TCA Connect Webinar: Intergenerational impact of cost of living transcript
Transcript: Intergenerational impacts of the cost of living crisis webinar
Please note that the below transcript has been slightly refined and paraphrased for enhanced readability while preserving the original meaning and context
VISUAL: Ciara Sterling CEO of Thriving Communities Australia is Zoom, wearing a blue blazer and sitting in front of a virtual blue and purple background with the Thriving Communities Australia logo in the top left hand corner. Ciara’s video appears each time Ciara speaks throughout the webinar.
CIARA: I'm really excited about this conversation because it's a really important one. I'm in conversations everyday around what we're seeing from a cost of living perspective and often there's a - we talk a lot about unheard voices and we are still, I think, missing a lot of people from this conversation, you know research shows that the cost of living crisis is really impacting a number of people across Australia and it's regardless of age and stage of life and we are continuing to see this play out. These experiences of crisis, they're affecting everyone in different ways and older and young - younger generations have distinct challenges and needs but also there's a real commonality to the interconnectedness of these challenges as well, so that's why we bought our two fabulous speakers together today.
Today I have joining us, Miranda Starke the Chief Executive of Council of the Ageing COTA in South Australia and I also have Zoe Robinson the Advocate for Children and Young People in New South Wales.
I'm going to jump straight in, so I'm going to start off by asking you Miranda, can you just tell us a little bit about your organisation COTA for those who haven't been able to have the pleasure of working with you and some of the work you're doing to support people in your community.
VISUAL: Miranda Starke, Chief Executive at COTA SA - Council on the Ageing, South Australia is on a Zoom call, wearing a black blazer and sitting in front of a white background. Miranda’s video appears each time Miranda speaks throughout the webinar.
MIRANDA: Thanks Ciara. Council of the Ageing is a federation so you'll find a COTA in every state and Territory in Australia, and we're the Peak body for older people aged 50+ so there's 9 million people in that category nationally and 700,000 in South Australia. We provide a wide range of programs and services really focused on helping people age well and to try to advance the rights and interests of older people including through advocacy to government and decision makers like many of you here today on the webinar.
One of the key things that we do with our time at COTA is engage with older people. We want to really be close to the experience that they're having and understand what life is like what would make it better. What some of those barriers and drivers are of ageing well. Ageism is probably our biggest problem that we're facing in Australia. Ageism we see as the single greatest barriers to people ageing well. One of the messages that I want to share today is that really ageism isn't just something that involves older people, it's younger people as well. It's every age and ageism really hurts us all so it's great that we're here today have this conversation about intergenerational issues and I'm looking forward to sharing some of the - the things that we know about cost of living pressures for older people.
CIARA: Thank you so much Miranda and we look - really looking forward to this conversation. Zoe, I'm going to throw over to you can you talk a bit about ACYP and yourself and the work that you're doing to support young people across the country as well?
VISUAL: Zoe Robinson, the Advocate of Children and Young People, New South Wales is on a Zoom call, wearing a white top and sitting in front of a dark background. Zoe’s video appears each time Zoe speaks throughout the webinar.
ZOE: I am the Advocate of Children and Young People in New South Wales. Our role here at ACYP is to focus on the safety wellbeing and welfare of the 2.5 million children and young people here in the state of New South Wales. We do that by lifting their voice and their experiences up into government but we also say business and community, because as you would appreciate children and young people don't actually think in terms of government it's about where they are and areas that they are in, so we do a lot of work across business and community and government as well. That is all done by things like doing quantitative data polling with children and young people but really it's all rooted and grounded in consultations with children and young people about issues that are impacting on them and all of it starts with their voice and their ability to participate and it all comes back to their voice in terms of recommendations and how we work across government business and community.
CIARA: Thanks Zoe that's so important isn't it having the voice of the humans that we're advocating for and in organisations who we're serving. We always talk about the importance of having those voices of the humans that - you know don't make assumptions designing with people not for people it's those types of things I think that are critical and I know both Miranda and Zoe you have a such a strong focus of making sure that the voice of those people that you're representing is really heard and really respected through that process.
