Too Critical to Fail: The Precarity of Emergency Relief Services

SUMMARY

This study investigated the precarity of emergency relief services in Australia through financial analysis and interviews with staff. The results show that the current levels of Commonwealth government funding contribute to only a small portion of the total cost of delivering emergency relief services. This structural reliance on in-kind goods and labour, and limited government contribution towards the total emergency relief costs, exposes the system to risks such as volunteer shortages and supply disruptions which can impact service provision to the point of closure.

Further, in considering the challenges that emergency relief services faced, interviewees identified six key themes that highlighted the ongoing precarity of the emergency relief service:

• Determining crisis and the level of need: staff have to make difficult judgements, in an environment of rationed resources, about people’s situations and the level of support required. This is exacerbated by rising numbers of consumers often presenting with complex personal circumstances.

• Workforce pressures and the reliance on volunteers and students: high reliance on unpaid labour creates an ongoing and additional workload through recruiting and onboarding volunteers. It is increasingly difficult to find regular volunteers placing excessive pressure on paid staff members.

• Food reliability and supply: While emergency relief services play a positive role in food reclamation, the flow of food into emergency relief was often unreliable, making planning difficult and required continual effort to maintain steady supply.

• Physical infrastructure: The majority of venues did not have adequate storage space which affected how much food could be kept on hand, the types of food on offer, and the ability to take on additional food and material goods when they became available. Smaller venues or venue layout sometimes lacked ‘private’ spaces constraining the ability to hold confidential discussions, limiting the number of consumers that could be assisted at any one time.

• Funding uncertainty: sites are unsure of whether they will receive funding and what the amount will be. Funding uncertainty impacts planning and often leads to programs being in deficit as they continue to expend funds while waiting for outcomes of funding applications or coping with higher-than-expected costs and volume.

• Gaps in service provision: Sector-wide difficulties often mean that services referred to are not readily accessible or may in themselves be under-resourced and unable to provide the immediate support needed with often critical consequences for consumers.

To increase the stability, reach and efficiency of emergency relief services, there is a need for a change in investment design. Two key investment changes would address key elements of emergency relief precarity:

1. Shift to higher ratios of paid to unpaid staff which would stabilise service delivery and reduce occupational risk, while helping to fill the short term ‘gap’ between crisis emergency relief and access to specialist services;

2. Targeted, one-off capital investment in appropriate infrastructure including: food and goods storage facilities, and service delivery space.

Ensuring this investment would increase the impact of services.