UP TO 45 families and individuals who depend on Kogarah Storehouse every week for food may soon not get enough to eat due to funding cuts.
In any given month, up to 150 recipients could be driven further into desperation when the Storehouse's emergency relief funding stops on April 1, leaving the organisation and its clients to fend for themselves.
The Storehouse is run by Brighton-Kogarah Uniting Church.
Its minister, the Reverend Robyn Lyons, and church council chairman Robert McAlpine are deeply distressed by the cuts.
Mrs Lyons paints a harrowing picture of growing poverty, disadvantage and mental illness, and situations where families and single people are living in cars, parks and under bridges.
She said growing unemployment was forcing people on to the streets, and the working poor had to decide between rent and food, while the federal government had just taken away $80,000 in annual emergency relief funding.
Mrs Lyons said the money was used to buy food to supplement food parcels. It was also used for food vouchers to be redeemed at local butchers and grocers, help with rent and medicine and provide some counselling and advocacy.
‘‘Our hearts are breaking. I’m the one having to say ‘I’m sorry, our food parcels will now contain only the basics from what is donated’,’’ Mrs Lyons said. ‘‘This is the ultimate failure of the ‘user-pays’ ideology — the poor are an easy mark because they are not going to complain.
‘‘They are too busy staying alive.’’
Mrs Lyons said the Storehouse offered a safe haven and hope for people who were desperate.
She said desperation and hopelessness would increase, leading to mental-health problems, an increase in petty crime and perhaps death as the weather got colder.
Mr McAlpine said while the federal government was calling this funding cut a restructure, it had not said where the necessary resources to look after the needy would come from, and said the state government’s Energy Accounts Payment Assistance scheme could also end.
‘‘We would like the government to accept responsibility for the poor rather than using the poor to balance their budget,’’ Mrs Lyon said.
The Salvation Army said it did not have enough information at this stage but ‘‘fully intend to continue the delivery of emergency relief services in the St George area and will make vital changes to this service to ensure it remains of benefit to clients’’.
‘BUDGET REPAIR’
Social Services Minister Scott Morrison has blamed the previous Labor government for changes to funding arrangements to frontline services.
‘‘Last year the government undertook a competitive tender for organisations seeking funding under an $800million Department of Social Services (DSS) grants round to support a broad range of vital frontline services that support communities,’’ he said. ‘‘The Minister for Social Services announced new bridging funding on January 30.
‘‘Regrettably the government’s budget repair task means there is a reduction in the overall size of the Department of Social Services grants program.
‘‘If Labor had been better able to manage the budget rather than shovelling money out the door for pink batts, overpriced school halls and cash payments to pets, then these sorts of expenditure reductions could have been avoided.’’
FUNDS UNTIL MARCH
Barton MP Nickolas Varvaris said the bridging funding would enable critical frontline services such as those provided by the Kogarah-Brighton Uniting Church to continue until the end of March and provide the opportunity for them to refer their skills, staff and/or clients to new service providers as they come online.
‘‘I am advised by my minister that Kogarah-Brighton Uniting Church has been informed they are eligible for the bridging funding,’’ Mr Varvaris said.
‘‘I encourage Kogarah-Brighton Uniting Church to make contact with the Department of Social Services so they can be put in touch with new service providers.’’
Have you been helped by Kogarah Storehouse or worked there?
