Special and Unusual Circumstances: DCM's benefit advocacy service

April 2004

DCM began its benefit advocacy work in 1991 when the then food bank coordinator Tony McGurk recognised that there were many people applying for food parcels who were not getting all of the benefits they were entitled to. The food bank is still the first point of contact for many of our advocacy clients.

"We try to figure out the underlying reasons why people have not been able to buy food and what could be done about them and that’s where the advocacy comes in,“ says Director Stephanie McIntyre.

"This can mean helping people access long term financial support from Work and Income if that’s what’s needed. But at the level of the food bank, advocacy can also mean acknowledging very complex socio economic issues including addictions and mental illness where no amount of direct financial assistance is going to help. At this level of work, because so much of the financial assistance that is available from Work and Income is discretionary, we get the best results by building relationships with local Work and Income staff and engaging with them to achieve the best outcome for the clients."

"At the most basic level my benefit advocacy work involves giving one on one advice to people about their benefit entitlement or intervening directly to help them get it,” says Senior Advocate Richard Noble.

"Sometimes you can give a quick answer to a query but at other times what seems simple can grow into many hours work with trips to Work and Income and supporting a client to appeal to a local Benefits Review Committee, then the Social Security Appeal Authority (at the District Court) and finally the High Court. Theoretically a case could be taken all the way to the Privy Council.”

One memorable recent case he worked on involved a family with an extremely high level of health needs. They were not beneficiaries but the father was working in a low wage job and the family was entitled to supplementary assistance from the state to pay for medical costs for the children. Eventually they were awarded a $17,000 payout from Work and Income!"

However benefit advocacy involves more than just assisting individual clients - it also involves working to improve the benefit system as a whole. Richard works with the Regional Work and Income office on operational matters in the Wellington Region and at the national level with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) on policy issues.

"Interaction at the regional level might involve an issue around service delivery. For example there is nothing more frustrating than turning up at a Work and Income service centre with an emergency situation only to find that there is no-one available of sufficient seniority to authorise an urgent decision. Recently local advocates worked with the regional office to set in place procedures to ensure that there was always someone on site who could make the necessary decisions immediately.”

At the national level he has been one of the Beneficiary Advocates Consultation Group’s representative on the MSD Working Party on Special Benefits.

"In this capacity I have been involved in redesigning benefit forms and the decision to include a Special Benefit application form as a matter of course when someone is applying for a Special Needs Grant. We wanted this because it is our experience that often people applying for emergency assistance are doing so because they are missing out on Special Benefit assistance to cover things such as high accommodation costs.”

"To some extent the High court cases which DCM takes also represent systemic level advocacy because they achieve ground breaking decisions which can affect the way benefits are administered throughout the country.”

Will there ever be a time when Benefit Advocates are no longer needed?

"The central issue is that current benefit levels are too low and people have to rely on supplementary and emergency assistance for survival,” says Graham Howell.

"Because accessing additional assistance currently relies so much on the discretion of case managers, and because the Special Benefit regime especially is so arcane, people either need the wit of a bush lawyer or the assistance of a benefit advocate to get it,” says Graham. “I think the need for benefit advocacy would only decline if the base level of benefits were to be increased substantially thereby reducing the need for supplementary and emergency assistance,” he says.