Functions of the Federation

The fundamental purpose of the Federation is to support its members. The support the Federation provides is separated into four functional areas; communication and quality assurance, training, resourcing, and advisory and advocacy.

Communication and Quality Assurance

Over 30 experienced representatives currently volunteer for the Federation. Categorised as Maori, district, and regional representatives these people work actively to support members, create opportunities for networking, coordinate communications across the country, and ensure that a consistently high level of quality service is delivered by Federation members.

As part of the overall Federation networking and communication strategy district and regional representatives are responsible for coordinating district and regional meetings each year. These forums ensure collective knowledge and best practice is communicated throughout the network and provide opportunity for training workshops and presentations from industry and government experts. Maori representatives support the Federation partnership policy, which promotes consultation and communication with Maori to increase the effectiveness of its service to Maori clients.

Federation support of this network of volunteers provides a necessary link between budget services and the Federation decision making and governance body. Policies and practices that negatively impact budget service clients are communicated very effectively through this network, which allows the knowledge of budget advisers to feed into the strategic decisions made by the Federation National Board.

The two main aspects of the Federation's quality assurance strategy are the annual service capability review and reaffiliation round and the Federation complaints procedure. Annually, every Federation budget service undergoes a comprehensive audit focusing on both the management of the budget service and the delivery of services to clients. Each year every service must reapply for affiliation with the Federation and the results of its review are considered during reaffiliation. The service capability review has been developed over three decades in consultation with government, the community, and Federation staff, volunteers, and clients.

The service capability review and annual reaffiliation process ensure a very high level of quality service is delivered by Federation members and afford a level of protection to clients that non-Federation budget services may not offer. If a client is in anyway dissatisfied with the service delivered by a Federation member they can lodge a formal written complaint, which will be thoroughly and rigorously investigated as per the Federation complaints procedure. Federation affiliated budget services can offer this level of protection to clients in New Zealand. Further detail on the Federation's complaints procedure can be viewed here:

NZFFBS Complaints Procedure.pdf

Training

The Federation contracts a trained pool of accredited tutors annually to provide all of the training needs for its members. The tutors are systematically appraised to ensure their delivery standards are kept very high. The tutors own skills are also kept up-to-date through national and regional tutor forums. The Federation's network of tutors is able to provide training in all regions and districts throughout New Zealand. The costs of maintaining this network is completely covered by the Federation.

The Federation provides a very comprehensive and up-to-date training programme for budget advisers. The Budget Adviser Introductory Course is a complete, structured training programme delivered by accredited Federation tutors. The course has been developed over a number of years in consultation with the community, experienced advisers, and budget services.

Recently, the course has been accepted for recognition on the New Zealand Qualifications Framework and covers the NZQA Unit Standard 7974. As the Federation is not a registered provider it cannot accredit Unit Standards. As the course itself meets the standard, however, budget advisers can apply for recognition of prior learning and use the credits toward the completion of a National Certificate.

Federation accredited tutors also deliver ongoing training modules to budget advisers. To ensure the high quality of advice given, there is a policy requirement for budget advisers to keep their skills up-to-date by attending one three hour ongoing training module per year. The modules are developed in-house by the Federation Training Manager and relevant, external training can be recognised to fulfil this policy requirement. This is an undemanding requirement and is the absolute minimum required of advisers to ensure their skills are kept current for the protection of clients.

Resourcing

The resourcing function of the Federation is a major initiative. A number of manuals, guides, and handbooks have been developed to support the capability of budget services. These guides are regularly updated and offer an extraordinary level of detail. An organisation could virtually set itself up using these comprehensive guides alone. The Federation also works constructively with other organisations to develop relevant resources to assist service delivery. The Federation has worked with Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Insolvency and Trustee Service, Inland Revenue Department, WINZ, Citizens Advice Bureaux, Cancer Foundation, and other organisations and continues to actively seek partner organisations in the creation of resources for its members.

The extensive experience of the Federation has been used to create a complete set of forms and stationery for services and advisers to use. The stationery ensures a consistency and high level of quality advice is offered by Federation budget services. Along with stationery items, the Federation has a broad and constantly updated range of pamphlets, posters, videos, and library resources that are made freely available to members. A free monthly newsletter is produced by the Federation that includes articles on relevant current issues and Federation network news and events. In terms of information technology, the Federation has invested in the development of a client database and management programme and continues to maintain this website. Also, each year the Federation covers the cost of listing all member services in the Telecom white pages where they are easily located under 'budget advice services'.

The Federation completely covers the cost of development, printing, and distribution of all its resources. A considerable discount can be achieved by printing stationery in bulk and the centralisation of this programme saves individual services substantial amounts of both time and money. The cost of this service runs to around $1,400 per member each year and many hundreds of thousands more is spent on the initial development of resources. This is just one of the many ways the Federation supports its members and ensures their limited resources can remain focused on service delivery.

Advisory and Advocacy

The fourth function of the Federation is its advisory and advocacy arm. The Federation advocates both on behalf of its membership and also on behalf of its members' clients. The Federation also uses its extensive level of industry knowledge to offer consultancy and advice to government departments and industry bodies. Sometimes this advice is directed by the Federation through the media and submissions but often the Federation is approached directly by government and industry leaders to provide input into various policy and practices. The Federation is a respected authority in financial literacy and consumer and household finance and is constantly in demand to share the considerable accumulated experience of its budget advisers.

© 2007 New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Inc.