Sofia’s story
In this post, David O’Halloran shares one woman’s experience of interacting with Centrelink and the employment services system in Australia, with her permission. “Sofia” has the most typical profile of an unemployed Australian – an older women with a chronic health problem at risk of homelessness. Weaving Sofia’s story into his research on employment services, David argues that continuing to design and deliver policy and processes that start from the assumption that unemployed people don’t want to work, instead of understanding their barriers to work, perpetuates a welfare-to-work system that is useless and harmful to the people caught in it. This post challenges government to do better for Sofia and for all Australians.
The House Select Committee on Workforce Australia Employment Services held its first public hearing last week with the first submission from the Department of Employment. With their usual tosh about the rainbows and unicorns otherwise known as “choice and flexibility” that Workforce Australia bestows upon the unemployed people who have no choice and no flexibility to use the system, the Department claimed that "compulsory mutual obligation requirements are effective". What was missing from this grand claim was evidence. I have a different story.
Nearly a decade ago, I began a PhD that commenced with the research question of why so many people don’t turn up to Australian employment service appointments. Non-attendance at Australian employment services appointments has been a long standing and significant problem. Until 2019, when regular information about attendance stopped being publicly available, between three and four million appointments annually were not attended. Despite successive governments increasing the severity of sanctions for non-attendance, as well as increasing the number of reasons for sanctions, and the ease with which they can be applied, there had been little change.
The one sentence summary of my PhD findings was people don’t turn up is because they experience employment services as mostly useless, and sometimes harmful. It’s not a great finding for something that is the Commonwealth’s largest single contract outside Defence - $7.1 billion. It’s also a finding that rarely surprises anyone who has ever had any experience with the system.
Throughout my PhD, and in the time since, I have been a volunteer on the Australian Unemployed Workers Union Hotline. I did this initially to understand a different perspective from my own, which had been as a provider, and to maintain a currency of knowledge about the system I had left. I keep doing it because I think it’s important.
Once a week for the best part of a decade I have been listening to and providing information and advice to unemployed workers who describe their frustrations with a system that does not work for them. I am always clear to anyone who asks - I am not unemployed, I am a supporter but not a member of the AUWU, and my only personal experience of employment services appointments is as a provider. However, I don’t subscribe to a view that experience is the only qualification for understanding. People are very capable of showing us at least some of the intricacies of their lives through what they tell us through projects of engaged listening.
The reason for that introduction is some background to a call I took this week. I have heard this story told in slightly different ways by many people many times over the years but something about this call made me feel compelled to share. I have the caller’s permission to share – we will call her “Sofia”.
I had spoken to Sofia on the helpline before. Her health is poor – multiple health problems that are unfortunately getting worse. Sofia has the most typical profile of an unemployed Australian – an older women with a chronic health problem at risk of homelessness. Her provider kept sending her to job interviews for work that she was physically incapable of performing and threatening her with payment suspensions if she didn’t attend. Her doctor had had enough of the toll this was taking on her mental health and had written a medical certificate seeking an exemption from her mutual obligations. Centrelink had rejected the certificate. What Sofia and her doctor didn’t know is that if Centrelink has already assessed her medical condition, which they had done, she cannot get an exemption for this same condition. Exemptions can only be given for something new or a significant exacerbation. Armed with that information, Sofia went back to her doctor and got a new certificate that made clear this difference and a temporary exemption was subsequently granted.
Sofia rang back this week to say thanks for the help and tell me what had happened, but the kicker of this story is what she told me next. Since being given an exemption, Sofia went out and found a job interview herself with a dress shop, which went well and she was offered work. The respite from the near constant bullying from her employment provider allowed her the head space to focus on the thing she has always wanted – a job that she could manage.
The irony of Sofia’s story should not be lost on anyone although I suspect that the Department of Employment will miss it, so I will spell it out:
So long as we keep designing a system that starts from the assumption that unemployed people don’t want to work, we will design a system that continues to fail all of us – a system that is useless and harmful. We can do better.
About the author:
David O’Halloran is an occupational therapist with more than 35 years’ experience in disability employment and vocational rehabilitation services including direct service delivery, program management, project management and policy development at a local, national and international level. David’s research focuses on unemployed workers experiences of employment services. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Ohalloran-3
Content moderator Sue Olney