Miranda, I might throw back to you can you tell us some of the the challenges that you're seeing you know as I said everyone's experiencing this at the moment but we are seeing sort of nuanced challenges for different parts of our community. Can you tell us about what you're seeing for older people through this cost of living crisis?
MIRANDA: Yeah certainly I might start with, the COTA Federation conducts a State of the Older Nation survey every few years, our most recent survey really showed a pretty grim picture for older Australians. It showed that older people feel that life is getting worse for them not better. If you look and track that back over previous surveys it's clear that life hasn't returned to normal post COVID.
So what's driving that feeling of pessimism? Mainly cost of living and the main contributor in cost of living pressure seems to be energy bills. Approximately18% of old Australians have overdue energy bills and it's this stress that they're living with. Of course it's not just one thing it's - it's housing as well we all know that there's a housing crisis that's absolutely playing into this. More and more older people are renting, approximaetly 20% and of course they're most likely to be on fixed incomes pensions and therefore there's really not room to move when rental prices go up or when any cost of living pressures go up including supermarket shopping costs and health expenses.
So what we are seeing is that that older people are feeling quite pessimistic, insecure, losing confidence in their ability to manage because they absolutely can't manage they cannot any longer do all the things that they need to do even at the most essential level. We've heard stories about people eating bread for all their meals because that's the cheapest thing they can afford. Or in extreme weather "do I pay for the air conditioner or do I pay for fuel to go in my car so I can drive to a shopping centre to stay cool"? These are dilemmas that we hear about all the time and this is part of the picture.
We also know at the same time that more older people than ever are retiring with a mortgage and that number - that proportion just keeps growing and growing. It's tripled over the last 20 years and it's more than a third now of older people are retiring with a mortgage. It's probably one of the reasons why about a quarter of older people that are still working tell us they feel they may never be able to afford to retire so we're really seeing a complete need to recalibrate our thinking about what it means to get older, what it means to retire. Retirement may be a luxury for some, but not for all.
At the same time, we know that due to ageism primarily and age discrimination it takes on average three times as long for someone over 50 to find a job, to re-enter the workforce, than it does for a younger person under 30 or 35. So three times as long to find employment. So it's really as people get older there's this compounding of all of these - of discrimination whether it's age discrimination, for women it's sexism as well. On the pension I'll just highlight that this has added pressure to this situation because the pension age is of course increasing and so it's now 67. What that means is that you'll have people until they're 66 turning 67 still on job seeker still going through all of those efforts that we all know are very challenging to demonstrate that they're trying to find unemployment.
We regularly get phone calls at the moment from older people particularly women who are experiencing housing stress and may be aware that their rental house lease is coming up for the expiry. The landlord wants to re-occupy or sell it and they just have no idea what to do, how to find somewhere else. Digital literacy might play a part of it, just not having been in that market for a long time. We're just seeing in every direction there's pressure and a lack of services because there's such high demand.
We're pleased here in South Australia that we're working with the government that is listening to these stories and trying a number of different measures to respond. I met with the Treasurer this morning and said we need more help for older people that are struggling, reinforcing that message it's not about age - tt's about the experience that you have at any age or stage in your life.
CIARA: It's interesting isn't it there's that conversation around - there's those assumptions and biases around that you know older people obviously all own their own homes and they're settled and they're safer and you do hear that narrative quite a bit when you're hearing - when you're talking about older Australians where it's like oh well we know it's not as much of an issue because - and they're the sorts of things I think those myths that we need to start busting around these conversations and I think that energy one is such an important point. We are all really frequently hearing that people - and I think we see this quite a bit with older Australians - and making that decision to not use power - we know there's significant health implications of either housing being too hot or too cold and making those decisions because they don't see they have a choice. They have to save that money they have to look at what they're doing and I think from the energy businesses in this room really thinking about that in your communications when you're advising people "well use less, use less, use less..." - then to fund those bills people are taking that really literally and there are safety implications to that. We do not want people making those decisions that are actually having significant health impact
MIRANDA: There's a couple of things I'll just add to that if I can because as more people are renting these are people that are very price sensitive they don't have a usually a lot of income to play with. They are really desperately are looking to reduce their energy bills but they don't have control over their homes to be a how to put in solar panels water tanks this sort of thing so I think energy companies helping to identify innovative solutions that can allow either incentives for landlords to put those things in or for tenants to be able to have portable energy saving solutions would be great. There was a recent study actually a UK study that the University of Adelaide's Housing Research Institute took part in that really showed there is a physical biological impact of private rental every year in private rental takes two years of life expectancy. That is a biological marker and it's because partly the uncertainty of renting and not having security ? Are the conditions in my home conducive to healthy living and wellbeing? It's a really strong message to energy companies too.
