When Sienna contacted the SSRV Legal Assistance Line for advice, she was stressed and overwhelmed. Struggling to find a rental property for herself and her children while existing on social security payments, for two years Sienna had been forced to live in the same house as her violent ex-partner. Now, she had been been informed of a Centrelink debt she said was incorrectly issued and would take her years to repay.

As single mother, Sienna had been receiving Parenting Payment Single despite having been living separated under the same roof with her ex-partner, and the recent Centrelink decision had deemed that for two of the years she had been receiving the payment she had been in a relationship, and she would now have to repay those payments. She had also had her Parenting Payment Single cut and was moved to the Jobseeker payment, at a much lower rate. 

In addition to her Centrelink debt, Sienna also had debts totaling tens of thousands of dollars, that she said she was coerced into accumulating by her ex-partner. 

Yet, when she disclosed her problems with SSRV’s financial counsellor Graeme Parsons, it soon became clear that her debts were the least of her problems. Sienna and her children were about to become homeless. 

“Centrelink issues rarely happen in a vacuum,” says Graeme. “Assisting someone to appeal a Centrelink decision might solve that issue, but not necessarily the overall problem.” 

SSRV staff regularly engage with clients who are experiencing a multiple, inter-connected and compounding difficulties. That is why the organisation sought and was so pleased to be granted funding for the Integrated Service Project, which is now in its fourth year. SSRV’s community lawyers and in-house financial counsellor work together, and with financial counsellors employed by other agencies, to improve client outcomes.

When a person calls SSRV to seek assistance regarding a Centrelink problem, SSRV’s front-line and legal team make an assessment of whether the person may benefit from meeting with the financial counsellor. If so, and the person agrees, they may be offered an appointment with the in-house financial counsellor or referred to the National Debt Help Line.

When Sienna contacted SSRV, the lawyer she spoke to identified that Sienna’s financial problems extended beyond her Centrelink debt, and connected her with Graeme, who worked with Sienna to understand her financial and related problems. 

“Working through the detail of a person’s finances, behaviours and current situation is often the best means of understanding what needs to happen next,” explains Graeme.

Sienna’s immediate need was to find housing. Once that was secured, with SSRV’s support she was able to address how her financial situation and address the Centrelink debt that had resulted from her ex-partner’s abuse, including appealing the Centrelink decision to raise the debt. 

Sienna says that having a lawyer and financial counsellor working together meant that she was able to get her financial state back in order more quickly and painlessly than having to deal with multiple organisations, and without having to relive her trauma by being forced to repeatedly tell her story.

In addition to his work with SSRV clients, Graeme and the Project team works with other financial counselling services to raise awareness of the big picture financial problems facing disadvantaged people and areas where changes to laws or processes, especially those relating to income support payments, could make a real difference.

Speaking about the provision of integrated services, Graeme says “It’s about the lawyers picking up on related issues being experienced by clients and referring them through to a financial counsellor who may help them address these needs. Often that involves working with creditors, and saying in Sienna’s case for example, yes Sienna did take out this loan for a motorcycle – but what does it tell you that she doesn’t have a motorcycle license? She was in an abusive relationship with man who already owns two other motorcycles and who pressured her to do so. Can you take this into consideration?” 

SSRV’s Integrated Service Project, says Graeme, is all about social security lawyers and financial counsellors working together in a person-centred way. 

“We work as an integrated service,” says Graeme. “People who contact SSRV are often already feeling isolated, alone and without allies – when they call us, we don’t insist they isolate their issues.” 

I started working for SSRV in August 2022, and I am part of the Integrated Services Project (ISP) team.

ISP is an ongoing partnership between Financial Counselling Victoria and SSRV, which aims to improve client outcomes through financial counsellors and social security lawyers working together more effectively. Our service often engages with clients who are experiencing multiple, inter-connected and compounding financial difficulties. The project aims to provide holistic care to clients.

Prior to joining SSRV, I worked as a community lawyer primarily in family violence, employment law and tenancy. I have also volunteered for several years in the community legal centre sector. I am passionate about using my law degree as a tool to advocate for clients and help them to gain access to our legal system.

Outside of work, I take pottery classes, enjoy cooking and trying new recipes, and hit the slopes with my snowboard in winter. 

Wednesday 23 November 2022
6.30PM

3rd Floor, Fitzroy Town Hall, corner Moor and Napier Sts, Fitzroy
You can also attend online – see details below

RSVP

Please RSVP to info@ssrv.org.au by 5.00pm Friday 18 November 2022 to advise
that you will be attending the AGM.

