Every year, the University of Otago invites their third-year medical students to a Community Contact Week, where they head out into smaller communities across New Zealand to learn more about what challenges they face, and how this can affect the healthcare that they provide. This allows students to speak face to face with people in these communities, and experience how it may differ from their upbringing.
This year, through a Zoom session due to the nationwide lockdown, we were delighted to take part in it and speak to the students about Budgeting Services North Canterbury, and how we contribute to the community.
As part of this workshop, we spoke about the emotional toll that financial hardship can take on people and how it can impact their day to day life and their opportunities. This allowed these students to understand the knock-on effect of financial health, and how these smaller communities face a range of different issues, in contrast to more urban city areas.
We also went through the services that we provide, including preparing budgets, debt schedules, negotiating with creditors and preparing applications for Kiwisaver financial hardship. We explained that because North Canterbury is a smaller, more rural community, we face a range of issues that can lead to financial hardships. These issues include:
- Lack of public transportation that leads to geographic isolation
- Limited employment opportunities, especially when combined with the above
- Fewer specialist community support services – for example, Mental Health Services that are usually widely available in urban areas and universities and something many take for granted
- Limited access to specialist healthcare services and outpatient services – many of these services require the need to travel into Christchurch
Many of the students we spoke to were unaware of the challenges that communities like ours face, and how this can affect people living there and how it may affect them working as health service providers in a similar community.
We also discussed the positives of being a small community. The size of the community means that we are well connected with all social service providers, and this cultivates a strong network of support for individuals within the community.
Within this network, the group meets regularly, to discuss emerging trends in the area and how they can best address the issues, as a team. For example, we as a community want to make sure that everyone has access to sufficient food for their families, and no child gets left behind. The food banks in Waimakariri and Hurunui work closely with these families, not only to provide food, but to see if there is anything else that they require, and will refer out to groups like us, when necessary.
As a network, we aim to better the lives of those living in the Waimakariri and Hurunui, whatever issues they may face.
The students were surprised to hear how interconnected these services are, and how we work to support individuals, as well as being surprised about how financial stress can have a knock-on effect on people’s wellbeing.
The students were also especially interested to learn how the pandemic had affected our services, and what particular issues people were facing this lockdown. We explained that as this is the second lockdown, we saw trends where repayment requirements were more relaxed at Level 3 and 4, and grants more readily available. While this benefitted many of our clients, it meant that once we hit Level 2 and Level 1 – WINZ and other agencies were looking for repayments to resume. People had then over-committed themselves to other payments, or loans, and were struggling to make ends meet again.
We’re prepared for this to happen again and have already started our plans for communicating with clients as the levels change.
Our work continues at all levels of lockdown, using a contactless service, whether that is a phone call, email or video call. We’re also continuing to advocate for our clients, with government agencies and creditors. As everyone is working at home, some issues are taking longer to resolve than before, but you can rest assured our team is still working hard to achieve the best outcomes.
Feel free to reach out to us today for a no obligation chat.