CIARA: It's a scary statistic and as a long-term rental let me tell you there is that stress of "Oh my gosh am I secure? Am I safe? Do I have rights? Do I have control? Do I have any ownership over the decisions I'm making in relation to my housing?" Zoe, I would imagine again when we're talking through this there's a lot of similarity through the different scale from that intergenerational side how are you seeing the cost of living crisis really impacting the young people that you're working with?
ZOE: The first thing, we did a report around this, and I think the title of that report is important for what Miranda's just said and what we're all talking about and the title of that report is "It should be easier to just exist" and I think that when you talk about all of the things that might have been created from a government lens about assisting in this you just have to go through a process and assistance to get access to those things and I think this whole - if you want to get help and reach out for help it should be much easier than what it is.
But in terms of the work that was done is that if I say to you that in 2022 when we did our first Youth Week polling cost of living was an issue for those people who participated in that poll for about 8% of the people who participated in 2023 that became 35% and in 2024 in data yet to be released it is now sitting at 46%. That means that in terms of the top-of-mind issues which used to be mental health cost of living now sit squarely as the number one issue. What I do want to say is that if cost of living is sitting at No. 1 issue we know that will impact on mental health as well and in terms of anxiety and stress for young people. They also have as No. 3 unemployment and access to jobs so we know that these things are related. I think from our perspective one of the things that we have been thinking about and talking about a lot is that when we say we're doing this data - this is data for children - young people age 12 and above so we're not just talking about 18 to 24 year olds we're talking about 12 year olds and 15 year olds and 17 year olds who are all feeling this as well.
We have a young person who we've done some work with, who the reason we've done work with them is cause at 15 now we're telling us that they were contributing to the mortgage so you know there is this kind of flow on effect. It's also children young people seeing the stress it has and the impact it has on families but I know that will come into it here. But it's also this conversation that we are having in spaces that just says well "these are choices that young people have to make and so they just have to suck it up" and I think that is the kind of rhetoric that I think we need to work through because I think based on what Miranda has just said what I've said and what we know is happening in community at large. It should be easier to just exist. You shouldn't have to choose between food and heating I don't think that's the kind of country that we ever wanted to be a part of necessarily.
CIARA: Yeah cause is that a choice right? If you're choosing between food or heating or medical how is how is that a choice?
ZOE: I mean I'll get to that as well and unpack it but we've seen the choices that young people are making some of the work we did was with young parents and the kind of choices that they're having to make there and I just I think that for all of us on this call that's not the kind of things that we want to see people making choices around whatever age you are. Whether it's your health and your wellbeing or where you live and what you eat and I think that's and it's part of that.
CIARA: You know it's - it is so concerning and even the rental market right we're saying you know "good luck getting into the rental market" and we see issues with - with older Australians in trying to navigate that but then there's younger people who don't have a history right don't have a credit rating don't have a rental history don't have that - you know all of the documentation that you need to when you're trying to put your best foot forward in the rental application. We see a lot of those challenges coming through especially for when you're talking there's really young people looking at needing rental properties too right and you don't want people –
ZOE: I mean I know here in New South Wales obviously there's been steps taken around that. I'm a renter and I'm confused by what my rights are at the best of times and I understand that it's meant to be in my favour now and if I'm confused you know - we have that kind of concern around overpaying and feeling like you have to overpay to get the property that you want, overcrowding, all of the other things that we know can happen as a result of this, and if you are a young person who's in a position to rent and can rent with your friends in a place that you want to rent in that's amazing if you're a young person with any layer of complexity to that as well then we know that you're in a particularly vulnerable.
