The Diary of a Winz Advocate

WINZ Office

It is raining when I arrive. The people in the queue outside the Winz office are at least sheltered under the overhang. That is good.

At 8.30am the security guards start letting people seeking advocacy for emergency assistance into the office – three in / three out / three in.

Some things are the same as last week, but there have also been changes:

• when people report to the front desk they are asked not just what they need, but why they need assistance. They are asked to add some of their story to their request. This seems good. However, it does not extend to the case-worker doing the phone appointment being told this story. All that person is told is what is required – eg food/petrol – written on a template page as we watch
• today when people ask for a time for their phone appointment they are told ‘within the next 2 hours’, which is an improvement on ‘sometime today’. It seems this mostly happens, but not always
• when people are granted food from now on, they no longer have to nominate a single provider. Money for food can now be spent as the applicants choose which allows them to shop around for the best specials. This has come apparently, as an email directive from the Regional Commissioner
• people are told there will be no 3-way phone advocacy opportunities today. There is no reason given. When I ask why this is the case, the receptionist goes to ask the manager. She comes back and says he was a bit vague but it seems to be because the advocates were not answering their phones when they were called last week. This is surprising – Winz was given 3 advocate phone numbers. I was called once and yet I had my phone with me at all times waiting for calls. Of the other advocates, one was called 4 times and the other 5 times, and like me, they had their phones with them at all times.

So even though the Winz website assures people of their right to advocacy assistance, today most people are being denied their legal right to advocate support because of the way the appointments are being run.

More than one person tells us today that although they had been told they would receive a phone appointment last week, they had waited until 5 pm and received no call. One of these people had stayed all day with the person whose number she had given as her contact.

Like last week there will be only 6 face-to-face appointments allowed today. We are told there is only one person available for face-to-face appointments and that they are no longer bringing in outside staff.

The first woman I am with is from out of Auckland. She and her son have come to a tangi and now need help with food and with stranded travel. Although her needs are not complex she is given a face-to-face appointment because she is first in the queue. She has gone online to get an air ticket to get home to the South Island, but found these very expensive. She knows she will have to pay this back so she has come in to see if a caseworker is able to get her cheaper tickets. As it turns out, tickets at about half the price are able to be purchased. She is also granted money for food.

I am with a woman who is also early enough to get a face-to-face appointment. She needs doctor’s bills to be paid, a phone and food. This is the third phone she has requested in recent months so this is declined. She explains that the phone has disappeared and that it is likely that one of her mokos has taken it. The case-worker asks if she has gone to the police about this – but she hasn’t, they are her family. I ask to see the manager as the woman has severe health issues (chronic heart problems, emphysema, hearing problems) and is just out of hospital having had pneumonia. The manager allows the phone – with a severe warning: this is the last one. This woman is on a Job Seeker/Medical benefit which means that every three months she has to pay for a doctor’s appointment to get a medical certificate to prove that she is unable to work. She has been on this benefit for 6 years and 4 months with the same health problems. I suggest that perhaps she should be on a Supported Living Payment. I question the case-worker about this – if she can show that her illness is likely to continue for at least 2 years doesn’t this mean she should be on the SLP? He tells me he doesn’t know what the rules are for that. I am surprised. This case-worker happens to be the one who is described as the ‘wrap-around’ case-worker for very vulnerable people at this office – the one who ‘looks at the whole person and makes decisions about her/his needs’. She is already on a Disability Allowance, Temporary Additional Support and an Accommodation Allowance. She has very high needs. I ‘google’ it and find I am correct. The case-worker tells me the doctor has dropped the ball. He should have made sure the woman was on the correct benefit . . . Eventually the case-worker allows the food grant and an advance on the doctor’s bill as well as the phone. She is given an application for the SLP which I help her to fill in (in the waiting area) as she struggles with it. It will make a significant difference to the amount she will receive and as well she won’t have to pay for the 3 monthly visits to her GP for the medical certificates. At her request, I phone her medical practice to explain what is required. She goes to a large practice and sees whichever doctor happens to be on duty. There is no-one there who has the big picture of her health.

By now there are no face-to-face appointments left. The woman I am helping is in Auckland for a tangi. She needs petrol to get home and food. She is here with her cousin who also needs help. She is told she will get a phone call before 12.00pm but it will not be a 3-way call. She wants advocate help and she stays in the office until the call comes through. The interview takes place in the Winz waiting area on speaker phone so we can both hear . . . and so can everyone else in the waiting area. The woman is asked what she needs and she says food and petrol. She is told that as she didn’t request food when she made the appointment at the desk this will not be considered. I say that food was definitely requested and the case-worker says it was not. The case-worker then notices that the woman gets only $8 in her bank after all weekly payments have gone out. She asks how she normally manages for food. The woman tells her that when she’s at home she pretty much lives off the land. The case-worker says, ‘so you don’t need money for food and there will be no money for food.’ I point out that the woman is not at home with her garden. She is in Auckland and requires money for food. The case-worker tells the woman she can have $60 for food and $100 for petrol. The woman is so stunned she just says yes. Too late I realise I should have challenged $100 to get 340kms. The case-worker has already hung up.

I go back to the desk to ask the receptionist whether she recorded food as well as petrol being requested by this woman. The receptionist says yes she did and shows me the template on which she has written this. I wonder why the case-worker said this was not the case.

