If not delivered return to PO Box 7820 Canberra BC ACT 2610
24 April 2025
Our reference: LEX 84435
Eli J. North
Right to Know
Only by email
: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Eli,
Your Freedom of Information Request
I refer to your request, dated and received by Services Australia (the Agency) on
28 March 2025 for access under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act) to the
following documents:
Under the Freedom of Information Act 1982, I seek access to documents held by
Services Australia that contain the fol owing information:
1. The number of suicides, attempted suicides, or self-harm incidents recorded,
reported, or reasonably suspected by Services Australia to have involved child
support obligations, between 2015 and 2024 (inclusive).
2. Any internal reports, reviews, statistical summaries, or briefing notes prepared
for internal or ministerial purposes that reference the mental health impacts of
child support obligations, particularly in relation to payers.
3. Any risk assessments, policy documents, or guidance materials created or
updated since 2015 that consider mental health, emotional distress, or family
violence risk factors in the administration or enforcement of child support
obligations.
If the full timeframe is too broad, please provide data from 2020 to 2024.
This request is made in the public interest, and I respectfully request that any
applicable charges be waived under section 29(5) of the FOI Act. The issue of mental
health and suicide in relation to child support is of significant public concern,
particularly regarding the wellbeing and safety of vulnerable parents, including
fathers.
Currently your request is broad and does not sufficiently identify the documents you require.
Further, if the documents were able to be sufficiently identified your request would cover a
wide range of documents and potentially be an unreasonable diversion of Agency resources
to process. Therefore, the Agency is now formally consulting with you under section 24AB of
the FOI Act.
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This letter is giving you an opportunity to provide us with specific information about the
documents you need. Providing this additional information wil assist the Agency in
processing your request.
If you decide not to provide further information or revise your request, I wil have to refuse
your Freedom of Information (FOI) request as a 'practical refusal reason' exists. For a more
detailed explanation of what this means, including some suggestions on what to consider
when revising your request, please see
Attachment A.
How to send us a 'revised request'
Before I make a final decision on your request, you can submit a revised request.
Within the next 14 days (consultation period) you must do one of the following, in writing:
• withdraw the request
• make a revised request, or
• tell us you do not want to revise your request.
Your response wil be expected by
9 May 2025.
If you do not contact us during the
consultation period, your matter wil be taken as withdrawn by operation of the FOI Act. See
Attachment A for relevant sections of the FOI Act.
If you decide to make a revised request, you should be specific about what documents you
actually want. This could help the Agency find the documents.
Note: You may want to access the Agency's online services
at www.servicesaustralia.gov.au
to immediately find some of the personal information and documents included in your original
request.
We have 30 days to give you a decision about your request, however the time taken to
consult with you now is not included in this 30-day time period.
Contact officer
I am the contact officer for your request. During the consultation period you are welcome to
ask for my help in revising your request. You can contact me:
• via email to arrange a phone call, by providing a contact number and advising of a
suitable time
• in writing to the address at the top of this letter, or
• via email
to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Note: When you contact us, please quote the reference number
FOI LEX 84435
Further assistance
If you have any questions, please email
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
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Yours sincerely
Alexander
Authorised FOI Decision Maker
Freedom of Information Team
FOI and Reviews Branch | Legal Services Division
Services Australia
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Attachment A
What I took into account
You requested access under the FOI Act to the following documents:
Under the Freedom of Information Act 1982, I seek access to documents held by
Services Australia that contain the fol owing information:
1. The number of suicides, attempted suicides, or self-harm incidents recorded,
reported, or reasonably suspected by Services Australia to have involved child
support obligations, between 2015 and 2024 (inclusive).
2. Any internal reports, reviews, statistical summaries, or briefing notes prepared for
internal or ministerial purposes that reference the mental health impacts of child
support obligations, particularly in relation to payers.
3. Any risk assessments, policy documents, or guidance materials created or
updated since 2015 that consider mental health, emotional distress, or family
violence risk factors in the administration or enforcement of child support
obligations.
If the full timeframe is too broad, please provide data from 2020 to 2024.
This request is made in the public interest, and I respectfully request that any
applicable charges be waived under section 29(5) of the FOI Act. The issue of mental
health and suicide in relation to child support is of significant public concern,
particularly regarding the wellbeing and safety of vulnerable parents, including
fathers.
Your request is unclear
As it stands, your request is too broad and does not sufficiently identify the documents you
require. In order to obtain advice on the types of documents the Agency holds relevant to
your request, I consulted with the following business areas of the Agency:
• The Child Support and Tailored Services Division
• The Data and Analytics Division, and
• The Enterprise Strategy Governance Division.
Point 1 of your request
The Child Support and Tailored Services (CSTS) Division advised that the Agency does not
report on the circumstances/causes of a Child Support customer’s death, or where a
customer has attempted or made references to self-harm. Additionally, the deceased’s next
of kin are not required to report cause of death to the Agency.
