Social Services start campaign aimed at addressing poverty

The “Free from Poverty” Campaign, being run ahead of the 2026 General Election, presents a comprehensive vision for structural change across six key areas of poverty reduction, welfare reform, health and disability, transition to work, Working for Families reform and housing and food security.

Christchurch Catholic Social Services manager Luis Arevalo said families facing poverty seek help from his organisation every day. Working families cannot make ends meet, despite their best efforts, said Mr Arevalo, who is also the NZCCSS Child and Family Policy Group convenor.

CSS has committed to being an active partner in the campaign, he said.

“Our team at CSS encounters families struggling with impossible choices: heating or food, rent or medicine, children’s school shoes or this week’s groceries. Housing costs consume nearly half of many clients’ total incomes, leaving families precariously balanced on the edge of crisis.

“The ripple effects extend throughout our community,” Mr Arevalo said. “When 27 per cent of children live in households where food runs out sometimes or often, we’re not just talking about statistics – we’re talking about children in Canterbury classrooms struggling to concentrate, families in our parishes facing impossible stress and a generation growing up knowing the daily anxiety of scarcity.”

Mr Arevalo said integration of the campaign’s themes into existing programmes is being explored, “ensuring that our direct service work connects to broader advocacy for systemic change”.

“When we help an individual family access emergency assistance, we’re also gathering evidence about why emergency assistance remains necessary and what structural changes would prevent future crises,” he added.

Mr Arevalo noted that the CSS “involvement in this campaign isn’t simply about policy advocacy – it flows directly from the foundational tenets of Catholic Social Teaching that have guided our work for decades”.

The NZCCSS campaign proposals “represent more than incremental adjustments – they offer a pathway to restore dignity and break cycles of generational poverty”, Mr Arevalo noted.

Catholic Social Services is a foundation member of the NZCCSS.

FULL STORY

Inform Lent 2026 (Catholic Diocese of Christchurch)