Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres
In 2005-06 the Australian government announced the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) - a 'gateway' service assisting separating couples to reach agreement about child custodial arrangements without recourse to courts. The use of a multi-round competitive contracting re...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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Blackwell Publishing
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/54807 |
| _version_ | 1848759466214817792 |
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| author | Butcher, John Freyens, B. |
| author_facet | Butcher, John Freyens, B. |
| author_sort | Butcher, John |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | In 2005-06 the Australian government announced the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) - a 'gateway' service assisting separating couples to reach agreement about child custodial arrangements without recourse to courts. The use of a multi-round competitive contracting regime for the purpose of selecting service providers gave rise to a number of tensions amongst not-for-profit organisations (NFPOs) which, to a degree, compromised the full realisation of stated public policy aims. Reporting on fieldwork conducted with a sample of FRC operators, industry representatives and key government officials this article evaluates the extent to which the case of FRCs conforms to critiques commonly aired in the social policy literature that attribute various forms of policy failure and/or social capital depletion to the competitive contracting of human services within quasi-markets. Although the competitive selection process imposed significant costs on the NFPOs involved, the program also exhibited substantial collaborative and collegial behaviours between government and NFPOs, thus diverging from the critique usually portrayed in the literature. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:00:20Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-54807 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T10:00:20Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | Blackwell Publishing |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-548072018-03-29T09:09:37Z Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres Butcher, John Freyens, B. In 2005-06 the Australian government announced the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) - a 'gateway' service assisting separating couples to reach agreement about child custodial arrangements without recourse to courts. The use of a multi-round competitive contracting regime for the purpose of selecting service providers gave rise to a number of tensions amongst not-for-profit organisations (NFPOs) which, to a degree, compromised the full realisation of stated public policy aims. Reporting on fieldwork conducted with a sample of FRC operators, industry representatives and key government officials this article evaluates the extent to which the case of FRCs conforms to critiques commonly aired in the social policy literature that attribute various forms of policy failure and/or social capital depletion to the competitive contracting of human services within quasi-markets. Although the competitive selection process imposed significant costs on the NFPOs involved, the program also exhibited substantial collaborative and collegial behaviours between government and NFPOs, thus diverging from the critique usually portrayed in the literature. 2011 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/54807 10.1111/j.1467-8500.2010.00708.x Blackwell Publishing restricted |
| spellingShingle | Butcher, John Freyens, B. Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title | Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title_full | Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title_fullStr | Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title_full_unstemmed | Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title_short | Competition and Collaboration in the Contracting of Family Relationship Centres |
| title_sort | competition and collaboration in the contracting of family relationship centres |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/54807 |