CIARA: What are some of those biases, how are you seeing those biases and really unhelpful narratives sort of playing out for the people that you're working with?
ZOE: I think that for us one of the things that we really want to have this conversation with - broadly with everyone is this choice and that all of the things that were perhaps what we regarded and I'm not presuming ages of everyone on this but I'm gonna own it. I'm a 40 year old person and when I was at university the ability to live at home or live out of home, go to university, have a job and go out to dinner with my friends, was all kind of the right of passage. Yes the avocado toast conversation was something that went on, but we're now seeing that conversation be like "ooh sorry that's what has to happen, you don't get to go out with your friends." And actually we know what belonging and being part of a community means to everyone, and so this kind of almost forced choice that says "well also you don't get to live near where you work or where you study that's just what happens, you won't be able to." I think that's kind of - I think in so many spaces and I'm curious you know - I was at an inquiry before this this kind of language of we're way more focused on the current impact versus what is the positive outcome we want to achieve and a positive outcome I would suggest for children and young people but also for people within here is choice. Choice about where you live, choice about what you can eat, choice about the healthcare you can access.
I think there's some really basic things that we would agree on, but also let's not have this rhetoric that pins one verse the other. We know the benefit of the ageing community and the young people together, we know the benefit of communities broadly working together. I think we need to start with what do we need and let's work on that space and not try and make it - not even force people say "well we can do this for this cohort but we can't do it for this cohort." What can we do for everyone so that we can ease this cost of living?
CIARA: It's really tough for people but there are differences in our community that make it you know even harder and Miranda on that you know we the same myths and narratives that are playing out we talked about that a little bit earlier about how that's playing out for older Australians and what are some of those additional impacts that you're seeing through that?
MIRANDA: I think Zoe's just nailed it which is talking about choices and preferences and I think that hopefully everyone involved with TCA would be familiar with that assumption that if someone's in need or they're disadvantaged or they're vulnerable then almost that it can be presented as "well look you you're not in a position to choose, you have to just take what is available. And really, as Zoe has said that's not the sort of society that any of us want.
We are all hopefully, if we're lucky, going to be older and so when we're ageist or when we're thinking in that way, we're really discriminating against our future selves and that's something to maybe think about as well. Whether it's finding social housing or whether it's older people having the full ability to be in control of their life decisions - they will have preferences about where they want to live the community that they want to stay in - I would encourage anyone to resist the temptation to think they should just like "beggars can't be choosers." it's not where we want to be and likewise other assumptions as I've mentioned ageism and to really to try and check ourselves on our on our ageist thinking or ageist language because it's really not helpful to anyone. It hurts us all at any age.
We see it in the media quite a lot, this attempt to really polarise Australians by generation and we see, particularly around housing prices and housing market, this idea that Baby Boomers are buying up the market and there there's almost this evil malicious intent of like shutting out young people, and it's the young people that are the battlers, and it's really it's a false. It's a false binary choice, there's no such thing. There are people struggling at all ages. So really when we're you know - anyone making decisions about policy or about service provision please resist the temptation to try and think that everyone is in a certain category or demographic just because of their age, it's just not the case, and it's becoming less so more and more.
CIARA: I think that those narratives that are super unhelpful it and to that point Miranda, it is about everybody experiencing vulnerability at times through all those stages of our lives. Kat, as always, I get very invested in the conversation and also then remember that that there are you know opportunity for people the audience to ask questions so do put your questions in the chat, Kat - I think you've had a couple come through already.
VISUAL: Kat Moore, General Manager Strategy and Programs at Thriving Communities Australia is on Zoom, wearing a light coloured jumper and sitting in front of a virtual blue and purple background with the Thriving Communities Australia logo in the top left hand corner. Kat’s video appears each time Kat speaks throughout the webinar.
KAT: Lots of chats coming and questions coming in to me behind the scenes. One for both Miranda and Zoe is considering all the data and insights that you are both privy to and that you see in your work are there any particularly surprising findings or things that were surprising to you or unexpected that you can share with the audience?
