Hi all,

The Coalition Government has now delivered its long awaited ‘Wellbeing Budget’ and whilst we wait for specific outcomes we do have some insights into what this will mean for the disability sector and the Community Care Trust. Our very high level analysis of the budget would be:

• In the 2018/19 financial year the DSS budget was $1.269 billion, but they spent $1.352 billion which was an $83 million overspend

• In this coming financial year (2019/20) they plan to spend $1.345 billion and although this is a $76 million increase it is $7 million less overall than they actually spent in the last financial year.

As a sector, this means we are essential back to where we were twelve months ago, if anything slightly worse off. For the Community Care Trust we will continue to be diligent around our spending whilst investing appropriately, primarily in our people, but also other resources and service delivery to ensure that we provide a quality service.

We do have a number of highlights on the horizon. Our new website is expected to go live next week, a personal thank you to all who have contributed because it looks great and certainly stands out. 

We have been offered a contract to deliver ‘Transition from School’ support in both Southland and Central Otago, as well as continuing to provide this service from Otago. We have completed our first round of consultation around our own ‘Wellbeing Strategy’ that will delve into how we reward and recognise staff as well as your conditions. 

We have now run a couple of pay rounds using FlowLogic and this seems to have gone smoothly and exceeded all our expectations. Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard to enable this to happen. I would continue to urge everyone to continue to check your electronic pay sheets at the end of each fortnight to ensure that we stay on track. 

Finally, just a reminder that support staffs pay rates will increase on the 1st July in line with pay equity. The rates are as follows: