National Affordable Housing Agreement: Output 1 (main)-Number of people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness who are assisted to secure and sustain their tenancies, 2011 QS
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 454359 |
Registration status: | Homelessness, Recorded 05/10/2011 Housing assistance, Recorded 05/10/2011 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | The main data quality issue is relevance: The Supported Accomodation Assistance Program (SAAP) data used to compile this proxy output does not cover the whole of the homeless (and at risk) population. Rather, only people who access SAAP services are captured in the data. It is difficult to measure the extent to which clients are able to achieve a sustainable housing outcome as SAAP data provides limited information on long-term outcomes. |
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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 this proxy output is a financial year. Data will be provided for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 financial years. |
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: | This proxy output does not cover all homeless people but only those that are supported at a SAAP agency. Homeless people who do not receive support from SAAP agencies are not in scope for the proxy output. It is difficult to measure the extent to which clients are able to ‘sustain’ a tenancy. This is because SAAP records information on immediate outcomes of clients (i.e. a client’s housing circumstance immediately after support), providing limited information on long-term outcomes. For this proxy output, a client is counted if they achieve a housing outcome (house/flat accommodation with tenure) and do not return to a SAAP agency (with an accommodation need for crisis, short-term or medium-term accommodation) within 30 days. This gives some indication as to whether a client has achieved a sustainable outcome as they have not re-presented with housing need. However, a client may return to a SAAP agency (with an accommodation need) at a later date. |
Accuracy: | This proxy output measures the number of SAAP clients who achieve a sustainable housing outcome after support. It must be noted that not all SAAP clients who achieve a housing outcome will be captured. One possible reason for this is that some clients may cease using SAAP services and not return to provide further information. In these cases information will not be captured at the end of a support period and the client’s housing outcome will be unknown. All clients who achieve a sustainable housing outcome within a particular reference year will be counted for that year. This includes clients that may have opened a support period during the previous year. For example, a client who begins a support period in 2007-08 will be included in the 2008-09 reporting period if they achieve an outcome in that year. Conversely, clients who open a support period in the reference year but do not achieve a housing outcome in that year will not be counted. These clients will be captured in the following reporting period if they achieve a sustainable housing outcome. An adjustment has been used to account for clients who achieve a housing outcome within 30 days of the end of the financial year reporting period. For these clients it is not possible to know if they were able to sustain a housing outcome for the 30 days. As such, an adjustment has been made based on the probability that they were able to achieve a sustainable housing outcome |
Coherence: | 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. |
Relational attributes | |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: |