MIRANDA: I don't know surprising's the word I think um you know shocked and disappointed, and I guess every time you know I get feedback about calls that we receive in our office or I see another survey result or we ask for feedback for a submission, it just reinforces you know how tough it is for lot of people.
We recently - I'm thinking of a story, a woman who is working, she's holding down a job, but she is homeless and she's sleeping in her car. She has left her rental house because of domestic violence that she's been experiencing and she told us how she's trying to keep up this facade that everything is okay so she can go to work so that she can keep her job - there's no shortage of stories that we're hearing. I think what's surprising is I guess the ability for humans to continue to be resilient and to survive despite all of these extraordinary pressures.
ZOE: I think one of the thing that stood out to me when we did this piece of work that I - I and it couldn't be surprising cause actually I think then perhaps the thing that is naive at times for me that I have great hope in faith in what we try and deliver in our organisation for the country for the benefit of people nd I sat in a consultation where a young mum who had been homeless and fundamentally was only moved in housing because they almost gave birth in a car but that they hadn't taken their young baby to a specialist to get one of those those things that goes on their head because of various complications and I thought definitely not what I want for her and it's definitely not what I want for her kid and she was just so nervous of the cost and she'd be going to a public health system.
We have great public health the whole point of public health is to make that that there's a point about equity and so I think that for me was particularly confronting but then also the other thing was it's probably the rhetoric more than anything children and young people especially young people we're talking about, aren't asking for mansions and unicorns and rainbows right there is a real rights-based baseline in what they're asking for and so I think one of the things we did do and perhaps it was cheeky, is that when people were having commentary in the media around young people in cost of living is as soon as that we came up on our media alerts we sent them a copy of the cost of living piece of work because you know this - this thing that is resilience and all that - all true all true about a lot of people.
A lot of demographics, a lot of people are really, really resilient but I don't want people to have to choose about going to a specialist appointment for their newborn baby, I just think that's incredibly unfair, and I don't think that's who we are. But I also don't want this to be this thing well "you're just resilient so you got to get through it as well." There are things that we have that create equity and so we should be making sure that they are actually accessible and available to people.
KAT: Zoe, there is another question here for you and I think it flows on nicely from where you just left off considering the challenges you are seeing with young people and what they're facing at the moment with the cost of living crisis in Australia. How do you maintain - or do you maintain - a sense of optimism or hopefulness about the financial future for this demographic?
ZOE: I hope to meet that person who asked that question cause you'll soon learn that I'm probably to a fault in this role an eternal optimist because children and young people are insightful and thoughtful. They've already asked for financial literacy in their curriculum you know they are they are thinking about their futures in a way that I wish I was thinking about my future at the same time. I'm incredibly optimistic about what they are asking for us/ What I'm asking for in return is what do we need to do? So we've done things like life skills pieces of work that were written by young person, an amazing young person wrote the financial literacy one who is a leader in this space and we got it approved by the ATO and banking and all of that so there's a lot of good work that goes on and that's led by young people, it's their ideas. So I think I'm very optimistic about this because actually they are already starting and then they will be the ones that draft policy. They're the ones already marching and standing up for the things that they believe in, climate change is a good example of that. I'm very optimistic because I get to work with children and young people.
KAT: Thanks Zoe, a question for you both - Do you have any examples that you can share of businesses engaging with older and younger Australians in a unique or tailored way, that they have found helpful um and given that there may be specific communication preferences for each of these demographics, is there anything that you've seen work particularly well?
MIRANDA: I can start if you like so I guess you know it is about preferences and in terms of communication if we think many businesses now are you know very aware of the need to be segmented in their communication and um much more available through social media um you know online as well as different ways of in person delivery I would say keep thinking about expanding those options for offline delivery because um there are older people that will uh still prefer to be able to communicate with organisations and businesses and especially essential services offline, by phone, and that is absolutely valid, there's no reason that that shouldn't be, so it's really important to maintain those those options.
