The Hits Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce played handball with Kiwi celebrities for 24 hours to raise money for KidsCan.
File video / Dean Purcell
A record number of schools and early childhood centres are asking for help from a leading kids’ charity as the struggle to provide the basics spreads to middle-income families.
Educators have described children arriving at school with shoes held together with duct tape - or noneat all - and clad only T-shirts in winter because their families can’t afford fleeces or jackets, KidsCan chief executive Julie Chapman said.
Others are missing breakfast and lunch as budgets strain as cost of living pressures and increasing unemployment affect more families than before.
“[We’ve] been inundated with requests for support – particularly from schools in middle-income areas… the poverty line is shifting.
“It’s heartbreaking to see children who didn’t need help before now arriving at school lacking the very basics, and we are unable to get food and clothing to them because we don’t have enough funding.”
KidsCan provides food, jackets, shoes, and health products to 889 schools - a third of schools nationwide - and 205 early childhood centres (ECE) in areas of high deprivation across New Zealand, with 40 more schools and seven ECEs joining their ranks from next term.
But it was clear schools in middle-income areas needed more support too, Chapman said.
More than 10,000 children in 260 schools and ECEs qualify for KidsCan help but remain on the charity’s waiting list, with the majority of the 98 schools in middle-income areas, where principals say they’re not resourced to cope with increasing hardship.
They include a primary school on Waiheke Island, where behind the grand holiday homes, residents are struggling; a rural Waikato school where a third of the 150 children are transient; and an Auckland school whose roll has changed with housing intensification, she said.
The waiting list was the largest in the charity’s 19-year history, and the impetus behind an urgent public appeal this week.
The appeal was also a reminder to those in power.
“We need to keep child poverty front and centre of the Government’s agenda, with a particular focus on housing and food. Too many children are living in dire conditions without enough to eat.”
Officials warned the Government in February the number of children living in poverty would likely increase by 7000 in four years as a result of benefit changes then being rushed through Parliament.
KidsCan founder and chief executive Julie Chapman is seeking donations to help the charity support more children in need. Photo / Alex Burton
Donations to charities such as theirs were also dropping as donors themselves grappled with the cost of living, Chapman said.
“We’re urging anyone who can afford to, to please step up and help reach a child waiting for support… we can’t forget about them.”
Schools were also feeling the pressure, becoming “social services - because they can’t teach children who are hungry and cold”.
And both kids and their whānau were often too embarrassed to ask for help, schools told the Herald.
“A lot of families put on a brave face”, Douglas Park School principal Gareth Sinton said.
The increase in families struggling has been particularly noticeable over the last 18 months, Douglas Park School principal Gareth Sinton said.
The Masterton school was a decile 5 under the former socio-economic scale, which was replaced nationally by a broader equity index last year, but there were some kids who came to school without fleeces or jackets, and who didn’t have breakfast or lunch.
A local bread company supported them to provide breakfast and lunch for kids in need, and the school delivered food parcels and firewood to some struggling families.
Douglas Park had been on the KidsCan waiting list for about a year, Sinton said.
“[The increased need] hasn’t come in a rush, but it’s been quite noticeable over the last 18 months. I’d say it’s [due to] cost of living. We’re a semi-rural town, no one’s early massive money, and the costs have crept up.”
At Te Atatū Intermediate, also decile 5 under the old system and also on KidsCan’s waiting list, around 10% of pupils came from families “in real need”, food technology teacher Katy Perry said.
“Most of the school are doing okay, but there’s some families that just can’t get ahead… and as the need has increased the people who [have the means] to support that need has gone down.”
The school ran a breakfast club with support from Sanitarium and Fonterra, and supplied lunches to some pupils through the charity Te Atatū Food for Schools.
Some kids are wearing raggedy clothing and footwear to school because their families can't afford to replace it, educators have told the charity KidsCan. Photo / 123rf
But they’d love to get access to KidsCan shoes for pupils wearing sandals year-round, or shoes kept together by duct tape, Perry said.
And being able to offer hot meals with KidsCan’s support would mean some pupils could enjoy the only hot meal they’d get in a day.
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
