Latest news with #AndrewCoster
1News
18-05-2025
- Business
- 1News
Profit not a motive behind social investment approach
The head of the Government's Social Investment Agency says he can't rule out commissioning for-profit social service providers in future, but that it isn't the focus. Andrew Coster, the former police commissioner turned Social Investment Agency (SIA) chief executive, spoke to Q+A shortly after the Government announced an additional $279 million over the next four years for its social investment strategy. The package, with more details expected in this week's Budget, included $190 million for a fund that will invest in at least 20 social service initiatives over the next year. It's anticipated the SIA would oversee the fund's establishment and use until mid-2026, with ministerial guidance about general priorities but not specific funding decisions. In future, the Government envisioned the fund's commissioning function would move into communities. A Cabinet paper released this month also proposed the fund could eventually "attract investment from private and philanthropic organisations". Coster said the changes around social investment the Government wanted to introduce was significant for agencies used to working within their own departments. "The reason why we are launching into something fairly disruptive and, frankly, reasonably risky in terms of being able to pull it off is because we need to embed it and prove it." When asked if the fund could commission for-profit social service providers, Coster said: "I won't say we're not, but this model is not focused on that." "Whereas in [the] health [sector] you have a lot of for profit service provision, in social services more broadly you see a lot of NGOs." The plan is the centrepiece of a four-year, $275m plan the Finance Minister says is meant to fix how social services are delivered. (Source: 1News) An earlier iteration of the social investment model under the previous National government included some use of social investment bonds. It's proposed the bonds could see a private funder or investor give up-front funding to an intermediary, which would then use the money to contract social service providers to achieve certain outcomes. Investors would then receive a return if those outcomes are reached. Coster said the rate of success with a previous iteration of social investment bonds was mixed. "They're quite a complex instrument with a lot of reporting involved," he said. "There's a reasonable debate to have about the idea of private equity profiting from a social good, so it's not where we've started. "There is so much opportunity within government funding already being allocated out there to organisations that we want to get our own house in order." National proposed using social impact bonds for social housing in the last election. Coster said the keys to the social investment approach were the use of data to measure whether a contracted provider of social services was actually making a difference. "So much of government activity at the moment is tracked through outputs. By that, we mean the activities, the things that are happening every day. The widgets, if you like." For example, a provider may be contracted to deliver a certain number of counselling sessions instead of delivering the outcome of improved mental health. The social investment model would flip this around by measuring a social programme's effectiveness through tools like Stats NZ's integrated data infrastructure (IDI). The IDI is a large, anonymised data base of Kiwis' information sourced from Government agencies, surveys, and NGOs. Coster said this data could then underpin funding decisions because the IDI could be used to find "comparable cohorts within the population". The SIA would then see if, after their use of certain social service providers, there was a difference in measures like school attendance or the number of interactions with police. The idea would then be to continue funding programmes that were demonstrably successful, he said. "The purpose of social investment is to get the best value in the broadest sense, which means the best outcomes for people, the best outcomes for the community, and the best use of funding in order to achieve that." When asked if the approach encouraged the state to value a life only in economic terms, Coster said there was "no misalignment between the desire to get good value for taxpayer money and the delivering of positive impacts for people in their lives". "In fact, it's incumbent on us to get good value because that demonstrates and delivers best outcomes." Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
RNZ News
15-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Big changes possible for social service funding
Social Investment Agency chief executive Andrew Coster. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone In light of a damning report into contracting processes by Oranga Tamariki , the head of the Social Investment Agency says it's looking to allow for a more streamlined approach for organisations to access funding, "freeing up" resource for more delivery. Andrew Coster told RNZ the Social Investment Agency could allow for a separation of Oranga Tamariki's responsibilities when it came to providing preventative services as opposed to its statutory role for the care of children. On Thursday, the Office of the Auditor General criticised Oranga Tamariki for the way it abruptly axed contracts last year for social services helping vulnerable children and their families. The report was released the same day Finance Minister Nicola Willis unveiled a new $190 million Social Investment Fund designed to transform the way the social services are delivered to vulnerable New Zealanders. The fund would be governed by the new Social Investment Agency and was expected to invest in at least 20 initiatives in its first year. The first three initiatives to receive support from the fund were an Autism NZ early intervention scheme, an Emerge Aotearoa youth offending programme, and a Te Tihi o Ruahine programme supporting families in need. Willis said the fund would scale up over time, taking over contracts currently secured by government agencies. The government currently spends about $7b a year on social services from non-government agencies. Speaking to RNZ's Nine to Noon , Coster said this would take time to scale up, but the intention is have a conversation with organisations about "contract consolidation." "The opportunity here is for providers to engage with the Fund for a conversation about contract consolidation that if approved, [sic] in terms of ministers agreeing, that money can be moved into the fund will enable us to change their contractual arrangements." He said organisations working "holistically with families" at the moment often had many contract with many different agencies. "So they're sort of forced to respond to a very fragmented and siloed way of contracting with government to be able to support families, and many of those contracts are very prescriptive." In time he said, this would be an opportunity for some organisations to bring "many contract arrangements into a single outcomes based contract, which will be quite transformational in terms of their activity and/ or their ability to focus on the family." Coster said some providers report spending 20 or 30 percent of their effort on contract management and securing contracts. "So the business of reporting, which is very onerous at the moment - overly so - and the business of ensuring that they've got funding to continue their operations, is very consuming. "So that movement into a single arrangement will also represent a real freeing up of resource to do more delivery." He said the Auditor-General's report reflected a general lack of insight across social service commissioning "as to the actual outcomes that are coming from our work." He said government funding that could move toward the new Investment Fund would be money that's working with families early to prevent them coming into the care system in the first place. "The judgement will be what funding is tightly tied to Oranga Tamariki's daily activities, which might be providing care for a child who is unable to be in their home, versus the funding that is about achieving enduring results to support children to thrive, rather than being at risk of coming into the care system." When asked if there could be a separation of Oranga Tamariki's responsibilities for providing preventative services and its statutory role for the care of children, Coster said "that's right." "And you can apply that principle across other areas as well to understand what a sensible division might be between the fund and agency." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
15-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Big changes foreshadowed for social service funding
Former police commissioner Andrew Coster started as chief executive of the Social Investment Agency this week. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The head of the Social Investment Agency - on the big changes ahead for funding of social services provided by NGOs for some of the most vulnerable. Yesterday the Minister for Social Investment Nicola Willis announced a new $190 million Social Investment Fund designed to transform the way the social services are delivered to vulnerable New Zealanders. She says it is starting small, but over time, more of the government's 7 billion dollars of contacts with NGOs would come under the auspices of the agency. The announcement came on the same day as a scathing report by the Auditor General found that Oranga Tamariki didn't look at the impacton children and families when it made abrupt cuts to social service contracts last year. Andrew Coster, former Police Commissioner, is the Chief Executive of the Social Investment Agency and will oversee the new fund.
