Financial Wellbeing and Capability Submission

Financial wellbeing and capability is critical to women’s ability to live full and dignified lives. Our submission in response to the Department of Social Services’ Review of Financial Wellbeing and Capability Programs covers a range of complex interdependencies affecting our clients across the financial wellbeing and capability continuum.

Our key recommendations focus on:

• The strong role that FWC programs can play in disasters, the need for an integrated financial wellbeing strategy, the importance of digital financial literacy, and the need for protection from technology facilitated abuse;
• The financial wellbeing needs of emerging FWC client cohorts, including the newly vulnerable and middle-income earners, and the centrality of a savings buffer for building financial resilience;
• High quality FWC programs that feature co-design to establish wraparound services, address short- and long-term financial and psychosocial needs;
• Developing consistent financial capability training for all frontline domestic and family violence staff, domestic and family violence training for FWC workers, and incorporating trauma-informed principles into all FWC programs;
• Recognising that place-based approaches harness and share resources in communities that are ‘place-based ready’, but are hindered without longer-term, flexible funding arrangements and backbone support;
• Flexible funding involves parties being able to request amendments in order to be truly client and community centric, and must account for service provider’s governance and compliance obligations;
• The enhanced impact of supplementary funding requires more lead time and crisis brokerage; and
• The need for a shared conceptual understanding of financial wellbeing that underpins FWC services and programs, and multiple metrics for capturing unmet client demand data.