Sector funding stability

Victoria’s child and family services sector needs funding arrangements that match the complexity and long-term nature of the work. Short-term contracts force providers into repeated tender cycles, create uncertainty for workers and families and drive unnecessary competition between organisations drawing from the same limited pool of government funding. This diverts time and resources from frontline service delivery, weakens collaboration, and makes it harder to plan, retain skilled staff and build trusted relationships with children, young people and families. These impacts are particularly acute in early intervention services, where continuity and trust are essential to supporting families before challenges escalate.

Victoria’s policy direction increasingly emphasises early intervention, prevention and integrated support for children and families. Reforms such as investment through the Early Intervention Investment Framework are based on the principle that earlier support can improve outcomes and reduce future demand for crisis and statutory services. However, these approaches depend on stable relationships, workforce continuity and sustained engagement with families, all of which are harder to achieve under short-term funding arrangements.

Stable funding improves workforce retention and service quality

Across the community services sector, short-term funding contributes directly to workforce insecurity, turnover and service disruption. Funding uncertainty affects more than organisational planning; it shapes families’ experience of services. When contracts are renewed only for short periods, providers struggle to retain experienced practitioners and invest in workforce development, disrupting relationships with children and families and reducing continuity of support.

This challenge is recognised elsewhere in Australia.  In 2025–26, the NSW Government released a Secure Jobs and Funding Certainty Roadmap and introduced a Community Services Funding Framework that puts providers on a path toward funding terms of up to five years.

NSW argued that funding certainty would support workforce retention, support service continuity and allow organisations to focus on vulnerable families rather than repeated funding applications.

Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS, 2023) reported that community services across Australia are facing significant workforce pressures, with almost half of sector leaders reporting excessive staff turnover and only 9% indicating government funding covered the full cost of service delivery.

Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS, 2025) similarly argued that funding terms should be extended to seven years to support workforce retention, trust, collaboration and long-term planning. This reinforces the case for longer-term funding arrangements that give community service organisations the certainty needed to plan, retain skilled staff and sustain effective relationships with children, young people and families.

Stable services require a stable workforce. Five-year funding contracts would help family service providers attract and retain skilled practitioners, reduce turnover and support trusted relationships between families and workers.

The NSW model demonstrates that five-year funding arrangements are operationally feasible within an Australian jurisdiction. Victoria should be able to provide the same stability to organisations supporting vulnerable children and families.

Sector-wide collaboration

Evidence from the human services sector also highlights the challenges created when organisations are expected to collaborate while simultaneously competing for funding. Research examining child and family service agencies has found that competition for funding, staff and clients can undermine collaboration unless carefully managed, despite collaboration being essential to effective service delivery (Bunger et al., 2014). Studies of government–nonprofit partnerships similarly conclude that collaboration is often necessary to address complex social issues and improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families (Nederhand, 2021).

National and international research has also documented the administrative burden created by repeated contracting and tendering processes, including complex applications, reporting requirements and compliance activities that divert resources from frontline service delivery (Boris et al., 2010; National Council of Nonprofits, 2022). Longer-term funding arrangements can reduce these inefficiencies, strengthen collaboration and enable organisations to focus on high-quality support for children, young people and families.

Aboriginal-led services

Aboriginal-led and community-controlled organisations need long-term, flexible funding to deliver culturally safe early intervention, strengthen self-determination and support Aboriginal children and families to remain connected to family, community, Country and culture. Short-term contracts and repeated competitive tendering undermine trust, disrupt relationships and make it harder to sustain the Aboriginal workforce and community-led responses needed to reduce over-representation in child protection and out-of-home care.

First Nations children remain significantly over-represented in out-of-home care and continue to experience poorer outcomes because of systemic disadvantage and the ongoing impacts of colonisation. Reform efforts must strengthen Aboriginal-led and community-controlled responses, support implementation of the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle and ensure First Nations children and young people maintain connections to family, community, Country and culture. Improving support for Aboriginal foster and kinship carers is essential to self-determination and achieving better outcomes for Aboriginal children and young people in care.