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The Agency administers a range of payments and services to customers who may be
experiencing challenging and highly stressful life circumstances. This includes parents going
though separation and shared care arrangements. While the Agency has established
processes for supporting customers who are in distress, such as referrals to social workers,
the referrals can be for a range of contributing factors, not just the administration of their
Agency payments or Child Support obligations. Additionally, the reason for the referral is not
typically recorded/reported on by the Agency.
Noting the above information, you may wish to consider withdrawing this part of your request.
Point 2 of your request
Similarly, to Point 1 of your request, CSTS advised that the Agency does not report on the
mental health impacts of Child Support obligations. CSTS further advised that many
customers engaging with the Agency are often doing so during difficult circumstances, and
there may be a range of factors that impact a person’s Child Support obligations.
Furthermore, the FOI team liaised with the Enterprise Strategy and Governance (ESG)
Division, to confirm if there are any ministerial documents related to this point of the request.
ESG conducted searches of the Parliamentary Document Management System (PDMS),
which is a workflow system used to transfer correspondence between agencies and Minister
offices.
ESG conducted their searches of PDMS by searching the terms “mental health” and “Child
Support”. Their preliminary search results located thousands of ministerial document types
which may be relevant to your request using these search parameters. Please note that the
content search results are for all documents and attachments in PDMS, and ESG would then
have to analyse each result to locate specific Child Support documents.
Based on the above, we require you to clarify and provide us with defined parameters to
enable us to conduct searches of the particular documents of interest.
Point 3 of your request
CSTS Division advised that many business areas across the Agency provide guidance in
relation to assisting customers who require additional support, and that the Agency regularly
updates staff guidelines, known as Operational Blueprints (OBs), and other resources to
ensure up to date and relevant information is available. OBs are the Agency's online 'how to'
library for staff, which is the approved product that explains service delivery processes for the
programs and services the Agency delivers.
I have located the following publicly available guideline/procedural documents relevant to
Point 3 of your request:
•
Social worker and other service referrals for Child Support customers 277-01140000
•
Customers talking about suicide or self-harm 003-06010040
•
Identifying customer vulnerability and risk issues 003-06010000
•
Solutions Gateway Team 277-09160000
•
Financial hardship 277-04360000
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You can also search our
Operational Information Portal via the Category Index or by
keyword, should you wish to explore other procedural documents.
Please note, the above guidelines are just a sample of the many staff guidelines which relate
to Point 3 of your request. Our recommendation is to explore the Agency’s Operational
Information portal to locate particular OBs of Interest. We would need you to identify which
additional documents you require outside of the publicly available documents provided above
or publicly available within the Operational Information Portal.
Furthermore, policy documents related to the administration and enforcement of Child
Support obligations are held by the Department of Social Services (DSS) as the policy
owners. You wil need to submi
t an FOI request with DSS. Alternatively, you may wish to
explor
e the Social Security Guide to obtain the relevant policy material.
Statistical data
Preliminary searches were undertaken by the Data and Analytics Division to identify whether
the Agency holds any data relevant to your request in existing documents/reports.
This Division confirmed that they do not hold any data relevant to your request in existing
documents/reports. However, they advised that you could submit a request for the data via
the External Information Release team. The External Information Release team wil then
decide on whether the data can be obtained and provided.
Further information regarding public statistical information and lodging requests for statistics
and data is available on our website
: Statistical information and data - Services Australia
Revising your request
To enable the Agency to process your request and avoid a practical refusal reason, you may
wish to consider:
1. Providing a smaller defined date range.
2. Providing defined parameters as described above to enable searches for ministerial
documents
or advise us that you do not require ministerial documents.
3. Identify what additional procedural / guideline documents you require
or advise us
that the publicly available information satisfies this part of your request.
4. Revising or withdrawing points of your request where the Agency does not hold or
record the data you requested
or consider submitting a request for the data via the
External Information Release team.
5. Removing the request for policy documents, as DSS is the policy owner, and
additionally, policy documents are publicly available.
If you do not revise your request, I intend to refuse your FOI request as a 'practical refusal
reason' exists under sections 24AA(1)(b) and 24 of the FOI Act. Under the FOI Act, the
practical refusal reason is your request does not satisfy the requirements in section 15(2)(b)
of the FOI Act (identification of documents).
Relevant sections of the Freedom of Information Act 1982
Section 24AA(1)(b) of the FOI Act provides a practical refusal reason exists in relation to a
request for a document if the request does not satisfy the requirement in section 15(2)(b) of
the FOI Act.
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Section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act provides a request must provide such information as is
reasonably necessary to enable the Agency to identify the documents are being requested.
Section 24AB(6) provides the applicant must, before the end of the consultation period, do
one of the fol owing, by written notice to the Agency:
• withdraw the request
• make a revised request, or
• indicate that the applicant does not wish to revise the request.
Section 24AB(7) of the FOI Act provides the request is taken to have been withdrawn at the
end of the consultation period if:
• the applicant does not consult the contact person during the consultation period in
accordance with the notice, or
• the applicant does not do one of the things mentioned in subsection (6) before the
end of the consultation period.
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