Cash-poor mums skip meals

CASH-STARVED mums are skipping meals to pay for children’s school excursions.

Other families are resorting to growing their own fruit and vegetables, delaying buying medicines, and walking or riding bikes rather than using cars or public transport to make ends meet.

The drastic measures some Melbourne households are taking to get by are revealed in a Brotherhood of St Laurence study.

Unstable casual and shortterm job hours and wages and inadequate, increasingly conditional income support payments, combined with unexpected costs, pushed them to the brink.

“With low incomes there is often very little left after paying high mortgage or rental costs …” states the report, titled Hard times: Australian households and financial insecurity.

“Even small, unexpected expenses such as a broken ket- tle or the fee for a school excursion could tip the balance from managing to not managing.”

To pay for a child’s unanticipated school excursion, some mothers reported going without a meal, putting less petrol in a car, buying less and doing without meat.

The study extensively interviewed and surveyed 75 households from areas with high rates of financial stress. Some had fallen on tough times due to illness or accidents.

More than half reported less than $500 savings as a buffer. One-third had no savings.

A disability support pensioner told of applying for a personal loan to pay for food or medicine. A full-time carer made meals for three instead of four people and ate leftovers. She kept busy doing housework during dinner.

Report author Dina Bowman said a national employment strategy was needed to tackle issues such as underemployment.