This woman continues to wait in the waiting area for the call relating to her cousin. She is his agent. He has significant health issues as well as an intellectual disability. He is a young adult whose family has moved to Australia. They couldn’t take him as he wouldn’t qualify for a benefit over there and he is unable to work. He is struggling in his current environment and so the woman is taking him to live with her. He has been living in a kind of quasi boarding house situation but the landlady won’t provide the kind of food he needs – his system won’t tolerate some kinds of food and she is not prepared to make allowances for his different nutritional requirements. He owns a car which has a transmission fault and the repair quote is over $1600. This needs to be done so he can drive to his cousin’s home. When he asks for an appointment he is told to get proof of registration in his name. He has done this and had the document scanned onto his file. As well as money for the car repairs he needs food and petrol assistance. After waiting all day he finally gets his phone appointment late in the afternoon. The call is again on speaker phone so the woman (his agent) and I can both hear, so again, it is very public. There is relief when his requests are all allowed.

I work with a woman I know well. I find her amazing. She has four sons, two of whom are in acute cardiac failure which will require surgery. She is here to ask for $350 food and petrol so she can get to a 1.30pm appointment at Starship today. She is told this must be a phone appointment so she asks if it could be before 12.00pm so she can get the petrol and then get into Starship by 1.30pm. She is told the appointment will be within the hour but she cannot have a 3-way call. She asks why she can’t have a face-to-face appointment and is told there are not enough staff today. She looks around at the newly refurbished office and says in a resigned way, ‘they can do all this fancy stuff but they can’t give my kids enough food.’ The call comes with time to spare. She wants me to advocate for her so we sit in the waiting area with the speaker phone on. It is apparent that the caseworker to whom we are speaking is in the same room as we are! I say this is unsatisfactory – it’s a very public situation. The case-worker says that we chose that. I reply that this is not our choice, it is because Winz is refusing to do face-to-face or even 3-way call appointments, to which she says to me, ‘I am not talking to you’. The woman immediately replies, ‘she is my advocate.’ There is silence. The woman then looks at me and says so that the case-worker and I can both hear, ‘I have to repeat my story every time’. Eventually she is granted food and advanced the petrol but she is very unhappy that it happens in such a public way.

I work with a woman who has urgent and complicated needs. She is told this will have to be a phone appointment. I ask for a face-to-face appointment because the situation is complicated. This is declined. I ask to see the manager but am told he has made himself unavailable. I ask to see the next manager who comes and tells us that a phone appointment is the only option – but we can have a 3-way conversation! Eventually, near the end of the day, the phone call comes through – from a case-worker sitting in the same room as we are!

This woman is a sole parent with three young children – 6, 5 and 4. She lives in a Housing NZ house. She has severe, uncontrolled epilepsy resulting in multiple (up to 7) grand mal seizures, back to back, every morning. She has regular booked admissions to hospital to monitor her condition – sometimes overnight and sometimes she is there for several days. The medication she is on slows her speech and her processing. She is slow to pick up what is being said and slow to respond. This is the main reason she has asked for a face-to-face appointment as a phone call is very difficult for her. She is tearful throughout the whole process.

When she is asked what she has done with her benefit money she explains how she has spent it all on going to the South Island with her children to the unveiling of her father and her brother who were killed a year ago in the same accident. As she is unable to fly (or drive) because of her epilepsy, she paid a friend to drive her and her three children there. This included a return trip on the inter-island ferry for the car and five people. She says she needs $350 for food for herself and her three children.

Her phone screen is so cracked that she couldn’t read it but she doesn’t have a quote. Fortunately the case-worker is happy to look for a quote online and allow this.

The woman’s main problem is her power. She had come in last week and asked for advocate help on a phone interview but this didn’t happen. Not only did she not get advocate help, she was told that she would get a call back about her power, but didn’t. She has been with her power company for 18 months and when she first began with them she asked Winz to set up a redirection for her power bills so she didn’t have to worry about not having enough to pay and so she knew exactly how much money she had. In March this year she discovered that she was in significant arrears with the power company because the redirection had never been set up. Winz advanced her the money for these arrears but this put her in debt to Winz because of their mistake. Last month the woman discovered the redirection had not been put in place in March either, and that she was again in arrears for over $1000 again. The power has been disconnected and so she can’t cook or keep her kids clean. She has moved out to stay with her grandfather (who is looking after her children while she is here). She needs the arrears and a reconnection fee. More debt to Winz which is their fault for failing twice to do as they assured her they would, not hers.

During the phone interview with the case-worker in the same room as we are, the case-worker tells the woman she can see the power history. She apologises to the woman and says she is sorry she has had to go through all this. She offers to negotiate directly with the power company and tells us both she will call each of us when the power has been reconnected before the end of the day. This she does. She ensures the redirection is finally set up.

The woman is granted $250 for food, although she says she needs $350. She is advanced money for a phone and for the power arrears (although Winz has caused this debt). The case-worker reviews the offsets (debt repayments) and brings them down to a total of $5 per week. She arranges for 1 debt to be paid off at a time.

The woman is told to go to the front desk to get a disability review form to check her full entitlement. She also learns that there is a Winz social worker linked to Auckland City Hospital who can help her look into a grant for travel to the hospital.

By the end of the phone appointment the woman is in tears and so am I – it has been so hard. I wonder why the assistant manager, knowing all this, insisted on a phone appointment with someone in the same room. Her one concession was to grant a 3-way conference call which has been denied to everyone else today.