Impact project offers extra support for beneficiaries

4 Work and Income

Wellington Archdiocesan Benefit Impact projects have been successful in helping Work and Income beneficiaries get their entitlements while keeping their dignity and privacy intact. 

This was spoken about at the first Archdiocese of Wellington online event for the World Day of the Poor, which was hosted by Wellington Catholic Social Services and the Archdiocesan Ecology, Justice and Peace Commission. 

“Our seminar shared experiences from the six Archdiocesan Benefit Impacts we have now held.  These have been in Upper Hutt (2016), Lower Hutt (2017), Kāpiti (2019), Levin (2021), Ōtaki (2021) and with the Deaf community of Horowhenua (2021),” a spokesperson told NZ Catholic. 

The speakers included Catholic Social Services community facilitator Paul Alsford, Hutt Valley BEST (Benefit Education Service Trust) manager Teresa Homan, and siblings Karen and Vini, who spoke of their experience with Work and Income. People from the community who want to be trained to become benefit advocates can get experience.  

“Our role in organising a benefits impact is to get out the right environment where a person in that situation can get the support that they need,” Mr Alsford said. “The whole thing is a dignified experience with . . .  very important confidentiality about the information that they’re sharing.” 

This year 149 people were helped, and 44 were trained to become benefit advocates. 

Mr Alsford added that 25 community and church groups were involved in the three events held this year. 

Vini, with the help of his sister Karen, spoke about the challenges he faced while seeking his benefits.  

“One of the first challenges that we discovered through the process of the benefit impact was the difficulty with interpreters,” said Karen, who was interpreting for her brother. 

Karen said that the Deaf people who are about over 60 years old were educated differently and often can’t read complex figures or numbers. 

She said case workers would sometimes tell the Deaf client that they didn’t need an interpreter as they could communicate by typing on the computer. 

There is also the matter of not having the choice of interpreters whom they trust, pointing out that they are sharing personal, private information. 

“Filling in of forms is often really problematic,” Karen said. “Like I said before, it’s often understanding the language and the forms. And there’s a lack of trust, because what ends up happening is that often a Deaf person like Vini will fill in a form, not really sure what they are filling in, and the next thing they know, they’ve got a debt. They owe Work and Income money.” 

This was a problem that surfaced when the benefit impact event was held for the Deaf community of Horowhenua. 

Mrs Homan, on the other hand, shared the experiences of people whom they have helped. 

“The main purpose of a benefit impact is to improve the financial position of the people coming to an impact,” she said. 

She spoke of a person who had been a beneficiary but had their accommodation supplement suspended for some years.  

“We were able to get the assistance started again, and backdated to the time it was suspended, which means a backdate of $2500 and a weekly increase of over $20,” she said. 

Mrs Homan said that they were also able to get a young mum help to buy a cot.  

A policy misinterpretation meant that a directive was given that help was not available to buy the cot, but help could be given to get a cot blanket. 

“We looked into this and [were] able to show that this was not the case and that the cot could be included,” Mrs Homan said. 

She explained that not everyone is eligible for additional assistance. They explain this to the person and the person comes out of it better-informed. 

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Rowena Orejana

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