FUNDING for two new positions overseen by the South West Rural Financial Counselling Service at Charleville will help alleviate a four-week waiting list, according to spokeswoman Karen Tully.
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The State Government is working with the RFCS South West board to identify two officers, one in Roma and one in Charleville, to help producers and their families.
The funding was described by Agriculture Minister John McVeigh as an indication of the state's ongoing drought support.
Funding for counsellors in 13 locations around Queensland was cut from the 2012-13 budget, before five recruits were put on last July following the announcement of drought assistance measures in the federal Farm Finance Package.
According to Ms Tully, the service, currently consisting of 11 officers, has seen a 32 percent increase in new clients during the drought.
"These are people who were able to see themselves through the millennium drought," she said.
"People haven't recovered from that drought - they were just building their herd numbers up and their cash flow."
Land values were high in the last drought as well, and bank lending less frugal.
"The whole rural debt thing has been different this time," Ms Tully said.
"If you can't make interest and principal repayments, banks are asking hard questions.
"On top of that, people only have to look out their back window to feel gloomy."
She believes there is an overriding need for social counselling alongside the financial counselling.
"There's lots of high emotion discussing finances and all our people can do at the moment is ask 'can we refer you to someone?'" she said.
"Often they're in another building or you have to book an appointment for another day, and people are reluctant.
"We find that to work on people's finances you've got to resolve their emotional issues first."
Dave Arnold oversees a similar financial counselling service for the central-south region, and while his service also consists of 11 personnel, he is not finding a large increase in demand for services.
"We don't find there's a sudden increase when there's a drought or a flood," he said.
"These things affect balance sheets months down the track.
"At the moment people are just bunkered down, but we are definitely fielding more enquiries, both for social services and for QRAA assistance."
Neither Mr Arnold nor Ms Tully spoke glowingly of the Federal Government's concessional loan plan - Mr Arnold called it a debt trap and Ms Tully said more debt wasn't the answer.
"It's pretty dire out there," she said.
"People are existing on hope."