The largest survey of Australia’s community services sector reveals that frontline agencies are under enormous strain and unable to meet the growing demand for help, according to the Australian Council of Social Service.
The annual Australian Community Sector Survey of over 500 agencies shows that housing availability and affordability is the greatest unmet need for clients of welfare services, followed by community-based care and treatment for mental illness and emergency relief.
“The clear message from this year’s survey is that Australia’s housing affordability crisis is having a devastating impact, especially for people on the lowest incomes who are falling deeper into poverty,” said ACOSS Deputy CEO, Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine.
“This is borne out by the fact that across the board, all services overwhelmingly nominated this as the greatest need of clients coming to them for help. Nearly 70% of housing and homeless services themselves reported that they struggled to meet demand, with a 5% increase in the number of people turned away.
“One of the striking features was that almost 80% of people presenting to the housing and homeless services that participated in the survey were wholly reliant on income support payments. They were also highly represented in numbers seeking help as reported by emergency relief providers (75%) and mental health services (61%). This is extremely alarming and further evidence of the damage being caused by keeping allowance payments such as Newstart as low as $35 a day.
“The other services under significant stress who reported being unable to meet demand among their own client groups were legal services (63%), youth services (52%) and emergency relief (47%) providers. Mental health (47%) and domestic violence and sexual assault services (46%) also reported being unable to meet demand for services.
“Most services reported having targeted their services more tightly or limiting service levels to meet demand. This was especially so for legal services (85%), emergency relief providers (82%) and mental health services (70%).
“These measures resulted in lower numbers of people being turned away than otherwise would have been the case. However, legal service still reported the highest level of turn-aways (20%). High numbers were also turned away from youth welfare (17%), housing and homelessness services (16%) and domestic violence services (13%).
“Our overall findings paint a disturbing picture of a sector under critical pressure, including from chronic underfunding and uncertainty about the funding of services. A majority of all services reported that the cost of delivering services exceeded revenue, and over the past three years our survey has consistently identified this as the most significant challenge facing the sector into the future.
“Australia’s community welfare sector makes an enormous contribution to Australian society: community services and health are our country’s largest industry grouping, employing 12% of the total workforce. This is projected to grow by at least 35% over the next ten years, according to the Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council. Our sector already contributes more than 5% to GDP.
“Yet the community sector is being undermined by severe underfunding and lack of action to deal with the national housing affordability and availability crisis that continues to squeeze households and plunge those on the lowest incomes into deeper poverty.
“We need urgent action to address these issues, along with a plan to increase the abysmally low income support allowance payments like Newstart, if we are going to prevent more people falling into poverty and into the arms of our already stretched community services,” Dr Boyd-Caine said.
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