provided learning opportunities to improve the contractual arrangements of future PADs, including the variables which become outcome payments, the calculations used to measure success, who they are measured against (the counterfactual), and building triggers into the contract that provide a review mechanism that allow for contractual adjustments.

• The Joint Development Phase supports the creation of a program and payment model that delivers positive outcomes for program participants and works for the Government and investors.