Currently one in six children in New Zealand are living in poverty – an absolutely horrific statistic that KidsCan is trying to change. But they have their work cut out for them – particularly as the poverty line is shifting and more families are going without. So, what can we do to help?
Julie Chapman, the CEO and founder of KidsCan, says she is seeing more and more evidence that the poverty line is shifting.
KidsCan – a charity dedicated to helping Kiwi kids affected by poverty – typically has a fairly long waiting list at this time of year, but this year, it’s longer than ever and beyond anything that Julie has seen in the 19 years she’s been running it.
“We’ve got the biggest waiting list we’ve ever had – there’s more than 260 schools and early childhood centers waiting for our support – that’s over 10,000 children,” she says. Currently one in every six children in New Zealand is living in poverty.
What’s becoming increasingly difficult is that a high number of these schools are from middle income areas – ones, which don’t receive any government support, like Ka Ora, Ka Ako, the Healthy School Lunches Programme. Ka Ora, Ka Ako provides free healthy lunches to more than 220,000 students – but made headlines this year after Associate Education Minister David Seymour challenged the initiative, looking to cut funding by half. But what Julie is seeing, is that plenty of kids who are going hungry go to schools that don’t qualify for Ka Ora, Ka Ako assistance.
“What we’re seeing now is that 98 of the schools on our waiting list are coming from those more middle income areas,” says Julie. “And 56 of the schools on our waiting list don’t qualify for the government lunch program. With the cost-of-living biting, and mortgage rates increasing, rentals going up, all these things – the poverty line is shifting. Schools are telling us that more and more families can’t make ends meet – especially ones that might have just been getting by okay before. We have principals are saying they’re not resourced to cope with that increase in hardship. That’s having a huge impact on children’s education, but also teachers in those schools are now becoming sort of social service providers too – because they can’t teach children who are hungry and cold. Teachers are doing what they can, but it’s a growing issue – they’re not able to do as much as they would like to be able to.”
KidsCan has launched an urgent appeal to try and help as many kids over winter as possible and to try and get those waiting lists down (you can head to their website to make a one-off donation, or sponsor a child for $30 a month)
Julie says children at schools in middle income areas (previously decile 4, 5 and 6) from Waiheke to Waikato to the Deep South are now arriving at school hungry, without lunch and often without warm clothing.
What teachers are seeing, is heart-breaking. One teacher says:
“We’re finding that the kids are coming to school with shoes that are either too small or broken or they’re not school shoes and they’re not suitable as school wear. And we have some kids who won’t come to school because of it. Our absentee rate has increased. When you delve deep you often find that it’s because they don’t have full uniform, or their parents just can’t replace their shoes. So, it does impact on attendance, and it does impact emotionally on their self-esteem.”
Another teacher says:
“And socks – do you know how many kids come to school without black socks? Just last week I asked one little girl, ‘Where are your black socks? Come on, it’s school uniform.’ And I had given her some the week before. She said, ‘Miss, I gave them to my little sister.’ It just shows me that there isn’t anything in the family.”
And Julie says the problem could be even bigger than we know, because poverty can be much more hidden in middle income areas.
“Parents who are finding themselves in this position for the first time – they’re feeling really ashamed to speak and say that they need help,” she says. “We know that schools are seeing children trying to hide the fact that they don’t have food – they’ll say things like they ate their lunch at morning tea, when they didn’t have lunch to start with.”
Julie says one of the positive things this government has done is signalling that they want to support food for early childhood centres. “That’s good, but I think we need to make sure that we still keep the issue of child poverty at the front and centre of conversations – within the government, business sector and in our communities, because children don’t have a voice.”
Besides making a donation if you can, Julie says another really helpful thing we can all do is keep engaging in those conversations – and to also help curb the stigma and judgement there is around poverty.
“It’s really important when someone makes a judgement about children or poverty, that we stop and we challenge that,” she says. “Because actually, life is a bit of a lottery and the children that need our support have not chosen the family they’re born into – the fact they’re born into hardship isn’t their fault. It’s really important that we do everything we can to get them into a position, with a good education, to be able to lift themselves out of that hardship cycle.
“When people place judgement on families that aren’t doing so well, that just makes it harder for families and children to lift themselves out of that, because believe me – they don’t need the judgement, they already know that they’re living in hardship and are feeling it already. I haven’t met a parent in the 19 years I’ve been doing this that doesn’t want better for their children”
For anyone working in the charity sector at the moment, it can be a heart-breaking and overwhelming job – the need is so great. But Julie says she holds on to hope and the positive acts she sees in the community to keep her moving forward.
“I feel really sad about some of the things I hear – it makes me want to do everything I can to help, even outside of KidsCan,” says Julie. “But I think what we have to try and hold onto is that there are still lots of good people who do want to help us make a difference. We need to keep going and keep supporting as many children as we can, because we know we can make a difference.”
If you want to support KidsCan please head to their website here.
