Budget advisory services in Whanganui and Marton juggling their own budgets as demand grows

Services want to be at the top of the cliff, rather than "figuring out what happens at the bottom". Photo / Alex Cairns

Free budget advisory services in Whanganui and Marton are wrestling with high workloads and need more money to keep up with demand.

The services will soon prepare business cases to access Ministry of Social Development funding.

Whanganui Budget Advisory Service manager Sandy Fage said demand was huge.

“We can’t see clients for two weeks out and we’ve very seldom been like that before.

“I think it’s the slow after-burn from Covid-19, along with the cost of living crisis, even the rates increase, all these added things.”

Fage said she was thankful for the funding she received from the Ministry of Social Development but more money would always be welcomed.

“What I struggle with is not being able to pay our staff at a professional rate, considering what we do and the situations we are dealing with.

“We are also not being funded enough to be able to expand our services.”

Ministry of Social Development general manager for safe strong families and communities, Mark Henderson, said this year’s Budget maintained the funding for core services at current levels until June 30, 2024.

He said a government investment this year of $29.188 million over four years ensured that.

“There has been no decrease for this financial year.”

Fage said financial mentoring in New Zealand was almost exclusively a volunteer service in years gone by.

She also started as a volunteer and at that time, there were 23 people in the Whanganui office.

“The financial landscape has changed so incredibly in the past 60 years and it’s much more complex.

“I went back into the old files and the governance board minutes were talking about the advent of credit cards and how they could clearly see they were going to have a negative impact on the population.

“That was back in the 1960s. We can see that now, and it’s still going.”

Whanganui Budget Advisory Service manager Sandy Fage. Photo / Bevan Conley

Marton & Districts Budget Service manager Christina Marcroft said it was hard to attract people to “give quality service” if they couldn’t be paid.

Her organisation has enough funding to employ one full-time equivalent staff member.

Marcroft said her volunteers were amazing but she needed to train younger people as well - someone to “hand the organisation on to in the future”.

“Our funding from MSD (Ministry of Social Development) doesn’t really even cover our one paid employee.

“Ideally, I would have two and a half full-time equivalents here.”

Henderson said contracts with MSD-funded providers had been extended to the end of June next year.

Before then, all services have to tender for new contracts with the ministry.

“We are commencing procurement of BFC (building financial capability) core services later this month,” he said.

“An advance notice is currently posted on the Government Electronic Tender Service (GETS) website.

“MSD will keep BFC providers informed as work progresses.”

Fage said she didn’t have a problem with that because the Government needed to know where its money was going, but it would involve a serious amount of work and stress.

“We clearly know there is only so much money in the pot for the next four years.

“In a better world, it would be really nice if we could pay our staff their worth and make being a financial mentor a career option.

“Then we could do more community education and be at the top of the cliff, rather than just figuring out what happens at the bottom.”

Paid staff at the Whanganui site are employed at no less than the living wage.

Marcroft said the only way to be sustainable was to seek funding from other sources such as grants.

Preparing applications took up time that could be spent with clients or completing administration work.

That was also the case with the preparation of a tender, a process which took her around 70 hours plus preliminary work the last time it was required, in the mid-2010s.

“We’re not sure if the rug is going to get pulled out or not.

“Next year is so uncertain until we get the results of the tender.”

Fage said her head hurt from the amount of work she had to do at the moment.

“You can’t not see people when they are in certain situations. We desperately need another person and the money just isn’t there. I would dearly love more dollars to be able to do more.”

Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.