As Victoria enters its final stages of reopening following two years of lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions, there are still people being left behind.
Support agencies saw demand for services surge during lockdowns and Shepparton’s August outbreak sparked a 400 to 500 per cent increase in people in need of food assistance.
While the number of people needing assistance has dipped since that peak, the demand is still more than two times higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The Salvation Army’s Doorways program, which is the main crisis relief point for people in need, has been seeing 25 or 30 people a day, up from around 10 pre-pandemic.
Regional Doorways manager for northern Victoria Luke Shay manages Doorways programs from Mildura to Wodonga, but is based in Shepparton.
He said demand for support was “still continuing”.
Mr Shay said Doorways was helping international students, refugees and asylum seekers as well as people who were in the older demographic.
He said bill shock from people who had spent more time at home during lockdowns would continue to put people in a bind in the lead-up to Christmas.
“That bill shock combined with the stress of Christmas could be difficult,” he said.
“The cost of living has gone up for our clients, they’d never go buy a new car but even second-hand cars now aren’t cheap.”
He said bigger sites like Shepparton, Bendigo and Wodonga were busier than usual while smaller sites had seen less requests for help.
However, organisations in those bigger centres have banded together to help each other, especially in Shepparton during the August outbreak, while business owners continued to support the Salvation Army even when they were hit hard by lockdowns.
Mr Shay said he was “unsure” how high demand would be at Christmas.
Shepparton FoodShare operations co-ordinator Grace Grieve said demand for the organisation’s services had been “steady” over the last month.
“It’s been a whole other demographic, people who aren’t vaccinated and lost their jobs or people who’ve never accessed our services before,” she said.
She encouraged local organisations who dealt with people in need to connect with FoodShare to help “stop people falling through the cracks”.
She said anyone in need in Shepparton should visit the Shepparton Family and Financial Service or Life Op Shop in Mooroopna if they were in urgent need of food.