COTA SA actually has a research and an engagement consultancy team here called the Plug-in and the Plug-in does work, it's a social Enterprise model, it operates on fee for service, the Plug-in has been going for a number of years now and works with um government works with big organisations private sector, small you name it whatever to engage and provide advice on what would it take to be better at working with older people - what would older customers think about this product? or this service? or how can we co-design with older people? something that is going to be absolutely fit for purpose so if that sounds like something of interest to anyone on online today you can find information about the plugin on COTA's website see some of the case studies and organisations that we've worked for including energy and water companies and banks and government so that would be one piece of advice.
ZOE: I think everyone knows social media is a great way to connect with young people even though it scares me and I think one of the things that they still talk about is the fact that they will go to their friends and their family so - and we also saw the flip side in terms of when we've done work around refugees and migrants and how young people are working with their older members of their family around stuff. So I think the reality is a lot of information - there's a lot of great information out there there's a lot of great tools out there, children young people often talk about a source of truth and where that comes from and so we have to understand there are different places that they trust and so working with the organisation that do really good work. I'm not here to plug anyone but The Daily Oz is a great platform that engages with young people but gives them informative information about news but they are also doing things around financial literacy and working with that so I think we've just got to accept that if we want to engage in a positive way we have to go to the mediums that make sense to them but they also will - still say in our recent data we could try to find it - that they go to their family and their friends for information so that that's why in so many places everyone talks about a peer-to-peer workforce and a peer-to-peer support because that is where sometimes we go. You ask the first question of do you know something have you had success in this space and then we can learn from each other in that stuff as well so there's a lot of good places I think that are doing it really well and banks are pretty good at it too not that I'm here to plug banks.
KAT: Thank you - there's a question from Tatiana in the audience would you like to or - we would like to invite you to jump off mute and ask Zoe and Miranda if not I can ask on your behalf you're on mute oh give me the thumbs up –
VISUAL: Tatiana turns their camera on to ask their question. They are on Zoom, wearing an orange shirt and sitting in an office-like setting.
TATIANA: Hi Katrina thank you for that um yeah things that we - Miranda just really fantastic discussions and very insightful we've got three of our team here today from Wannon Water, we are from a water service in regional Victoria we do a lot of work in the space around how can we create supports for our customers that experience vulnerability in the region an area that I'm particularly interested in because it relates to the work that I do is we have a really robust system in seeking feedback from our customers on a regular basis that helps us improve our services their experience and the supports that we can provide them we also know that while when seeking feedback from customers experience vulnerability can be quite sensitive in terms a is not a priority for them it can add even further more pressure and also their barriers to participating.
So I was really interested to hear from um both Zoe and Miranda what are some of your suggestions and advices I think the Plug-in, I've already pulled up here on my browser I'll just be looking into that but um what other things have you seen that have worked in in getting the kind of first um direct voice from customers that are in those circumstances to really feed into our businesses and the way we can actually improve what we do and provide better supports for them?
ZOE: I was going to say, think of how you feel when you're asked what is the benefit that they get from giving you that feedback? What is the outcome they are going to achieve and how they going to see it change for the benefit of them? Every young person who participates in work with us will receive a copy of the report that we do and the recommendations and we use quotes throughout our report and part of that is to say we want you to see yourselves reflected in our work but also we've made a commitment to you that we're going to do something so we're going to come back to you. So I would suggest young people themselves save you asking us for feedback we will give you I mean anyone who has a young person in the house knows that you'll get feedback. But you know I gave feedback the other day for an online company and I got a 15 dollar voucher that was excellent, and when we're talking about cost of living and all that stuff is someone's giving you feedback what is going to change for them how are they going to be positively impacted from that so perhaps design the system so they can receive a benefit from it.
TATIANA: Great thanks oh that's great
MIRANDA: What I was going to suggest is I guess you're in a position a great position where you would have access to quite a lot of data and and you're able to I would imagine flag something without the customer actually even being able to tell you and so sometimes it will be about I've saved someone defaulting on bills but as you probably know it's not always and there's many many people in fact I would say the majority don't want to be in debt they want to be paying and they want to keep up with their payments and they might be going into - they might be paying their their water bill for example and not eating just so that they don't have any risk of you know not being in their home or a sort of you know - cutting off energy supply.
