INTERNAL — Room F Marketing Kit · Governed by CMO Position Brief · Not for public distribution
Room F · Health Sector · Referral Partnerships · Marketing Kit v1.0

Unmanaged debt is a clinical problem. We are the referral pathway.

The operational package for cultivating health-sector referral partners — palliative-care units, hospices, PHNs, hospital social work departments, and condition-specific national charities. Data-heaviest payload — clinicians are convinced by cycle time, outcome evidence, and licensing, not by story. Story is used sparingly, and only when it opens the door to the data.

Y1 target: $0 (MOU cultivation, referral volume seeding)
Y3 target: $80,000 embedded-advocate fees
Y5 target: $1M portfolio
Payload: Story 20 · Trust 35 · Data 45
Decision cycle: 3 to 18 months (institutional MOU)

01Clinical rationale — case-for-referral

The single sentence that opens every referrer conversation.

"Unmanaged consumer debt in the last months of life is a clinical problem. It affects pain thresholds, family communication, treatment adherence, and the quality of the final weeks. Life Without Debt is the licensed referral pathway that resolves it — without adding to the household's burden, and without absorbing clinical time on financial casework."
Room F anchor · room-f.html

Why this sentence works with clinical audiences

Three reasons. First, it names the problem as clinical, not social — which is how palliative-care clinicians already privately frame financial distress. Second, it draws a hard boundary: LWD does the financial work, the clinician does not. Third, it uses the word "licensed" — because a clinician's biggest fear when referring a household to a financial service is that the service is unlicensed, unregulated, or predatory. That fear is retired in the first breath.

The three clinical harms of unmanaged debt at end of life

These are the harms we cite when a clinician asks why this is a clinical problem, not a social work problem. Each is grounded in published evidence.

Clinical harm Mechanism Published evidence base
Elevated pain scores and reduced treatment adherence Financial distress raises baseline cortisol, sleep disruption, and non-adherence to prescribed opioid schedules. Household stress spillovers reach the patient within days. Palliative-care service reports (PCA), Australian financial-hardship health-outcome studies. LWD cites, does not reinterpret.
Family communication breakdown in the final weeks Undisclosed debt discovered post-mortem is the single most cited cause of long-term family estrangement in bereavement services casebooks. Pre-mortem resolution prevents this. Bereavement services casebooks; Consumer Action Law Centre files on inherited debt disputes.
Delayed discharge and readmission risk Households cannot accept discharge to home when home finances are collapsing. Palliative-care beds block; readmission rates rise. Debt resolution unlocks safe discharge. Hospital social work case audit patterns; PHN system-integration reports.

The clinical time argument (why referral saves clinical minutes)

The second-strongest argument for a clinical referrer is that LWD gives them clinical time back. Every case a social worker or palliative-care nurse spends triaging debt is a case they cannot spend on symptom management, family conferences, or discharge planning. LWD absorbs the financial casework end-to-end — from first phone call to final creditor letter — and returns only a written closure summary.

Sample line for a referrer conversation: "The referral form takes ninety seconds to complete. Everything after that is on us. You get a closure letter for the file at day twenty-three. Between those two points, we don't call you unless the household withdraws consent or something clinical changes."

02The four-touchpoint referral pathway

The pathway is the product. Every referrer conversation ends at the pathway diagram. Memorise it — do not paraphrase it.

01
Referral
Day 0 · Clinician-side

Referring clinician or hospital social worker completes a single-page referral form. Attaches clinical certification of terminal-illness status. Household consent captured on the form.

Clinical time cost: ≈ 90 seconds.

02
Intake and acknowledgement
Within 24 hours · LWD-side

LWD advocate contacts the household within 24 hours of the referral landing. Full financial picture captured under the household's informed consent. Written acknowledgement returned to the referrer confirming intake — no clinical detail requested, no clinical time absorbed.

Referrer commitment: One inbox notification. No response required unless clinical status changes.

03
Advocacy and mid-case update
Day 1 to Day 20 · LWD-side

Creditor negotiation. Life-insurance activation. Hardship waivers. Aggregate mid-case update to the referrer at approximately day 12 — one paragraph, no confidential detail unless the household consents.

Referrer commitment: One inbox notification. No response required.

04
Closure and written outcome
≈ Day 23 · Returned to clinician

Written outcome summary to the referrer: total debt extinguished, inter-generational liability prevented, insurance activations completed. Case closed with signed household confirmation. Referrer credited in the annual audited impact report (subject to their consent).

Referrer commitment: File the closure letter in the household record. Done.

