Working families are among the growing number lining up for help as the cost of living and inflation bubble upwards.

Food shortages are hitting food banks too.

Like "Mother Hubbard", who went to the cupboard, North Island foodbank staff are finding bare pantries.

People are generous but can't afford to donate as they did in the past - they just don't have the means.

Less food, fewer parcels

Aotearoa Food Parcel Measure indicates that the nationwide number of food parcels distributed in March was 3422 fewer than at the start of the year.

"We're having to really tighten the budget and be really careful with our purchasing, we're mindful that we're in a position of reasonable stability for a charitable organisation," says Tauranga Community Foodbank manager Nicki Goodwin.

Urban marae are also trying to fill their communities' pantries. They are cash-strapped too.

Papakura Marae's Tony Kake says his marae's foodbank is struggling to feed everyone asking for help. They give out about 300 food parcels per week. About 75 percent of the whanau they help are regulars - but anyone who needs help is welcome, he says.

Where to from here?

Any idea that last week's budget would help has died.

In a statement commenting on the 2023 Budget, the Auckland Catholic Diocese Justice and Peace Commission says there is little bread-and-butter support for those in most need and very little to alleviate intergenerational family poverty.

The Commission said that implementing the May 2019 Welfare Expert Advisory Group's key recommendation to substantially increase basic Social Welfare payments so that families can support themselves continues to be ignored.

"And the promised relief for families in the face of rising costs seems to be completely missing in action.

"What sort of society are we when 71 billion dollars can be found for very necessary infrastructure but only scraps of funding for families who are so overwhelmed by rising food and rent costs, they are being forced to choose between paying the rent to avoid homelessness and feeding hungry children?"

The Commission thinks a more focused approach to providing support would help.

There needs to be a solid plan in place, moving ahead, "rather than just a reactive, here's an extra $10 a week" the Commission said.

Helen Robinson, Chair of Kore Hiakai Zero Hunger Collective and Manutaki at the Auckland City Mission, says local government and local food plans need to be at the heart of the response, while being connected to a National Food Strategy.

This would mean our domestic and export food systems are in concert with each other.

Robinson's basing her views on a report the Collective has just released. Called 'Realising Food Secure Communities in Aotearoa: a review of locally led reports, plans and strategies', it shows us that we know how to do this, and that we can, she says.

It spotlight ways mana whenua, local communities, councils and central government can work together.

When working in partnership, together we can build food secure communities, Robinson says.

Source

• RNZ
• NZ Herald
• Voxy
• Supplied - Justice and Peace Commission

"The more hungry we are, the more we will see unrest," says Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson.

"Thousands and thousands of us just don't have enough money for food."

She should know. Over the past 10 years, demand for City Mission food parcels has risen each year.

"It's gone from 9,000 to 65,000. That's a huge number of people suffering food insecurity.

"Food prices rose 12 percent in the year to April. That's the largest increase since 1987."

Robinson had hoped last week's Budget might help.

So had Susan St John, economist and Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) spokesperson.

It didn't.

CPAGs view

The Budget is policy makers' biggest opportunity, says St John. They can change the systems that lock whanau into poverty. They can also opt to keep the status quo.

"Budget 2023 was short-sighted," she says.

"It didn't give money to families struggling to meet basic living costs. It's terrifying it didn't address food insecurity's rise.

"This budget should have delivered a reformed and effective Working for Families.

"It is tiresome to hear that 'allowing low-income families to have sufficient income to feed their families would be inflationary'. It would not - in fact, it would make the economy work better," the economist says.

"Poverty is stealing families' dreams and there was little in the Budget to change this."

Changing policies can work

St John's recommendations to immediately alleviate the problem involve two things:

• The in-work tax credit (IWTC) being folded into the Family Tax Credit, to form one payment for all low-income children.

This would be a targeted and very efficient way to reduce child poverty, she says. It offers a higher level of support only to those who currently do not get the IWTC.

St John says it would cost about $500m per year.

Her other suggestion addresses poverty traps for middle- and low-income families in paid work:

• income assistance abatement thresholds must be raised and rates of abatement cut from 27 percent to 20 percent.

At present they face impossible "clawbacks", she says.

For each dollar they earn over a very low threshold, they may receive only a few cents. This is because income assistance abates (reduces) so quickly in several domains that it keeps them in poverty traps.

Victoria University's Kate Prickett is also concerned about the Budget's failure to make systematic changes for families.

She's the Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children.

Targets to lift children out of poverty aren't being met, Prickett says.

"We're not going to make further dents in child poverty without implementing bold support for those families being left behind."

She suggests helping:

• working families teetering on the poverty line
• Pacific families who may be less likely to qualify for support because they don't have residency status, despite contributing to the economy and their communities
• families unable to work, or whose work may be limited due to care needs (eg for whanau with disabilities)

This week's Budget feels woefully inadequate, she says.

Source

• 1News
• The Spinoff
• RNZ
• Voxy

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The diocese's Justice and Peace Commission's submission particularly focuses on housing and child poverty, Maori children and the youth justice system.

Housing affordability

Acknowledging the ‘10,688 homes added to the public housing stock since 2017″, the Commission said:

"It would be helpful to know the net gain in public housing and how this could be increased given the large number of families waiting for housing.

"The importance of affordable and sustainable housing is the key to addressing social and economic inequalities, and ensuring that children have a secure start in life," says Commission member Jan Rutledge of De Paul House.

"Government cannot do this alone and should focus on working with community housing providers ... Not everyone wants to live in 2 or 1 bedroom housing which is what is being built by Kainga Ora."

The Commission's submission continued:

"The number of households on the Register for public housing continues to rise.

"We urge the Government to be prepared to put large resources of land and money towards tackling this pressing societal problem.

"A specific major allocation of funding to provide more public housing should be a priority in the Budget."

The Commission acknowledged the Government's attempts to reign in the private housing market. It supports the upcoming Budget's intention to top up the 2020 Progressive Home Ownership Fund.

It asked for additional funds to be allocated to continue and extend the established schemes.

Child poverty

The Commission commended the Government's May 2021 and 2022 Budgets and their efforts to redress the 1991 Budget's cuts to base rates of Social Welfare payments. Those cuts led to decades of intergenerational poverty, the Social Welfare Expert Advisory Report says.

"We ask that child poverty be addressed by including in the 2023 Budget sufficient funds to lift the wellbeing of families in need by enabling them to have a decent income to support themselves by -

• substantially increasing the base benefit for families in line with accumulated inflation
• continuing to increase the minimum wage
• establishing a Social Welfare Commission to ensure all families access the assistance they are entitled to.

"What is needed now is substantive action to address this massive injustice that prevents the poorest and most vulnerable in society being able to genuinely participate in building a decent society for all.

Maori and Pacific wellbeing

Maori and Pacific families' wellbeing is a pressing concern.

"Their children's wellbeing would be immediately improved if the recommendation to increase the base benefit for families by between 12 and 47 percent were implemented. This would have a significant effect on lifting Maori and Pacific incomes, skills and opportunities, the Commission wrote.

The United Nations is concerned about Maori children's over-representation in the youth justice system and suicides in closed institutions.

It recommends

• developing an action plan to reduce disparity in detained Maori children's sentencing, incarceration and survival rates
• a child rights-based approach measure to end child poverty
• addressing the connections between offending and neurodisability, alienation from whanau, school and community, substance abuse and family violence.

Source

• Waatea News