National Affordable Housing Agreement: 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: | 454062 |
Registration status: | Homelessness, Recorded 05/10/2011 Housing assistance, Recorded 05/10/2011 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | The data provide relevant information on the proportion of people who are supported at a SAAP agency and are assessed by a SAAP agency worker as having need for housing or accommodation support more than once in a year. It is not a measure of the proportion of people experiencing repeat periods of homelessness as it does not capture all people who experience homelessness. Data are available by State and Territory, and by Indigenous status. The measure counts people accessing homelessness services within a single year. People who had periods of homelessness in previous years but not in the current year are excluded from the scope of the interim measure. Annual data are available. The most recent available data are 2008-09. Data are of acceptable accuracy. Detailed explanatory notes are publicly available to assist in the interpretation of results. Additional data from the data source are available on-line, and on request. The Steering Committee also notes the following issues: Revised data were provided for 2007-08, which is comparable with data provided for 2008-09. This measure for this indicator is an interim measure until the new national Specialist Homeless Services (SHS) data collection is finalised. Data for SHS are anticipated to be collected from 1 July 2011. The SHS data collection will expand the scope, type of information collected and provide more timely information of those people who are provided with specialist homelessness services. The SHS data collection will provide more comprehensive information on people experiencing repeat periods of homelessness as it will be able to count people who have had periods of homelessness in previous years. However, it will still only be able to capture those people experiencing homelessness that access SHS. |
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has had the role of environment: 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.
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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. The relevant publications associated with the proxy indicators are: 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 AIHW 2010. Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP AIHW 2005. SAAP National Data Collection collector’s manual July 2005. Karmel R 1999. SAAP National Data Collection: adjustment methods for Commonwealth of Australia, 1994, Supported Accommodation Assistance Act 1994, Act No. 162 of 1994, Canberra. |
Relevance: | SAAP data does not cover all homeless people and those at risk of homelessness, but only those that are supported at a SAAP agency. Homeless people (and those at risk) who do not receive support from SAAP agencies are not in scope for proxy indicators compiled solely from SAAP data. The proxy indicators that have been complied using SAAP data have the same scope as the SAAP Client Collection. In the SAAP Client Collection, data are collected by support providers for each client support period. An individual client may receive support on more than one occasion – either from the same SAAP agency or from different SAAP agencies. The scope for the proxy indicators is all people who were either SAAP clients or children accompanying SAAP clients during the 2008-09 financial year. A SAAP client is a person who is homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness who: is accommodated by a SAAP agency; or enters into an ongoing support relationship with a SAAP agency; or receives support or assistance from a SAAP agency which entails generally 1 hour or more of a worker’s time, either with that client directly or on behalf of that client, on a given day. This includes people who are aged 18 years or older and people of any age not accompanied by a parent or guardian. People can be considered as SAAP clients for a particular financial year reporting period when: the client’s support period ended in the reporting period, or the client’s support period started on or before the end of the reporting period and either was ongoing at the end of the reporting period (30 June) or the end date of the support period was unknown and the record was entered by the NDCA before the data entry close-off date for the reporting period. An accompanying child is a person aged under 18 years who: has a parent or guardian who is a SAAP client; and accompanies that client to a SAAP agency any time during that client’s support period; and/or receives assistance directly as a consequence of a parent or guardian’s support period. A SAAP support period commences when a client begins to receive support and/or supported accommodation from a SAAP agency. The support period is considered to finish when: the client ends the relationship with the agency; or the agency ends the relationship with the client. If it is not clear whether the agency or the client has ended the relationship, the support period is assumed to have ended if no assistance has been provided to the client for a period of 1 month. In such a case, the date the support period ended is the last contact with the client. The SAAP definition of homelessness used in these proxy indicators comes from the SAAP act 1994 and is consistent with publications such as the Government-funded specialist homelessness services: SAAP National Data Collection annual report 2008-09. Cat. No. HOU 291. Canberra: AIHW. Under SAAP, people are considered homeless when they do not have access to safe and secure housing. This definition of homelessness can be considered broader in scope than the cultural definition of homelessness (Chamberlain and MacKenzie, Counting the Homeless 2006) used in NAHA Indicator 3 (Proportion of Australians who are homeless) as the cultural definitions only covers people who do not have access to housing above or equal to the minimum community standard of a small rental flat with a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and some security of tenure. The financial year was chosen as a standard time frame for the proxy indicator as this is in line with the SAAP reporting period |
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.
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Data products | |
Implementation start date: | 07/07/2011 |