The three commitments the pathway makes to the clinical team

Cycle-time evidence. Y1 audited case data shows 23-day average from referral to first substantive resolution across 31 cases. Median 21 days. Longest case 41 days (complex estate). Shortest 9 days (single-creditor personal loan). Cite the average; do not cite outliers unless directly asked.

03Eligibility and scope discipline

Clinical trust is built on legible scope. Referrers stop referring to services whose acceptance criteria are unpredictable. Ours are deliberately narrow and written down.

LWD accepts referrals when:

  • A household member has a specialist-certified terminal illness — typical life expectancy 24 months or less
  • Consumer debt is present or likely (credit cards, personal loans, buy-now-pay-later, utility arrears, unpaid rent, medical debt)
  • The household resides in Australia (any state or territory)
  • The household has provided informed consent to the referral
  • The referring party is a health-sector organisation, financial counsellor, community legal centre, or Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation

LWD does not accept referrals when:

  • Terminal-illness status is not clinically confirmed
  • The debt is unrelated to a household member facing terminal illness
  • The household has not consented to referral
  • The presenting issue is business debt, tax debt not related to hardship, or fraud recovery
  • The referral would compromise an existing legal proceeding without proper consent to intervene

Why the scope stays narrow

Every service that broadens its scope to please a referrer loses the referrer's trust within twelve months. Clinicians refer to services whose behaviour they can predict. Our narrow scope is a marketing asset, not a limitation — it is the reason a palliative-care nurse will reach for the LWD referral form in the diagnostic conversation instead of a general financial-counselling number.

Do not agree to scope expansion in a partner meeting. If a referrer asks "could you also take referrals for chronic-illness households where the household is not terminal?", the answer is not yet — we are testing the model on the terminal cohort first, and expansion decisions sit with the Board. Escalate to Carla and Laurence for any scope-expansion conversation. Never commit in the room.

Referring partner types accepted

04Referrer talking points (for LWD-side conversations)

Six conversation cards. Written for the LWD Board member, CMO, or senior advocate meeting a clinician, hospital director, hospice CEO, or PHN executive. Every card is short enough to memorise before the meeting.

Q: What exactly does LWD do?

"We resolve consumer debt for households where a family member has a certified terminal illness. We take the referral, do all the financial casework — creditor negotiation, life-insurance activation, hardship waivers — and close the loop back to your team with a written outcome. Free to the household. Free to your organisation. Twenty-three days average cycle. We hold Australian Credit Licence 387398 through our related for-profit entity, and we operate under professional indemnity."

Q: How does this differ from a financial counsellor?

"Two differences that matter to a clinical team. First, we are cohort-specific — we only take terminal-illness households, which means our advocates know the diagnostic-window pressures your teams already know. Second, we close the loop in writing to the referrer. A general financial counsellor cannot do that at scale because the volume is too high. Our narrow cohort makes the closure discipline possible."

Q: What does an "average case" look like?

"Y1 data across thirty-one cases: $58,700 average total debt at intake; $1,840 average LWD cost per case; twenty-three days average to first substantive resolution; fifty-two percent average drop in psychological distress on the K10 scale from intake to closure. Eighty-seven cents of every dollar donated to LWD goes to direct service. Those numbers are audited annually and published."

Q: Who pays for it?

"Y1 through Y2, LWD is funded entirely by philanthropy — foundations, corporate partners, and regular giving from the public. From Y3, an optional embedded-advocate model becomes available for organisations that want a named LWD advocate stationed physically or virtually with their team. That's the only fee-for-service element. The core referral pathway remains free forever."

Q: What happens if the household has complex or business debt?

"We refer out. Our scope is consumer debt in the terminal cohort. If we open a case and discover material business debt or an active legal proceeding, we co-refer to the relevant specialist — community legal centre, Small Business Debt Helpline, or insolvency practitioner — and stay involved on the consumer portion only. The closure letter to your team names any co-referrals we made."

Q: What do you need from us to start?

"A signed MOU covering the referral flow, consent capture, data-handling under APP compliance, and the closure-letter format. Two to four weeks to sign. Ninety-day pilot on a low-volume ward or clinic, then expand across your network. We do the pilot design; you approve it. That's the total institutional cost of the partnership."

