By Renee Wood
The Redwood Warburton ADRA Community Care Centre is seeing the demand for its services grow as more families and singles seek financial support and relief.
The centre offers weekly food donations and volunteers are quickly running out of packages to provide to those in need.
“Recently, the past few weeks especially we’ve had to turn people away – we’ve just had too many people request food,” Kate Barratt, centre manager said.
“We have the capacity at the moment to make up 35 to 40 good food parcels depending on what we received from Second Bite, but we are getting asked for up to 50 at the moment, which then it spreads the delivery quite thin.”
Ms Barratt said the pandemic’s affects on employment and businesses continues to swell, while families struggle to pay with school expenses and pandemic support drys up.
“There’s been a number of small businesses who have closed, so unemployment has also been affected and has caused these issues, and just people that are living on government benefits, such as the age, disability or care pensions, they just can’t make ends meet,” she said.
“We are seeing consistent numbers that are just much higher than we can actually support at the moment.” \
Homelessness also still remains as a prominent issue in the area.
“It’s an ongoing issue that we’re having, that rental properties are being put up for sale or are being repurposed, so we are seeing a drastic reduction in what’s available in your area.”
Ms Barratt said the rise in people needing support isn’t isolated to the Upper Yarra area and it’s something the wider Yarra Ranges Emergency Relief Network is faced with.
“Together, the agencies pool resources and we found that the demand is more than the supply.
“I’m not putting a call out just for ADRA Redwood, this is on behalf of all of the emergency relief organisations within the area.”
Ms Barratt hopes the community can help boost the packages by providing donations for local families.
Non-perishable items are always welcomed during donation drop offs and perishable goods can also be donated if arranged with volunteers.
“Any sort of pantry items and we actually can accept fruit, vegetables and dairy products as well – we just ask people to contact us to make sure someone is there to receive those donation.”
The centre also has rooms for hire which helps to fund the support it provides however, that service has also taken a financial hit due to the pandemic.
Ms Barratt said room rentals was a main source of income for ADRA and it’s yet to pick back up.
“Regular hire was a really good source of income and we just don’t have groups hiring anymore, so we would love to see a bit of life back in the centre.
“We may have to close if we can’t get the donations up.”
Cash donations and volunteering your time are both also value ways locals can support ADRA and other relief centres.
“We have a vegetable garden that we would love to see flourishing. We’ve had some donations of seedlings, but we just don’t have the man power at the moment.
“People just need a working with children’s check to be able to volunteer for us.
“If people would like to donate to their nearest emergency relief agency, I can direct them so that they can and then I can direct them.”
Contact Ms Barratt on KateBarratt@adra.org.au for more information.
