Welfare Rights Centre is very grateful to have received significant funding from 2020 following the bushfires, Covid, the floods and a great focus on family and domestic violence.
We used this funding to innovate.
- We set up our First Nations Access Program.
- We helped more women escaping family and domestic violence.
- We increased services to the thousands of people needing help navigating Centrelink.
- We’ve been sharing our expertise with community workers so that they can also help people with Centrelink problems.
But by 30 June 2024, much of this temporary funding is coming to an end, which means all of this work will be significantly reduced or end completely.
This is not what we expected to see in the first Federal Budget following the Robodebt Royal Commission.
To maintain our current service levels we need:
• $160,000 for our advice and casework services
• $120,000 for our First Nations Access Program
• $120,000 for our community worker training program
• $125,000 for our community worker hotline
Welfare Rights Centre’s current situation underscores is that one-off “hits” of funding are not the right way to respond to crises when we’re already not meeting demand. There needs to be a permanent underlying increase in funding to community legal centres.
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