Phrase discipline for clinical audiences

Say:

  • "Debt-hardship negotiation"
  • "Household" or "family"
  • "Referred household"
  • "Written outcome to the referrer"
  • "Terminal-illness cohort"
  • "Clinical time cost"
  • "Under Australian Credit Licence 387398"
  • "Twenty-three-day average cycle"

Do not say:

  • "Debt relief" (ASIC RG 96 outcome-language breach)
  • "Patient" — the household is the referred party, not the patient (the patient remains the clinician's)
  • "Client" — beneficiaries, not clients
  • "Case management" — implies clinical case management, which we do not do
  • "Financial counselling" — we are advocacy under an ACL, not counselling
  • "Rescue" or "save" — reserved for clinical care, not financial work
  • "We work with the doctor" — we do not enter the clinical relationship

05FAQ and objection handling — 10 clinical questions

The ten objections a clinical partner is most likely to raise. Every answer is designed to be delivered in under sixty seconds in a live meeting.

1. How do you protect patient privacy when a household is referred to you?
The referral form captures the minimum data needed to open a case — the household's name, contact details, and a clinical certification that terminal-illness criteria are met. No clinical detail beyond that certification travels with the referral. All data handling operates under the Australian Privacy Principles; we hold a documented APP-compliance framework and a signed data-processing schedule as part of every MOU. Households sign informed consent before any creditor contact.
2. Is LWD a debt-management company?
No. Debt-management companies charge fees to households, are unlicensed under ASIC RG 96, and typically make the household's position worse. LWD charges nothing to the household, operates under Australian Credit Licence 387398 (held by Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd, our related for-profit entity), and is a registered charity with DGR status. The legal structure is deliberately the opposite of a debt-management company.
3. What if the household later regrets the referral?
The household can withdraw consent at any point in the case, and LWD stops immediately. Withdrawal is common in the first forty-eight hours, when households sometimes realise a family member is a co-signatory who was not informed. We do not chase withdrawn cases. We do not report withdrawals to referrers unless the household specifically consents to that disclosure.
4. Do you provide any medical or clinical advice?
No, and this is written into every MOU. LWD advocates are qualified financial counsellors or accredited paralegals. They are not clinicians. If a household raises a clinical concern during a case call, the advocate directs them back to the referring clinician and, if the concern appears acute, escalates the call through the safe-call protocol. Clinical decisions belong to the clinical team.
5. What if we refer a household and LWD refuses the case?
The referrer receives a written declination letter within seventy-two hours, with the specific eligibility criterion that was not met and, wherever possible, a co-referral to a more appropriate service (National Debt Helpline, Consumer Action Law Centre, local community legal centre). A declination should be rare — the eligibility criteria in section 03 of this kit are designed to be checkable at the point of referral so referrers do not send cases we cannot accept.
6. How do we know your outcomes are real?
Three layers of external validation. First, ACNC annual reporting — LWD files audited financial statements and an activity report every year. Second, an independent evaluation partnership under negotiation with an Australian university social-work faculty (announcement pending). Third, the annual impact report is externally audited and includes de-identified case-level outcome data. If the numbers cannot be independently verified, they do not go in the report.
7. What happens if the household has dependents who inherit debt?
Preventing inter-generational debt inheritance is one of the core outcomes we measure. On every case, we identify whether the household has co-signatories or dependents who could be exposed post-mortem, and we resolve the debt before the death event wherever possible. Y1 data shows $340,000 in secondary transferable debt prevented across 31 cases — that is an average of about $11,000 per household that would otherwise have landed on family members after the death event.
8. Can we brand the referral partnership for our patients?
Yes, within limits. Under the MOU, your organisation can co-brand the referral form, patient-facing information leaflets, and the closure letter. The advocacy itself is delivered by LWD under its own registered name and licence — that is a regulatory boundary we cannot cross. Co-branding decisions are made once, at MOU signing, and reviewed annually.
9. What if our organisation has its own hardship program?
Most large hospitals and hospice networks already do. LWD does not duplicate what a hospital hardship team already does — we take the debt referrals your team cannot resolve internally, typically because the debt is external to your organisation (banks, buy-now-pay-later providers, utility providers, personal loans). We are the outbound referral pathway, not a replacement for your internal social work. The MOU carves out the exact handover point.
10. What is your safeguarding position if a household is in acute distress?
Every advocate is trained in the safe-call protocol — a documented escalation pathway that identifies acute distress markers on intake and connects the household to Lifeline (13 11 14) or the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467), and, where a clinical referrer is on file, alerts that referrer to the escalation. The safeguarding protocol is annexed to every MOU and reviewed by the referring organisation's clinical governance lead before signing.

06MOU template outline

The referral MOU is the operational contract. Every clause below is standard across all referral partners; departures are exceptional and require Board approval.

