Children are living in tiny, damp and sometimes squalid boarding houses, while Housing NZ staff are discouraging people who are seeking help from formally registering their need, saying they have no business interfering.

Welfare agencies alarmed at extreme lengths some people go to just to eat. One desperate case of a Bay of Plenty child and his three siblings has been offered as a stark example of the degree of poverty in our communities.

Applications for financial support following last week's deadly Christchurch quake are flooding in.

Prime Minister John Key says he is open to work-testing beneficiaries when their youngest child turns three.

The Government won't consider reductions to main benefit levels including the sickness, invalid's, unemployment and domestic purposes benefits as part of any welfare overhaul recommended by the Welfare Working Group tomorrow.

A consortium of North Shore doctors has a radical proposal to use health professionals to help sickness and invalid beneficiaries back to work.

John Key has been accused of being disconnected after saying that beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices".

John Key says beneficiaries who resort to food banks do so out of their own "poor choices" rather than because they cannot afford food.

A solo mother of three children has been given 90 days notice by her landlord and Housing NZ won't open her file for two months.