2019-20
Hello and welcome to ACSO’s 2019-20 Annual Report
This year our report goes digital which is fitting given the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and our need to turn to technology and remote support in 2020 to deliver ACSO’s client services in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
We launched the ACSO 2020-2023 Strategic Plan at the 9th International Criminal Justice Conference in November 2019. The Conference theme; ‘Balancing the costs of prison and community safety – building strategies to reduce offending and unnecessary incarceration’ frames our strategic direction and our organisational vision. “A community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and prison is truly the last resort”. This is important to ACSO because the Australian imprisonment rate per 100,000 of adult population more than tripled from 66 in 1985 to 223 in 2019. And the evidence is clear that as a deterrent imprisonment is not working – only a quarter of inmates are entering prison for the first time and more than half return within two years. There has been no real decrease to these outcomes since 1985. Our Strategic Plan is focused on addressing the failed policies that result in rising rates of incarceration and also designing services that intervene earlier on the justice continuum. Our service delivery focus is balanced between diverting people away from prison and providing transition services for those exiting.
Our strategic objectives over the next three years are directly aimed to try and ‘shift current justice policy from an incarceration focus to ‘diversion and prevention’. Three of the plan’s five pillars are focused on our external environment; to influence the change for justice reform, to design new service models that divert people away from the criminal justice system and for the organisation to grow sustainably in jurisdictions that need our expertise and capability.
Importantly the strategic plan places our clients at the centre of the organisations future. More resources have been committed to embedding the expertise of lived experience to enable our future growth and the design of services that are measured by their impact on clients, the community and government. We have also committed more resources to embed culturally, diverse and inclusive practice across the organisation; at Board, within our corporate support systems and within our service delivery. This includes creating authentic and meaningful partnerships with First Nations communities.
To ‘drive’ the momentum of our Strategic Plan, we invested in and established the ‘ACSO Strategy Unit’. Reporting directly to the CEO and headed up by our Chief Strategy Officer, the unit is responsible for Service Design and Impact (including data analytics for contract performance reporting and impact measurement), Communications and Marketing and our inaugural Project Management Office.
COVID-19
We were able to largely continue progress on our ‘Strategic Projects’ and momentum on the Strategic Plan during 2020, whilst also successfully managing the response to the CVOID-19 Pandemic. This is a testament to the hard work, commitment and loyalty of the people who make up the organisation – employees delivering client services and corporate support functions, the Leadership and Executive teams and our Board
There is no doubt that COVID-19 has had a disruptive impact on the organisation, especially given that we are based in Melbourne with 90% of our operations in Victoria. We were able to continue providing uninterrupted services to our ten residential programs in Victoria. We managed to keep all of these services ‘COVID-19 free’ and we increased staffing resources to ensure that residents received additional supports during the stage 4 ‘stay at home’ restrictions. Our pandemic co-ordination and planning ensured all client services, corporate supports, contracts and systems kept running. An initiative that we are very proud of is the creation of the COVID-19 Employee Support Package. This broad support initiative ensured that all ACSO employees do not need to use their accrued personal and annual leave entitlements for self-quarantine, COVID related illnesses and carers responsibilities whilst the restrictions are in place. Since March 2020 our COVID-19 Employee Support has included; granting 154 weeks of special paid COVID Pandemic leave to 117 employees, and provided a $500 Learning & Development grant to 195 employees. A key highlight during the COVID-19 restrictions was the 2020 Employee Engagement Survey Results held in June this year. We achieved an amazing 97% participation and 76% positive engagement rates across the organisation. ACSO is truly a great organisation to work for.
COVID-19 will have social and economic impacts in Australia for years to come and we are already planning for opportunities to ‘operate’ the organisation differently. Offering our clients more intensive supports by complimenting face to face with the use of technology, improving work – life balance for our employees with broader flexible work from home options and reducing the size of our commercial office footprint allowing for increased investment in direct client services
The impacts of COVID-19 has actually helped further progress our efforts in collaborating with Government on service delivery reforms in the Justice system and also to assist communities in their recovery from COVID-19. An example is the announcement of the new COVID-19 Partners in Wellbeing Service, delivered as a partnership between ACSO, EACH and NEAMII National. ACSO supporting mental health recovery across Regional Victoria funded by the Victorian Government.