Clause Purpose Standard position
01. Parties and purpose Names the two organisations and defines the referral pathway as the sole scope of the MOU. Referring organisation + Life Without Debt Ltd. Single-purpose MOU — no bundled clauses.
02. Eligibility criteria Locks the acceptance criteria from section 03 of this kit into the contract. Verbatim reproduction of the "LWD accepts" and "LWD does not accept" lists.
03. Referral form and consent Defines the single-page form, mandatory fields, and household consent capture. Signed household consent required at point of referral. No exceptions — including for emergency admissions.
04. The four-touchpoint pathway Contractually binds LWD to the pathway in section 02 of this kit. 24-hour acknowledgement, mid-case update (aggregate), closure letter. All in writing.
05. Data handling and Australian Privacy Principles Data-processing schedule; retention periods; incident-notification protocol. APP-compliant. Data retained for seven years post-closure under Australian Credit Licence record-keeping obligations, then destroyed.
06. Safeguarding and escalation Safe-call protocol, acute-distress escalation, clinician re-notification. Annexed protocol reviewed by referring organisation's clinical governance lead pre-signing.
07. Co-branding Governs use of both parties' names and logos on referral materials and closure letters. Co-branding permitted on forms, leaflets, closure letters. Advocacy delivered under LWD name and licence only.
08. Impact reporting and referrer credit Aggregate impact data returned to the referrer annually; naming credit in the audited impact report. Annual anonymised data pack to referrer. Referrer named in the impact report subject to their consent.
09. Term and review Initial term, review cadence, termination. Initial two-year term. Six-month review at day 180 of Y1. Terminable on 60 days' written notice by either party.
10. Fees and financial obligations Explicit "no fee to household, no fee to referring organisation" statement, with the Y3 embedded-advocate option carved out separately. Free referral pathway for the initial term. Embedded-advocate fee-for-service optional from Y3 under a separate schedule.
Full MOU draft. The full MOU template (pre-approved by LWD's legal counsel and cross-checked against APP compliance) sits with Carla. Version 1.0 is ready to release to a founding partner once the CMO has run the discovery meeting and confirmed the referrer is a fit. Do not circulate the MOU speculatively — it is issued only after the discovery meeting.

07Cultivation notes — PHA, MND Australia, condition charities, PHNs

Two founding partners are already in cultivation. Four other partner classes are the priority prospect pool. Notes below are for internal reference only — none of this is to be forwarded to prospects.

Palliative Care Australia (PCA) — founding partner in cultivation

Why: PCA is the peak national body for palliative care. A PCA-endorsed referral pathway becomes a de facto national standard across state palliative-care networks and the eight PHN palliative-care commissioning teams.

Cultivation status: Introductory conversations underway. Position Brief plus the four-touchpoint pathway diagram have been shared. MOU not yet issued.

Cultivation approach: Data-first. PCA leadership responds to cycle-time evidence and safeguarding rigour, not to case stories. Lead with the audited Y1 numbers, the APP-compliance framework, and the safe-call protocol. Story is reserved for the leaflet layer, not the executive layer.

What we need from PCA: Endorsement in principle, followed by a co-designed pilot with one to three state member organisations, followed by a national referral-pathway announcement in the PCA member communications channel.

MND Australia — founding partner in cultivation

Why: MND cases have exceptionally high consumer-debt loads at diagnosis — the disease trajectory forces rapid household-income collapse, and the average time from diagnosis to inability to work is under twelve months. The David composite in the Position Brief is drawn from this cohort ($8,400 LWD spend, 34 days to closure). MND Australia is a small, tightly-networked national charity that can move quickly.

Cultivation status: Introductory conversations underway. High receptivity in the leadership team.

Cultivation approach: Story + data. The MND cohort responds to both — leadership wants to see that we understand the specific disease trajectory (story) and that our numbers hold up in audit (data). Trust layer: our licensing and the safe-call protocol.

What we need from MND Australia: Referral pathway MOU covering their case-managers, plus co-marketing to their state member networks. Aim: 25 referrals in Y1 from MND Australia specifically.

Condition-specific national charities — priority prospect class

Cancer Council, Dementia Australia, Prostate Cancer Foundation, MSK Australia. These bodies operate national helplines and state member networks that are the natural upstream of terminal-illness referrals. Each has a different clinical culture — Cancer Council is highly cautious and evidence-led; Dementia Australia is deeply relational; MSK Australia is small and pragmatic. The cultivation cadence and materials should be tailored per prospect, but all four use the same MOU template.

