3. Targeted Income Management
In relation to this, we have a suggestion based on our experience in the region. We undertake casework support for select individuals in the region, mostly the chronic petrol abusers who have the potential to start up sniffing outbreaks and involve others in their addiction. Our caseworker spends a lot of time trying to ensure these individuals receive income support from Centrelink. Without money, these individuals become a burden on their already impoverished families because of the compulsory sharing aspect of Indigenous culture. In some cases, the individuals are incapable of the administrative requirements of staying on benefits due to their addiction, brain damage or simply language problems. The increased poverty predisposes the individual and others within their family to substance abuse, widening the net.
We suggest that people on benefits who fail to meet administrative requirements continue to receive benefits, but that 100% of the funds are managed. This would strengthen the Indigenous cultural safety net, ensuring that individuals did not become a burden to their families, and decrease the tendency of the existing interaction of the two systems to push people towards substance abuse.
This sort of targeted income management could be implemented over time as a roll-back of the existing system, and would increase the safety of the children in the communities through ensuring their material needs were better met by the income support system.