The latest Communities Tasmania dashboard from the March quarter has been released today. The outcomes are broadly consistent with the previous quarter, but some important improvements have occurred.
The number of children in active transition decreased from 278 in December 2018 to 148 at the end of March 2019. All children in active transition are actively triaged, with oversight provided by senior staff who will escalate the urgency of allocation as required.
It is important to note that all priority one cases are commenced on the same day.
In housing and despite the current challenges, we have seen the Housing Register stabilising, while the Average Wait Time decreased from 52 to 50 weeks since the last quarter.
What is pleasing to see is that the Dashboard shows more people are being housed faster, and the Number of People Being Housed in the March quarter was 243.
We are taking urgent action on housing, and last week we announced an additional $5 million for immediate actions to further expand our response to homelessness and housing stress across Tasmania.
This is in addition to the Hodgman Liberal Government’s $125 million investment into Stage Two of our Affordable Housing Strategy, taking our total investment to almost $200 million over eight years – the largest ever investment into affordable housing in Tasmania’s history.
We are committed to our long term strategy to assist Tasmanians in need and continue to work hard to improve important service provision including in housing and child safety services.
Due to the transition to the NDIS, the indicators for disability services continue to show a substantial decrease in the number of people with disability waiting for both supported accommodation and community access.
This is fantastic news and demonstrates the positive impact the NDIS is having for Tasmanians.
As at 31 March 2019, there were only five people waiting for supported accommodation, down from 17, and six people waiting for community access, down from 28.
The dashboard can be viewed here.