Please ensure that you include your email address.

Link to AGM and meeting papers

The online link to the AGM will emailed to all people who have RSVP’d closer to the meeting date. If you do not RSVP, you will not receive the link. The minutes of the previous AGM, annual report and audited financial statements will be emailed to members and others who have advised that they will be attending prior to the AGM.

If you are attending in person

Enter via a blue stone lane off Moor St into a courtyard.
Follow signs to SSRV (and Fitzroy Legal Service), at glass sliding door SSRV staff will meet you and escort you to the 3 rd floor meeting room.

Please call (03) 9481 0299 or email info@ssrv.org.au if any assistance is required with RSVPs, online attendance or if you have any access requirements.

People using violence against their partner are adept at weaponising economic products and systems to extend their abuse both during a relationship and after it ends.

Economic abuse is an often-hidden form of family violence in which one person tries to control another by restricting or exploiting their economic resources in a way that threatens their economic security and potential for self-sufficiency.

This could look like one partner controlling all the money, or withholding necessities, sabotaging their partner’s ability to earn an income, or building up debts in the other person’s name.

There are many different tactics of economic abuse but it is usually not the only thing going on. It commonly co-occurs with other forms of abuse, like emotional, psychological, physical, or sexualised violence.

Importantly, when the person using economic abuse is a man and the target of their abuse is a woman, there are structural disadvantages that make the woman more vulnerable to his increased control, and less able to recover, including: the gender pay gap, women’s higher rates of unpaid care, higher rates of part-time and casual work linked partly to the cost and availability of childcare, as well as societal expectations about motherhood.

Conservative estimates suggest 1 in 6 women will experience economic abuse at the hands of a current or former partner. And more than 60 per cent of women in high financial stress have a history of economic abuse.

The link between domestic violence and economic insecurity is well established. We know that:

• Women experiencing domestic violence have more difficulty paying bills, carry higher average levels of debt, and are more likely to go without food when they are hungry.
• Women experiencing domestic violence are much more likely to cease paid employment.
• Domestic and family violence is the primary reason women seek support from homelessness services.

However, the deliberate nature of economic abuse driving this financial precarity is often overlooked.

For instance, preventing a partner from working, redrawing ‘savings’ from a joint mortgage facility, putting joint bills in the other partner’s name only, or being the registered owner of a vehicle their partner relies upon for transport, are just a few examples.

The social security system should be a key support for people experiencing violence from an intimate partner, but it is also manipulated, even while it is already ill-equipped to provide adequate and timely support to victim-survivors of abuse.

Some of the ways the social security system is turned into a weapon by perpetrators include:

• women being forced by the abusive partner they live with to apply for the single rate of the Jobseeker payment (which is a higher amount than the rate when you are part of a couple), and then threatened with being dobbed in;
• misleading claims about the percentage of care of children to manipulate Child Support payments; and
• refusal to lodge tax returns meaning that an incorrect rate of Family Tax Benefit is paid, leading to a future debt for the victim-survivor.

All of this is against a backdrop where even if the abusive partner is not deliberately manipulating Centrelink, the system still falls short in supporting people experiencing domestic and family violence. It assumes couples share income, it doesn’t deal very well with couples who are separated but living under the one roof, and it fails to adequately support people who have assets on paper that are controlled by their partner or ex-partner. The criteria for Centrelink’s Crisis Payment in cases of domestic and family violence is too restrictive and must be claimed within seven days which is a ridiculously short time frame for people in crisis.

This interplay of gendered violence, structural economic barriers, and poorly designed social security undermines women’s economic safety.

This article was written by Rebecca Glenn, Centre for Women’s Economic Safety, Jasmine Opdam, Financial Abuse Service NSW, and Pamela Taylor-Barnett, Social Security Rights Victoria.

This article first appeared in Economic Justice Australia’s publication Social Security Rights Review, August 2022, and was reproduced with permission.

Every person affected by family and domestic violence should be able to access adequate financial support to leave an abusive situation and rebuild their life in a safe home. To ensure that essential social security reform remains a priority over the next decade, SSRV has added our signature to those of 500+ other organisations, including the leaders of 67 key domestic violence, welfare and other aligned organisations, in an open letter to the relevant Ministers. 

The open letter calls for the Government to ensure that social security is embedded in the new National Plan to end violence against women and children.

Economic Justice Australia (EJA), the authors of the open letter, have since had positive meetings with Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, and Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth. The ministers understood and were sympathetic to the issues and indicated they were open to exploring the possibility of changes to the law.

