For Rhys Pagalday's mother Caroline, the final straw came on Monday, when Centrelink cut off her son's $210-a-week welfare payments.

For three years, Rhys has been fighting a rare form of bone and tissue cancer - Ewing's sarcoma - and he has been slowly losing. Diagnosed at 18, in his final year of school, he is now gaunt and bald.

He has been dosed with toxic chemicals to attack the tumours, bombarded with radiation, gone under the surgeon's scalpel, and recently tried a last-hope drug treatment that proved unsuccessful.

He has been told he has months to live.

While Rhys has been battling the cancer, his mum has been battling Centrelink and MAX Employment - a US-owned employment services provider that is part of a national organisation receiving billions of dollars from state and federal governments.

Rhys has been receiving government benefits, and at some point Centrelink signed him up to a program designed to find jobs for people with disabilities.

Under that program, MAX had been trying to get him off benefits and into work.

"Rhys was referred to us 10 months ago as a client for the disability employment program, not a disability payment as such," MAX managing director Deborah Homewood said.

"We are a disability employment provider; that is our only reason for being.

"Centrelink refers clients to us."

'Payments were stopped multiple times'

According to Caroline, her first contact with MAX Employment was about two years ago. MAX said Rhys' case was only referred 10 months ago. What is clear is that a cancer patient was put on a program to designed to find him employment, and he remained there for at least 10 months, despite showing no sign he was going to recover; his condition has become terminal.

Caroline said that Rhys' payments were stopped several times because he hadn't turned up for interviews about job-hunting. This is backed up by Rhys' sister, Sunny.

"It's happened multiple times in the past," Sunny said.

"We really depend on Rhys's disability payment to pay for Rhys's basic medical needs.

"Every time this goes wrong and they cut off our payments we have to go into the Centrelink office, and speak to people and spend hours on the phone just to try and get them turned back on."

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Whatsapp Rhys and his sister, Sunny.

Despite these hours spent at Centrelink, the situation never set off alarm bells within the welfare bureaucracy, or at MAX Employment.



At the beginning of this week, Rhys's payment was stopped once more, Caroline told Hack.

"That was the final straw for me," she said.

"On Monday morning, I received a letter saying they had cut his payments because last week we didn't make an appointment.

"We didn't make it because he was in a pain crisis in [hospital] having radiation to relieve the horrific pain."

"She cut our payments without even calling me to say what's going on."

Managing Director Deborah Homewood said the case worker who cut the payments, a woman named Anna, left the company on Tuesday - the same day Sunny posted a letter of complaint about MAX Employment and Anna on Facebook.

Ms Homewood said there was no relation between the employee's departure and the Facebook post.

"She resigned a couple of weeks ago," she said.

"I don't know what was going on in [Anna's] life, I don't know why she also did what she did and how she managed and spoke to Rhys' mum."

She said that MAX had not known of any potential trouble brewing.

"There was a Facebook post sent to me and immediately we jumped on it," she said.

According to Caroline and Sunny, Anna has been harassing the family for two years; phoning multiple times a day and implying Rhys was rorting the government.

MAX disputes this. It said only five calls from Anna to Caroline's number had been logged.

Caroline said her dealings with MAX Employment started around the end of 2014, when Rhys' cancer had come back after a year of treatment, and he had begun chemotherapy.

"I had to go into Centrelink at that time and take a letter in and say, 'look he's not going to go to work. He's very sick. He's relapsed'."

"They told me to ring Anna at that point, so Rhys's payment was not cut off."

"That was my first encounter with Anna."

'Cancer nurse sent letter to Centrelink'

Since his diagnosis, Rhys has been treated at a specialist cancer center in Sydney, the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse. In a statement to Hack, the centre confirmed that a senior nurse supplied Centrelink with a certificate stating Rhys was too unwell to attend Centrelink interviews.

Caroline said Anna continued to harass her over the phone.

"She had no respect for us, no respect for my son and what he was going through," she said.

A Lifehouse spokesperson said the centre had noticed "a lack of understanding and clarity" around the requirements relating to welfare benefits.

"It has resulted in delays or lack of payments to vulnerable families at such a distressing time," the spokesperson said.

The complexity of the benefits system can be difficult to navigate for families dealing with the tragedy of terminal illness."

Late last year, just before Christmas, Rhys was told he had months to live. He was put on a pain killers and very high doses of morphine, plus vitamins and steroids.

MAX said it could have handled Rhys's situation with more compassion.

The provider MAX Employment is part of MAX Solutions, which has contracts with state and federal governments worth billions. In 2015, the Department of Employment awarded MAX Solutions two five-year contracts together worth more than $1.2 billion.

MAX Solutions also has a $337m five-year contract with the Department of Social Services to provide disability management services and employment support.

When it places a person with a disability in a job, it gets paid by government. Deborah Homewood refused to say how much the company earned per placement.

Asked if it was a fault of government to have referred Rhys to MAX Employment when he was terminally ill, Ms Homewood said she didn't know.

"I've been on the phone to the department today, dealing with his contract manager who is working with us to get Rhys on a different program," she said.

"Clearly it was an inappropriate system for Rhys to be in."

She said the company had no say in what clients were referred to the program.

"I don't know what happened in that interview when Rhys went on the payment," she said.

"I don't know what information Centrelink was given on Rhys."