annual general report annual general report - Casey North CISS

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Financial Counselling Throughout the year, we have maintained our capacity of two financial counsellors providing, between us, five person days of financial counselling per week. This has enabled us to generally keep up with demand. At times we have been booked up to four weeks in advance, but average client waiting time has been about two weeks. Even in quiet times there has never been a day without client bookings. Clients are usually referred to us from within CNCISS as well as from local community agencies or by self-referral, maybe after talking to someone who has used our services or after reading about us on the website or in our publications. We spent 690 hours dealing with client issues. We supported 44% more clients than in the previous year, involving 23% more actions taken. We were able to do this as a result of our second financial counsellor working the full year and gaining further experience. Instances of clients not turning up for appointments increased during the busiest seasons, such as after the January school holidays, when clients had to wait at least three weeks for appointments. This is despite being reminded by telephone the day before their appointments. Below is a breakup of actions taken by geographical area: LOCATION POSTCODE NO. OF CLIENT ACTIONS Endeavour Hills 3802 29 Hallam 3803 96 Narre Warren North 3804 21 Narre Warren 3805 296 Berwick 3806 119 Hampton Park 3976 49 Cranbourne North 3977 91 Doveton 3177 5 Pakenham 3810 6 Other Various 16 The spread of clients between locations is generally consistent with last year. The number of actions involving bankruptcies increased by 77% and we are now seeing this high rate being maintained. Younger clients who have gone into debt, lost jobs or have had failed businesses see bankruptcy as their only source of hope for financial survival. Actions for clients suffering mental illness more than doubled. Clients coming from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds comprised 28% of our case load, this is 19 % more than last year. These two client groups generally require a good deal more time as their financial situations can often be more complex. 19
Clients with mental illness and those with ethnic backgrounds generally require more support time and effort. The bulk of the New Consumer Credit Protection Act came into effect during the year. We attended training and professional development to help us apply the changes to the benefit of our clients. Recently the Federal Government has been investigating greater regulation of pay day lenders such as Cash Converters. We have added our support to Consumer Action Law Centre, who are making strong recommendations to the government in the face of equally strong counter arguments from the pay day lobby. Contrary to the pay day lending industry that says that they help people, our experience is that nearly all clients with pay day loans fall into a debt trap, paying effective interest rates of up to 600%. Another area of growing concern is the rising cost of utilities. Despite most clients having health care cards and receiving rebates and grants, we regularly see clients with bills that they cannot afford and receiving disconnection notices. Once accounts get into arrears, the minimum fortnightly payments that we can arrange become huge financial burdens for low income families. Our representation at the South East Region Financial Counselling Network and Casey North Network gives the opportunity to discuss and explore specific issues and trends with other financial counsellors and community workers in our area. We also share information about programs and services to help us in our referral process. Funding of financial counselling by Federal Government requires that we keep activity data to produce half yearly reports for FAHCSIA. This work takes about 7% of our time and all reports have been completed on time. The ongoing demand for financial counselling, the myriad of hardship scenarios presented by clients and the ever changing consumer legislation make our work very challenging and rewarding. The CNCISS team continues to be an enthusiastic, dedicated one to be part of. We are proud to continue this work. Financial Literacy & Support – Keeping It Together In addition to our Financial Counselling program, the financial literacy support program was funded for 2 days a week during 2010/11, and a further 38 clients benefitted from this program. This role consists of providing individual sessions for clients and community education in the form of financial literacy workshops. Financial literacy means being able to understand how money affects your life and to manage your money in order to make informed decisions. Being financially literate can reduce stress and anxiety around money issues, make it easier to budget and manage money, and understand debt and how to stop the cycle of debt just to name a few. 20
Page 1 and 2: ANNUAL GENERAL REPORT 2010-2011 CAS
Page 3 and 4: President’s Report Whilst this la
Page 5 and 6: Board of Management President Vice
Page 7 and 8: Staff Executive Officer Social Work
Page 9 and 10: Executive Officer’s Report At Cas
Page 11 and 12: Cranbourne Information & Support Se
Page 13 and 14: Programs Our services and programs
Page 15 and 16: Information & Support Services Prov
Page 17 and 18: clients were unaware initially that
Page 19: Counselling There were 175 counsell
Page 23 and 24: Keeping It Together Programme In Ap
Page 25 and 26: No Interest Loan Scheme Ten years a
Page 27 and 28: Volunteering Casey North Community
Page 29: Treasurer’s Report The accounts o
Page 34 and 35: Casey North Community Information &

annual general report annual general report - Casey North CISS

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