National Affordable Housing Agreement: Indicator 4-Proportion of people experiencing repeat periods of homelessness, 2011 QS
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 437900 |
Registration status: | Homelessness, Recorded 05/10/2011 Housing assistance, Recorded 05/10/2011 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | The key data quality issue for the proxy indicator is relevance: The proxy indicator does not cover all homeless people but only those people (and accompanying children) that are supported at a SAAP agency and are assessed as having a housing/accommodation need by a SAAP agency worker. Agency reporting practices and policies can result in multiple support periods being recorded for each episode of homelessness. For example, a client may present at a SAAP agency several times during a homelessness experience. In this way, several support periods may be recorded for a single period of homelessness. This necessitates an adjustment to be made to identify repeat homelessness. A gap of 6 weeks between SAAP support periods has been used to identify distinct periods of homelessness. Without using a gap the number of support periods overestimates the incidents of repeat homelessness, however using a gap can also lead to some repeat periods of homelessness being unidentified. The gap of 6 weeks provides a reasonable balance between these two extremes. By only counting homeless people within a single year, persons who had periods of homelessness in previous years could fall out of scope for the proxy indicator. |
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has had the role of the SAAP NDCA since the collection’s inception in 1996-97. The AIHW works closely with all state, territory and Australian Government authorities in collecting, analysing and disseminating data. However, the Institute is an independent statutory authority within the Health and Ageing portfolio, and is responsible to the Minister for Health and Ageing. The Institute is governed by a Board, which is accountable to the parliament of Australia through the Minister. When errors are found in published data, those errors are corrected immediately in publications on the AIHW website, and where necessary, in on-line tables and online interactive data cubes. Corrections are documented on the AIHW website. There are various mechanisms in place that provide the framework for the implementation and governance of SAAP and the NDCA. These mechanisms include the SAAP Act (1994) and the Multilateral and Bilateral Agreements which set out accountability arrangements, management structures, and funding allocations. As part of the Australian Government’s National Reform Agenda, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) replaced SAAP with the new National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA), effective from 1 January 2009. Agencies that participated in the 2008-09 Client Collection were funded under the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) from 1 July 2008 to 31 December 2008, and then under the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) from 1 January 2009. |
Timeliness: | The reporting period for each of the proxy indicators and outputs is a financial year. SAAP data has been recorded on a continuous basis and published annually since 1996. The most recent reference period for the data is 2008–09. The data for the 2008-09 financial year was first published in: AIHW (2010) Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. The SAAP NDC annual reports are published between 6 to 9 months after the end of the reference period. |
Accessibility: | Related data to those shown in the proxy indicator tables are available publicly in the SAAP annual reports released by AIHW. Not all disaggregations, including those shown in these performance indicator tables, are published directly but may be requested, subject to jurisdiction approval. AIHW 2010. Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. AIHW 2009. Homeless people in SAAP: SAAP National Data Collection annual report. SAAP NDC report series 13. Cat. no. HOU 191. Canberra: AIHW. |
Interpretability: | Further information on the adjustment scheme, legislation and the SAAP collection can be found in: 1. AIHW 2010. Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. 2. AIHW 2005. SAAP National Data Collection collector’s manual July 2005. Canberra: AIHW. 3. Karmel R 1999. SAAP National Data Collection: adjustment methods for incomplete coverage. Canberra: AIHW. 4. Commonwealth of Australia, 1994, Supported Accommodation Assistance Act 1994, Act No. 162 of 1994, Canberra. 5. National Affordable Agreement on Homelessness http://www.coag.gov.au/intergov_agreements/federal_financial_relations/ |
Relevance: | The proxy indicator does not cover all homeless people but only those that are supported at a SAAP agency and are assessed as having a housing/accommodation need by a SAAP agency worker. Homeless people who do not receive support from SAAP agencies and SAAP clients who are not identified as having a housing/accommodation need are not in scope for the proxy indicator. The financial year was chosen as a standard time frame for the proxy indicator as this is in line with the SAAP reporting period and repeat periods of homelessness must be measured over a period of time. By only counting homeless people within a financial year, persons who had multiple periods of homelessness spanning across different financial years may fall out of scope for the proxy indicator. Multiple periods of SAAP support can be provided which could relate to just a single episode of homelessness. This can happen, for example, when a SAAP client receives support and then seeks additional support for the same episode of homelessness over the following days. A SAAP client’s support period is assumed to relate to a different period of homelessness when there is a gap of 6 weeks or more between support periods for which a housing/accommodation need has been identified. A gap of 6 weeks has been determined to provide a reasonable balance between identifying support periods which relate to different episodes of homelessness and extending the minimum gap required for identifying distinct support periods. If the minimum gap between distinct support periods is extended too far this leads to more gaps between support periods crossing into the following financial year and potentially falling out of scope for the proxy indicator. See General SAAP DQS. |
Accuracy: | Data for Victoria is affected by the model of homelessness service delivery used in this state where much of the supported accommodation is provided via the complementary Transitional Housing Management (THM) program. Accommodation provided under the THM program was not consistently recorded in the SAAP Client Collection as ‘SAAP/CAP accommodation’, which has resulted in some under-reporting of accommodation provided by Victorian agencies. For more information about Victorian data see: AIHW 2010. Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. See General SAAP DQS. |
Coherence: | Both the numerators and the denominators in the proxy indicator tables have been drawn from the SAAP NDC and have been produced using the same definitions and estimation schemes. The total number of SAAP clients for whom a housing/accommodation need was identified during the financial year reference period was chosen for the denominator as it is the measure that will provide the most reliable comparison with the numerator of the proxy indicator. The denominator for the proxy indicator was estimated from the SAAP NDC so that changes to the proxy proportion would not be driven by inconsistencies in the estimation of the numerator and denominator. Some ROGS and NAHA measures can be considered complementary where they cover similar concepts. However, even when both measures have been derived from the SAAP collection, these estimates should only be compared with caution. Different adjustments may have been made to SAAP data for NAHA reporting, in order to improve comparability between the NAHA performance measures and more appropriately capture the information required by these measures. See General SAAP DQS. |
Source and reference attributes | |
Submitting organisation: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Steward: | Housing and Homelessness Information Management Group |
Reference documents: | AIHW 2010. Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Supersedes National Affordability Housing Agreement: 4: Proportion of people experiencing repeat periods of homelessness, 2010 QS Homelessness, Standard 16/02/2011 |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: | National Affordable Housing Agreement: Indicator 4-Proportion of people experiencing repeat periods of homelessness, 2011 Homelessness, Recorded 27/09/2011 Housing assistance, Recorded 27/09/2011 |