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Hi auspol I wonder if anyone might have some advice for me in regards to Centrelink’s general incompetence impacting someone close to me. My girlfriend is doing tafe full time to carry through for her Cert IV and Diploma and has applied for Youth Allowance from Centrelink. She gets about 3 hours work a week from a retail job (usually Friday or Saturday work, never Sunday), both of her parents are disabled and not in a position to support her financially. She lodged her initial claim for Youth Allowance on 4th Jan, and despite providing everything they asked for at the time had her claim rejected 3 weeks later on the 25th Jan and was advised that she needs to provide evidence of her tafe contact hours, but once she did that processing ‘should be pretty quick’ because it will all be part of the same claim assessment and won’t be treated like a new one again. She provided the tafe timetable info as proof within the same day for the claim to progress. 2 weeks after resubmitting the info on the 24th Jan she hadn’t heard back so she called Centrelink’s Student Services department. She called Student Services multiple times a week every week at different days and different times only for the call to ring out every time. After 3 weeks of not being able to contact the Student Services dept she called the Complaints department and was advised nobody had looked at her claim yet and there was no ability to progress things and to keep calling Student Services. Today (2 weeks after speaking to Complaints) she finally got through to Student Services and was told that the claim still hasn’t been reviewed, and it’s probably at the bottom of the pile because they were currently dealing with a number of contested rejected claims. They have now told her they have marked it as urgent after she told them the same thing she told Complaints, ie she is in a very precarious position work wise and her parents are not in a position to support her, and they have now said they’d be hopeful someone will be in touch with her on the 13th and if not to call them again on the line that has proven impossible to get ahold of anyone on for the last month and bit. Is there anything else she can do from here both from a getting the claim assessed point of view or as a way to lodge a complaint with Centrelink that will actually get some traction (and not a public smearing in retaliation?). Her work cancelled her shift for this week and its completely hosed her, she has spent the last 5-6 weeks living off the $70 a week she sees from her one shift and her phone and smartrider burns up half of that each week before food. I’ve never dealt with Centrelink before in my life so I don’t really know the best way for someone to get traction with the bastards.
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Mar 3, 2017 07:45
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Thanks for the suggestions, contacting the local member of parliament is an idea I like, as a friend of hers is in the same boat, so a couple of letters from a couple of people in the same boat might get a response.
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Mar 3, 2017 09:10
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