Our client was a member of the community, who was living in a remote regional location and experiencing mental health complications due to ongoing and sustained domestic violence, including emotional, physical and financial abuse toward themself and their child.
The person found the courage to leave the situation but due to worsening mental health found themself needing in-house mental health care.
Our client had been receiving social welfare supports when they left the marriage and was advised while receiving in-house mental health care, they would be transitioned to the Cashless Debit Card.
Our client attempted to exit the Cashless Debit Card without assistance and was declined. This impacted our client’s mental health further as they were unable to cover living costs due to most businesses in their location not accepting the card as payment as well as incurring late fees from their bank when payments dates were missed because of late deposit by Indue. Repeated calls to Indue regarding payments further impacted our client’s mental wellbeing. Our client experienced shame when the card was declined for any reason but usually because the location that they were at served alcohol.
The person came to SSCLS for assistance to complete another exit application. Our advocate and the client called Indue to speak with the helpdesk to request the exit. The Indue helpdesk transferred our client to the Department of Social Services (DSS) to complete the process. Our SSCLS advocate wrote a support letter to attach to the application and assist our client to gather the required supporting documentation for application.
We then assisted our client to upload documents to DSS via MyGov.
DSS called the SSCLS advocate to confirm arrangements for a telephone interview with our client at the IDAS office. Our advocate supported the client during the telephone interview to assist her to remain calm and minimise anxiety.
Several weeks later, our client was pleased to contact us and tell us that the application had been approved and they had been given an exemption from being on the card. Our client was pleased with the outcome as it was in line with their wishes.
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