Looking Ahead
In 2021 we will be focused on addressing the increasing economic, personal and social costs of imprisonment. We have established an alliance with a new national advocacy group call the Justice Reform Initiative which has a social change platform to reduce incarceration across Australia. We will create a new evidence based social housing service delivery model that diverts hard to engage people away from the criminal justice system. This initiative will be designed to enable scale and sustainability in other jurisdictions outside of Victoria. ACSO is working closely with government to identify people with high levels of social vulnerability who are at risk of significant long-term significant offending. Our strategic objective is to ‘turn the tap off’ prior to someone becoming entrenched in the prison system and a life of serious harmful crime. This new service design is an integrated model of psychological treatment, housing support, case management and community transition. Our future work will be informed by data science and we will complete the development of the OSCA Case Management System which will enable outcome and impact measurement of ACSO current and new programs.
On behalf of the Board, Executive team and ACSO employees we are proud to share our 2018-19 Annual Report with you.
Warm Regards
Karen Corry
ACSO Chair
Vaughan Winther
ACSO CEO
The philosophy of Learning and Development at ACSO is to provide accessible opportunities that increase the knowledge and confidence of our people in core areas of practice. To achieve this, we consulted with our employees and created ACSO’s core learning and development matrix.
This matrix ensures our people are equipped with the knowledge and confidence in their core areas of practice to enable meaningful client experiences
Without our incredible people, ACSO would not be able to support our clients and positively impact our communities. To ensure our people know they are valued, ACSO has re-energised its employee recognition. As well as recognising exceptional work with peer and leader recognition, coffee cards, thank you cards and recognition walls, ACSO has also re-introduced its Employee Awards which saw:
“Being a leader with ACSO has given me the sheer joy in assisting and watching people grow and develop within their role until it becomes second nature, and then watching the same people assist in the training of the next generation of team members. It’s true joy!”
– Harry James Constantinou, 2019 winner of the Leadership Excellence Award and Mental Health Intake Team Leader
Tom* was a 79-year-old man with serious health concerns, and he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and subsequently had frequent hospital stays. In custody, Tom had a full-time carer and used a wheelchair when moving about the prison grounds. Queensland Corrective Services (QCS) applied parole for Tom on the grounds of exceptional circumstances due to his deteriorating health and submitted a referral to ACSO’s CREST program for his community support.
Tom’s CREST Forensic Case Worker, Paris, worked quickly to ensure he would be assessed and appropriate support in the community would be ready for his release. Working alongside the Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT), QCS and Tom, they were able to identify his specific needs across the medical, physical, cultural, psychological, and social domains and create a plan for his release. This collaboration allowed Paris to find a suitable placement at an aged care facility which also agreed to hold the placement thereby allowing for the parole application process to be finalised.
Paris collected Tom on his day of release and accessed program brokerage so he could purchase new clothes, toiletries, and bedding. During the process of waiting for parole to be approved, QCS and ACSO continued to work together to ensure Tom’s needs were addressed and his transition from prison to the community had the greatest chance of success. Paris continued to work with Tom and his professional support team for the following three months to ensure he settled in.
Though CREST only supports someone’s journey from prison to the community for the initial three months of their parole, it is often the most critical point for a person to successfully transition. Tom is now comfortable, settled and enjoying his new home, he is relieved he can live in a calm setting with the support he requires during such a challenging time.
“…the effort and consideration that you have put into Tom right from the beginning has been exceptional. It has been a very long road to be able to get him into a more appropriate setting that can sufficiently address his needs. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to the whole process. We love having you working with our team for all these reasons.” – Feedback from Queensland Corrective Services following Tom’s release
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
From April 1, ACSO provided our people with an advanced COVID-19 Employee Support Package which proactively offered special leave, redeployment opportunities and additional wellbeing support.
From March 25 to June 30, the Executive Team have delivered 41 episodes of live ACSO broadcasts, fondly known as ‘ACSO TV’, created to maintain clear, consistent and supportive communication and a strong sense of OneACSO culture during COVID-19.
Over 440 care packages delivered to our employee’s homes during the pandemic Leaders accessed an additional 25 hours of leadership coaching support during COVID –19.
528 masks were distributed to employees during bushfire season, which saw smoke surround many of our workplaces and communities.
“I am super proud to work for an organisation that is innovative, client-focused, and looks after its people. I felt this way well before the COVID-19 situation, but even more so now given how supportive ACSO has been during the pandemic.” – ASCO employee, 2020 employee engagement survey.
The philosophy of Learning and Development at ACSO is to provide accessible opportunities that increase the knowledge and confidence of our people in core areas of practice. To achieve this, we consulted with our employees and created ACSO’s core learning and development matrix.
This matrix ensures our people are equipped with the knowledge and confidence in their core areas of practice to enable meaningful client experiences
Without our incredible people, ACSO would not be able to support our clients and positively impact our communities. To ensure our people know they are