Payouts to beneficiaries more than $7m
Hawke’s Bay beneficiaries are turning to Work and Income for advance payments for essential costs such as schooling and health care — and more than $7 million was handed out in the wider region last year.
The Ministry of Social Development can provide an advance payment to beneficiaries with an immediate need for essential items such as food, health costs, power and other costs.
Beneficiaries in the East Coast region had 18,936 grants worth $7,619,592 approved last year, according to official figures.
Figures showed 1430 grants were for medical and associated costs, 1279 for school and education costs and 15,945 for other emergency situations.
Hastings Budget Advisory Service co-ordinator Kristal Leach said the payments were for essential needs such as rent arrears, power arrears, baby clothes, cots, and medical costs.
Each January there were lots of applications for advance payments for school costs. Applicants for those payments would get a quote from the school then take it to Work an Income to assess, said Ms Leach.
Case managers looked at a person’s level of debt before providing an advance. If it was over a certain level, it needed to be authorised by the manager of the Work and Income branch.
“Work and Income do look at that debt level to ensure that it’s something they can afford,” she said.
A case manager might refer a client to a budgeting service if they’d had several advance payments throughout the year.
Ms Leach said the advance payments were interest free, which was much better than getting a loan through a third tier lender with high interest rates.
Many people on benefits or low incomes also had very little ability to borrow from mainstream funders such as banks, because they might have damaged their credit level, she said.
The number of grants has remained largely steady over the past few years. Beneficiaries in the East Coast region had 18,440 grants approved in 2014 and 19,480 in 2013.
To qualify for the advance payment a client needed to have an immediate and essential need, meet hardship obligations including budgeting, meet an income and asset test and buy goods or services from a preferred supplier if an arrangement was in place.
East Coast beneficiaries had 1058 applications for advance payments declined last year. Reasons for declining an application included “circumstances could have been reasonably foreseen”, “need can be met in another way” and “not an economic purchase”.
Nationwide, beneficiaries received 313,334 grants worth $127,756,265 last year. They had a further 18,187 requests declined.
Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) coordinator Alastair Russell said significant numbers of people were unaware they were eligible for advances. AAAP held events to help people get what they were entitled to.
It saw 700 people at an event in Mangere in April and turned away more than 800 or 900.
“Those people were coming there desperate to access advance payments in significant numbers.’’
The people it did manage to see and got in front of Work and Income case managers accessed $ 850,000 worth of advance payments and other grants, which they were legally entitled to but had difficulty accessing without support.
Mr Russell said people drove from Whangarei, Tauranga, Thames and Hamilton for the event.
While the group was Aucklandfocused, it was happy to talk to beneficiary groups and community groups elsewhere in New Zealand.