Primary Health Networks (PHNs) — priority prospect class

Thirty-one PHNs across Australia, each commissioning primary care and community services in their catchment. PHNs are the strategic access point for scaling referral volume into general practice and community palliative-care services. The cultivation approach is population-health framing: "unmanaged terminal-illness household debt is a measurable driver of preventable hospital re-admission — we resolve it under licence, and we close the loop back to the clinician." Lead with PHN commissioning language.

Hospital palliative-care units — priority prospect class

Large public and private hospital palliative-care units with dedicated social work capacity. High referral volume potential but slower institutional decision-making — expect nine to eighteen months from first contact to signed MOU. Cultivation should be led by Carla (Board-facing) or Laurence (clinical-governance-facing), not by the CMO in isolation.

Hospice networks — priority prospect class

Community and inpatient hospice networks (state-level and national). Lower institutional velocity than hospitals but higher referral density per bed, and closer to the diagnostic window where LWD is most useful. Cultivation should emphasise the closure-letter discipline — hospice teams particularly value the written closure back to the file.

Cultivation cadence. Founding-partner cultivations run at approximately one meeting every 4 to 6 weeks, with a data pack sent between meetings. Priority prospects run at approximately one meeting every 6 to 8 weeks. Never cold-email a clinical leader; always warm-introduce through a known channel or through PCA/MND Australia once those endorsements are in place.

08Referrer nurture sequence — five touches, six weeks

The referrer nurture is deliberately slower than corporate or philanthropic nurtures. Clinical leaders are inbox-fatigued, so we send fewer emails and load each one with substance. Cadence: Day 0 · Day 10 · Day 24 · Day 38 · Week 6+.

Channel discipline. Referrer nurture is email-first and LinkedIn-second. Do not phone unless the partner has explicitly asked for a call. Do not use SMS. Do not use social direct-messages. Clinical leaders' inboxes and calendars are the two channels that can be relied on to reach them — everything else is noise, and noise costs trust in a clinical context.

09Stewardship playbook — closing the loop back to the clinician

Stewardship of a referral partner is the closure discipline, applied at the institutional level rather than the case level. Every closure letter is a stewardship touch; every quarterly report is a stewardship touch; every named credit in the impact report is a stewardship touch. Retain referral partners by closing loops.

Touchpoint Trigger Owner Format
Closure letter Every case closure (≈ day 23 of the individual case) Case advocate Written summary, one page, filed in the household's clinical record.
Quarterly aggregate report End of each quarter after first referral received CMO Anonymised data pack: case volume, cycle time, cohort breakdown, safeguarding escalations, safeguarding outcomes.
Semi-annual partner review Six months and eighteen months post-MOU signing Carla + CMO In-person or video meeting with the partner's referral lead and clinical governance lead. Two-way — what is working, what needs adjustment.
Annual impact report credit Publication of the annual audited impact report Board via CMO Named credit for the referring organisation (subject to their consent). Advance copy sent to the referrer's leadership team 14 days before public release.
Clinical governance review invitation Annual, prior to MOU renewal CMO Written invitation to the partner's clinical governance lead to review LWD's safeguarding data, escalations, and process changes over the past year.
MOU renewal 60 days before end of initial two-year term Carla Formal renewal letter with updated MOU (any changes redlined), plus a summary of the partnership's outcomes over the two-year term.

Retention targets

MOU renewal at end of Y2 is the primary retention KPI for Room F. Y1 target: 100% renewal on the two founding partners (PCA and MND Australia) plus at least 60% renewal across the priority prospect class where MOUs were signed. Loss of a founding partner is a Board-level event and triggers a same-week post-mortem.

The stewardship win. A referring partner who renews and expands (either adds new sites to the MOU or adds the embedded-advocate model from Y3) is worth ten times a partner acquired cold. Renewals are the growth engine of Room F, not new logos. Budget stewardship time and attention accordingly.

10Threading

Where this kit connects to the rest of the LWD ecosystem. Use these links in-meeting when a referrer asks "can I see how you talk to households directly?" or "can I read your governance documents?".

Room F · live page (share with a referrer) Seven-room hub · the full room map Referral pathway detail (referrer-facing) How LWD helps · household-facing CMO Position Brief (governance document) Room A kit · Foundations Room B kit · Corporate Partners Room C kit · Regular Giving

In-meeting talking prompts for the threading links

Room F Marketing Kit v1.0 · Authored under CMO delegated authority · Post-establishment authoring frame (Ask #7) · Governed by CMO Position Brief · Payload weighting Story 20 · Trust 35 · Data 45 · All numbers cited to Y1 audited case data (n=31) or clearly labelled composites · Not for external circulation