EMCH funding is based on supporting 15 per cent of children aged 3 or under enrolled in the Universal MCH program and providing 20 service hours per family on average. The department does not know whether EMCH service delivery aligns to this.
No council could show that they only provided EMCH support to eligible families. This is mainly because the system limits MCH professionals' ability to effectively record data and monitor eligibility.
We made 3 recommendations to address our findings. The relevant agency has accepted the recommendations in full or in principle.
| Agency responses | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finding: The Enhanced Maternal and Child Health program may not be reaching everyone who needs it | ||||
Department of Health
| ||||
Our audit followed 2 lines of inquiry:
1. Is the Enhanced Maternal and Child Health program (EMCH) being accessed by families experiencing challenges?
2. Is EMCH meeting its performance and outcome measures?
To answer these questions, we examined:
Download a PDF copy of Appendix E: Policy performance data.
Download a PDF copy of Appendix D: Agencies under the Policy.
Download a PDF copy of Appendix C: Review scope and method.
Download a PDF copy of Appendix B: Abbreviations, acronyms and glossary.
Download a PDF copy of Appendix A: Submissions and comments.
We looked at 6 agencies in detail to see how they process and pay invoices. This section contains case studies which look at the business practices that support agencies to pay their invoices on time.
Covered in this section:
We looked at 6 agencies in detail to see how they record and report their payment timeliness data. We found that agencies apply and interpret the Policy differently. This makes it difficult to compare agencies’ performance.
Covered in this section: