Victorian Government Budget Update 2023

29/5/2023

What is the lowdown on last week's $677M investment in outcomes and early intervention?

Last week's State Budget gives us yet more evidence that the journey to outcomes-based funding is speeding up. While the Feds will build an outcomes-contracting fund (the Outcomes Fund) the Victorian Government is using its Early Intervention Investment Framework (EIIF).

Both the Outcomes Fund and the EIIF do the same thing - allocate funding to programs that pre-determine their performance targets. The point is to direct funding to those practices that show measurable, real impacts and that, as a result, lower the use of acute social and health services.

In both cases, measuring 'avoided costs' will be critical. Avoided costs are State Government service costs saved from a successful service intervention (or, Avoidable Costs minus services delivered = Avoided Costs). This is the high-bar for impact measurement as far as Governments are concerned.

What does this mean for you and your program? Are you 'Avoided-Cost' ready? Reach out to us if you'd like to talk about the implications of this shift. Read more for the full list of EIIF funding programs.

Partnerships Addressing Disadvantage (PADs) - Two more!

PADS (the contracts formerly known as Social Impact Bonds, or SIBs) are the high-bar of outcomes-contracting. We call them the '10-metre diving board' version.
Think intense service design and development, financial modelling, lawyers, contract negotiations and commercial financing and you're getting close...
Last week's budget announced $26.6 million for an expanded PADs program with two more contracts to be offered. The budget papers state that this PAD allocation is also to be spent on '...initiatives to inform early intervention, including grants to support data collection and program evaluations, and public reporting of client pathways data and insights'. (Budget Paper Three, p.109).
Feeling up for the challenge? Having successfully negotiated several of these contracts we'd be happy to talk you through your readiness.

Early Intervention Investment Framework

There were other initiatives whose approach is to integrate services around cohorts with complex and high needs. The highlights for us were:

Our Place (Education sector): $19.3M over four years [Budget Paper 3, p.19]
Court Services Victoria, Court Integrated Services Program Indictable Stream Pilot, $18.3M, [BP3, p.112]

And now to the bulk of this funding, programs listed under the Early Intervention & Investment Framework (EIIF).

Keep in mind that, given the EIIF's focus on reducing acute service use, each of these programs will need 'hard' measures of progress toward achieving pre-agreed performance targets - impact indicators that measure how your program is affecting those to whom it is being delivered. Are you achieving the targets that you thought you would?