The Department of Social Services confirmed in estimates last night that there were no plans to reconsider eligibility criteria for the Escaping Violence Payment, or the Leaving Violence Program which is due to replace it in July 2025, despite more than 17% of applicants being deemed ineligible, and up to half never receiving the payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Australian Greens Leader in the Senate and spokesperson on women, Larissa Waters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRestrictive criteria doesn\u2019t help keep women safe, it forces them to stay in unsafe relationships and living situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Department confirmed last night that at least 17% of women seeking the current escaping violence payment are being rejected, but there are no plans to change the criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the reasons for ineligibility for the program is a lack of a safety plan to move soon – this is not an inherent skill, it should be standard practice to support women to establish one, not a reason for rejection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSix women killed by violence this year were allegedly murdered by their sons. Escaping violent homes is not limited to escaping intimate partners, so the payment shouldn\u2019t be either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven though it takes an average of seven times before a woman is able to finally leave an abusive relationship, you can\u2019t get the Escaping Violence Payment more than once within a 12 month period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Department was also unable to provide details about the time women have to wait between first request for payment and actually receiving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMeanwhile the Leaving Violence Program\u2019s well-meaning referral pathways will lead to frontline services who have received no extra funding – what good is it to refer someone to a support service that is already full? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd we are still no closer to understanding how many women are turned away from frontline services due to funding constraints, because despite me asking for 2.5 years what\u2019s being done to quantity unmet need, there is not even a timeframe for when a scoping project will complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf the Leaving Violence Program is the best this government can do for women experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence, they aren\u2019t taking the issue seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n BACKGROUND The Department of Social Services confirmed in estimates last night that there were no plans to reconsider eligibility criteria for the Escaping Violence Payment, or the Leaving Violence Program which is due to replace it in July 2025, despite more than 17% of applicants being deemed ineligible, and up to half never receiving the payment. … Continue reading “NO CHANGES PLANNED FOR BARRIERS TO ESCAPING VIOLENCE PAYMENT”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27088,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27087\/revisions\/27088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Senate Community Affairs Committee: ParlView | Video 2510073 (aph.gov.au)<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"