Single mother families in Victorian are very diverse. They are also the poorest families in Australia. What single mothers share is resilience and a dedication to providing their children with a good life and a bright future. Nationally, 37% live below the poverty line, compared to 10% of couple families. The ongoing cost-of-living crisis is ...
Council of Single Mothers and their Children Inc.
Supporting single mother families in crisis
GOAL
$10,000
Australia > VIC > Metro and Regional
09/01/2024 > 31/08/2026
Field of Interest
- Individual/family services and support
- Social inclusion and justice
Target Population
- People experiencing socio-economic disadvantage or vulnerability
- Women and girls
Council of Single Mothers and their Children Inc.
Council of Single Mothers and their Children Inc. (CSMC) is a non-profit organisation founded in 1969 by single mothers to secure a better life for women parenting alone and their children. We achieve change by championing the agency, rights and needs of single mothers and their children and providing specialist support services.
CSMC provides single mothers with tailored support, information, financial aid and referral. We represent the needs and issues of single mothers and their children by working with government and community organisations, the media and research partners. CSMC also advocates to overturn social and economic disadvantages faced by single mothers and raise the status of single mothers and their children.
CSMC envisions a society that ensures social and economic inclusion for all single mothers and their children, across their lives.
Each year CSMC receives over 3000 contacts from single mother families seeking support, information and referral to assist them to secure basic human rights such as financial security; affordable housing; flexible work and education opportunities; legal protection; and health, safety and wellbeing for themselves and their children. We have over 5800 single mother members – membership is free for single mothers.
CSMC’s advocacy and service provision is founded on lived experience; all staff, board and volunteers are or have been a single mother.
Project Summary
Single mother families in Victorian are very diverse. They are also the poorest families in Australia. What single mothers share is resilience and a dedication to providing their children with a good life and a bright future.
Nationally, 37% live below the poverty line, compared to 10% of couple families. The ongoing cost-of-living crisis is deepening existing disadvantages, posing a risk of perpetuating them across generations without timely and specialised support, and increasingly impacting mothers with paid employment who are seeking support for the first time.
In 2022-2023, Council of Single Mothers and their Children (CSMC) supported 4600 unique single mother families to secure basic human rights such as financial security, affordable housing, work and education opportunities, legal protection, and safety after family violence, health, and wellbeing. This is a 73% increase compared to the year prior, even with the challenges posed by COVID.
In 2023-2024, the cost-of-living crisis further heightened demand for CSMC’s specialist services and emergency relief, while frontline staffing reduced to 1.3EFT (from a peak during COVID of 2.2EFT). Understaffing and the surge in demand resulted in delays in supporting families in crisis and a proportion of calls going unanswered, leaving families in crisis without our critical assistance.
The immediate objective of this project is to respond to expanded service demand arising from the continued cost-of-living and housing affordability crises. Additional staffing for our frontline services will ensure that women calling our services are provided with timely, tailored, and holistic support.
Additional frontline staffing also assists with the continued expansion of our networks of referring services, which ensures availability of our specialist services to workers in more narrow service delivery organisations, such as housing, family violence or financial counselling, so they can better support single mother service users by referring them to CSMC for current and future engagement with our ongoing supports.
Furthermore, additional staffing will expand the organisational capacity to advocate for change on critical issues such as the housing market, in particular the rental housing market in which most of these families are competing while facing significant disadvantage in trying to secure rental properties compared with dual income and higher-earning applicants. This capacity includes engaging single mothers in our advocacy.
Project Outcomes
Employment of an additional Contact Worker 0.6EFT will enable more families to access our specialist support, information, emergency relief and tailored referrals.
Single mothers turn to CSMC at their times of greatest need and for ongoing support. Our expert frontline staff provide information and guidance on diverse issues. Emergency relief applications serve as a valuable entry point for accessing CSMC’s support. If desired, women can join CSMC’s network of single mother members. Membership is free and offers safe and welcoming community to support wellbeing and reduce social isolation.
Single mothers and services that support them can contact the Support Line via email, telephone, Messenger or webform. Families are provided with individualised, wraparound support that explores their intersecting needs, along with specialist information and referrals, and are empowered to undertake continued self-advocacy.
Contact Workers provide support on diverse issues including parenting solo, government benefits, child support, housing, short- and long-term recovery from family violence, managing money, and family-friendly employment and education opportunities. Our annual back-to-school program provides financial aid along with information on navigating the education system and finding affordable school supplies.
Single mothers are referred to CSMC by other community service and our Support Workers connect women to their local services throughout Victoria.
Additional staffing will enable support for approximately 400 additional women and 720 children per year.
Outcomes will be measured through various mechanisms.
Impact measurement
CSMC introduced impact measures in early 2022 to inform continuous improvement of our frontline services. A brief impact measure survey is sent to willing service users to measure their response to our service provision, which asks three questions for response on a Likert scale and collects demographic information.
Outputs
Outputs are similarly used to track increases in our reach and the source and demographics of our service users. We track the number of contacts to our Support Line, including demographic information, membership status and repeat utilisation of our services.
Reach
Our long-term goal is to reach 10,000 single mother families a year to provide support and connect them to one another.
Budget Breakdown
TOTAL BUDGET: $65,000
FUNDING
| Funding source | Amount |
|---|---|
| Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (confirmed) | $15,000 |
| Sidney Myer Inclusion and Equity Fund (confirmed) | $40,000 |
| Funding gap (unconfirmed) | $10,000 |
EXPENSES
| Expense item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Contact Worker 0.6 EFT | $65,000 |
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