The Department of Social Services will be working over the next couple of months on developing a brief for the Minister and have agreed to consult EJA on the draft.

SSRV will keep you updated as news comes to hand.

As we all know, disasters can have unexpected consequences for those affected. For some, this can include impacts on their social security entitlements and obligations.

A disaster, such as a flood or bushfire, may result in a person losing their identification documents, for example. This can result in a Centrelink dispute about proving their identity when they go to apply for a Disaster Payment.

Another common example is where correspondence from Centrelink goes undelivered or not received due to the postal address being one in a disaster affected region. The letter sent by Centrelink might include important time limitations which are easily missed if the recipient does not receive the letter, and they may not even know the letter was sent.

At SSRV we understand the significant impact a disaster can have on your social security entitlements – and we’re ready to help.

Find out more about SSRV’s Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan and read more from our Did You Know? series.

I joined SSRV at the end of 2020, at a time when the vulnerabilities of the many Australians had come into sharp focus due to the pandemic and many of us were having our first interactions with Centrelink – and a time when I was thrilled to be doing work that wasn’t home-schooling. 

I create and manage all the external communications for SSRV, including website content, social media, and the development of our monthly email newsletter. It’s important work, simply because if people don’t know we exist, or are unsure about how we can help them, how will they know to reach out to us when they need it the most? 

The team at SSRV are some of the smartest, most passionate people I have worked with. The dignity and rights of our clients are their motivation and working with them inspires me in the work I do. 

They’re also willing to step out of their comfort zones in order to help the most vulnerable members of our community. Some of our staff have written articles for me, having never written one before, and most recently, they have started producing video clips for our website and social media, which can be confronting and challenging for anyone. 

All this produces an engaged and energetic workplace vibe, which is probably the thing I love about working for SSRV the most. 

I am a single mum of two girls, who are bold and clever, and who never walk past an injustice without taking action, which makes me think I must be doing something right. When I’m not working, I enjoy hanging out with them, paddle boarding, hiking, bike-riding or watching Stranger Things for the twentieth time. 

SSRV project worker, Mark Morand discusses the Centrelink issues that can arise when disasters, such as floods, bushfires and pandemics, strike, and how SSRV’s Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan will help Victorians when they need it the most.

Every night there are 116,000 Australians sleeping without a home. They are mothers and children escaping family violence, young people with little support, families unable to keep up with rent, people living with disabilities. Once, homelessness was thought by many to be something that happens to other people, but that’s changing.  

Homelessness is a growing crisis in Australia. Rising interest rates mean landlords have needed to increase rents. Add to rising rents the increase in cost of living and basic necessities such as food and heating and you can understand why, for many families living on Centrelink payments, housing has become simply unaffordable.   

The theme for this year’s Homelessness Week was ‘to end homelessness we need a plan’, and at SSRV we believe that plan needs to address the rate of Centrelink payments and issues of equality and accessibility to social security. 

Without a liveable rate of social security, families will continue to be unable to afford to pay rent. Without equal access to social security, the number of the most vulnerable people in our communities experiencing homelessness will continue to grow.  

SSRV will continue to work for real change to our social security system, while providing free legal advice on social security and Centrelink matters for people right across Victoria. 

Violence or poverty: this is the terrible choice many women escaping family violence in Australia face every day. This week, ABC’s current affairs discussion show Q and A dedicated an entire episode to addressing the issues around single mothers and poverty.

The program focused on a newly-released report from journalist and researcher Anne Summers that drew on data especially prepared by the ABS mostly from the 2016 Personal Safety Survey. 

The panel included Anne Summers, Jess Hill, author of See What You Made Me Do, Veronica Gorrie, author of Black and Blue, Federal MP Anne Aly and anti-violence activist, Arman Abrahimzadeh, who all took questions from the audience, including Leanne Ho from Economic Justice Australia, who asked a question we consider crucial to addressing family violence:

“What will the new Labor government do to ensure that economic security, particularly social security income support, is included in the new National Plan for the Safety of Women and Children?”

While Minister Aly re-affirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to supporting single mothers escaping family violence, there was no such commitment to include an increase in social security as part of its National Plan for the Safety of Women and Children.

Watch The Choice: violence or poverty on iView.

SSRV believes that women escaping family violence will continue to be faced with the choice between violence and poverty unless livable social security rates are addressed.

Next Friday, Federal and State ministers with portfolios responsible for women’s safety will meet to discuss economic safety for women. We are urging these ministers to make economic security a key pillar of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.