Reports and Submissions
Read the latest reports and submissions from FCVic on a range of topics significant to financial counsellors, consumer advocates and the wider community.
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FCVic Strategic Plan 2022-25
- Published: 23 October 2022
The FCVic Board has adopted its 3-year Strategic Plan for 2022-2025.
Developed through a consultative process with FCVic members, the Strategic Plan articulates the priority areas of focus for our organisation, and our sector, as we move towards our vision:
A fairer and more equitable society with improved community wellbeing and better lives for vulnerable people.
Following the direction of our expiring Strategic Plan of the past three years, the new plan continues the aim of building our sector capacity to respond to new and increased community needs, while protecting our workforce from burnout and work-related stress.
FCVic’s current and recent projects have enabled us to connect more closely with other sectors and organisations to demonstrate the benefits of financial counselling for the communities they support. The Strategic Plan reflects our commitment to strengthening those relationships through collaborative initiatives that allow us to achieve our social justice objectives.
As always, FCVic remains driven and led by its members – professionals with strong ethics and high-quality practice standards. As our profession reaches a new stage in its maturation, the Strategic Plan strives for financial counsellors to be recognised and respected, with opportunities for growth and leadership.
The past three years have been heavy with challenges, which the financial counselling sector has been adaptive to respond to. Our new Strategic Plan maintains a positive outlook for the future and what we can achieve.
We invite you to read the FCVic Strategic Plan 2022-2025.
Short-changed: The ongoing costs of an inadequate JobSeeker Payment
- Published: 17 October 2022
- Topics: Social Security and Centrelink
Between March and June 2022, 90 people who were clients of financial counsellors shared their stories about trying to live on the JobSeeker Payment.
They also provided information about their weekly income and expenditure showing that it is simply impossible for many people to make ends meet on the current rate.
The costs resulting from this impossibility are borne directly by the most vulnerable in our community, facing destitution, declining health, homelessness and hunger, and also carried by overstretched emergency relief services, and by our service systems including justice, health and mental health.
Annual Report 2021-22
- Published: 19 September 2022
Read the FCVic Annual Report for 2021-22
Submission to the Victorian suicide prevention and response strategy
- Published: 12 September 2022
- Topics: Mental Health
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended that the Victorian Government develop a new suicide prevention and response strategy. The strategy will take a whole-of-government and community-wide approach to better prevent and respond to suicide. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Division in the Department of Health issued a discussion paper as a starting point for collaboration and co-design of the new Victorian suicide prevention and response strategy.
Financial problems combine and interact with other contributory factors across all areas as a driver of suicide risk. Financial counsellors well understand from their practice that financial difficulties, debt, and hardship are important contributors to suicidality amongst the many groups of people they work with.
Drawing on financial counselling client experiences, our members’ professional observations and FCVic’s work with communities, our response to the discussion paper outlines key insights financial counselling can contribute to the development of a suicide prevention and response strategy, and includes several recommendations.
Submission to the Inquiry into Support for Older Victorians from Migrant and Refugee Backgrounds
- Published: 2 March 2022
- Topics: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities, Older Victorians
FCVic has made a submission to the Inquiry into Support for Older Victorians from Migrant and Refugee Backgrounds.
Drawing on client experiences, our members’ professional observations and FCVic’s work with communities, this submission raises several concerns about the adequacy and accessibility of support for older Victorians from migrants and refugee backgrounds, with a focus on financial support and the prevention of financial abuse.
Response to the draft National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032
- Published: 24 February 2022
- Topics: Family Violence
FCVic has made a submission to the consultation on the draft National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 (National Plan).
The National Plan provides an essential overarching roadmap to comprehensively addressing violence against women and children, with key insights articulated in the Foundation Principles and Four National Pillars, alongside essential provision for a dedicated Plan to be developed in consultation with First Nations people. However, there are some key areas in which the National Plan needs to be strengthened around issues of economic and financial abuse, and interlinked financial disadvantage for women and children.
Our submission makes the following recommendations:
- That the recommendations made by the House of Representatives Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee Inquiry into Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence be incorporated into the National Plan across the corresponding pillars.
- That an additional focus area is included in Pillar One:
We recognise the critical role of government in:- preventing violence through fostering gender equality in the workplace
- designing programs and services that are safe, based on gender equality and recognition of design that will prevent misuse
- training all government frontline staff in family violence and how to ensure safety of clients.
- ensuring adequate and meaningful support is available in the form of a financial safety net through Services Australia
These responsibilities run across government functions and agencies, including Treasury, Home Affairs, ATO, Services Australia etc.
- That the full recommendations of Economic Justice Australia’s 2021 report Debt, Duress and Dob-Ins: Centrelink compliance processes and domestic violence be included in one or more focus areas in the National plan.
- That the National Plan provide for identifying and sharing excellence in state services addressing financial and economic security and safety for women and their children impacted by family violence so that best practice can be supported and implemented across Australia.
- That the National Plan add a new focus area to Pillar 3 that addresses impacts and needs in relation to financial hardship and vulnerability.
- That financial counselling and community legal centre peak bodies are represented in committees set up to implement the National Plan, and that the National Plan provide for the family violence service system to employ and integrate financial counsellors in service delivery, along with strengthened links to community legal centres. This should be done to ensure access to free advocacy and legal assistance for women and children experiencing financial and legal impacts (including property settlement) from family and domestic violence.