So in some cases it may be I guess profiling the risk in the population and then making some assumptions It might be checking in with another kind of question that helps you to match uh what you know to be a profile of someone with the person that you're talking to. I know there are banks that are doing that now, they're proactively saying you know if you go into an app would you like to know about the benefits that you could access or would you like help to find this or that? So I think it's um you know giving people the option to opt into that but you as well as a business um using all of the data and the population information that you have to be able to make those links.
One thing that we know about older people is that they desperately, desperately want to be independent and they want to be seen as independent and any older person any person really hates the thought that they are the opposite of that dependant on other people, needy not able to be self-sufficient so when we're engaging with older people and potentially people experiencing vulnerability we need to provide space for that dignity and that ability for them to feel like this is not taking away their independence, this is not disrespecting or making them feel less than. It is providing enough room for them to step into that space and identify yep that would be good for me to get that support, that would be good for me to access that different payment plan, um providing that dignity.
ZOE: And I think that's so important to note that if people have come to you for help that is a massive step yeah and so let's make that moment as good as we can both in terms of language and experience. And so you know I think we've all had it if they've come to you in a moment of help perhaps that's not the moment to go back to them and say can you please give us some feedback and some review maybe it is how are you creating such a good experience that even if in 3 months they do receive a text or an email they feel like they had such a great experience they want to give good feedback and participate in that.
CIARA: Thank you and thanks Tatiana for that question I think I mean it's such a big conversation that point around you know the different sort of ways to communicate with people the fact that people are not necessarily wanting to seek support and that's across generations that that embarrassment that pride not knowing how to access support not knowing where - you know, we talked Zoe and Miranda in previous conversations about if you haven't been in a rental property before you don't necessarily know how some of these systems work and what bills you're coming up for and even just conversations around 500 a week isn't really 500 a week when you calculate it out over a month like all of these things that I think catch people out and even different conversations around you know what we're seeing from a pressure perspective from older Australians the bank of mum and dad - I'm a mum with many many children who come in and out of my house and that impacts my household bills and that it's that same - that there's younger people asked to - contributing to household bills and then we have older Australians who are absorbing people back into their home because they - young people just cannot survive outside they're in their rentals that they're moving through that and they're having to come back home because they just are no options and these are the customers and clients and humans that everyone in this room is serving and we talk about thriving communities, which we are, but we are surviving communities at the moment, and we need to transition, we need to be doing what we can to really understand the complexities individuals are facing. Miranda and Zoe, I'm just going to throw you for one quick last question cause we are out of time. What is the one thing you want people in this room who are working with your community to take away from this conversation?
ZOE: No unpaid interns you know I mean it sounds ridiculous but you know that - let'sshare what our experience was growing up with these generations, let's make sure that they have all of the spaces they need to thrive in and let's do what we can to ensure that we can financially support them, emotionally support them, and create spaces for them work. Like yeah we would love your assistance whatever it needs to be but let let's stop getting their work and their ideas for free, and then also let's just share what it was a bit like to be what - what it was for us and let's have some patience and hope that they can have a very similar experience to us
MIRANDA: I would say what I've already said which is you know don't be ageist you know don't stereotype based on age, resist the temptation to you know segment your customers on age alone. Certainly, there are things to be learnt from different ages and generations but it's not the whole picture and when we're talking about cost of living and we're talking about vulnerability that is at any age so - so please resist that temptation and resist the ageist stereotypes.
CIARA: Thank you both so much and we know this conversation could go on for the next four days without breath, we will continue to talk to Miranda and Zoe and capture thoughts and information all the questions we did not get to today and we'll feed back that through lots of different mechanisms including some blogs and some different communication tools.
But the takeaway here is really keep it front of mind, the people that you are - that are coming to you have programs that are bespoke for them have communication styles that's accessible to everybody and take bias and judgement out of our conversations and out of our thinking.
Thank you so much everyone I know this is a passionate issue for everyone because we had so many people turn up to this conversation today, thank you so much Zoe and Miranda for your participation today and forgiving us those great insights.