Place Based Income Management (PBIM) was a trial within the Building Australia’s Future Workforce (BAFW) package. This package was a group of initiatives aiming to assist vulnerable families and children, and to enhance opportunities for people to enter or return to the workforce. 

The purpose of PBIM is to provide people with the financial stability needed to increase their social and economic participation and to encourage recipients of welfare payments to use them in the best interests of their children and families. PBIM participants were required to direct a proportion of their welfare payments towards ‘priority items’ including food, housing, clothing and utilities. 

The process and impact evaluation of PIBM involved a three-year longitudinal study to capture the immediate and sustained impacts of income management on participating families. The baseline report is the first of four reports from the PBIM evaluation. It reports on the results of:

• the baseline wave of the longitudinal customer survey
• in-depth face to face interviews with customers and third parties
• focus groups and interviews with departmental agency staff, child protection staff, and housing authority staff
• online surveys conducted with service providers. 

The data from the baseline survey describe the characteristics of the samples recruited in both the trial and comparison sites for the longitudinal survey and highlight any pre-existing differences between the trial and comparator group.