New commuter train from Rangiora to Rolleston proposed
Environment Canterbury is proposing a new commuter train from Rangiora to Rolleston, which it says the region's booming population needs. Councillor Joe Davies spoke to Charlotte Cook.
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RNZ News
12 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Free lunches feeding children in need, say ECEs
KidsCan send ingredients to participating centres, which then cook the meals including vegetable curry, ravioli, and tuna pasta salad. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro Early childhood centres in the government's free lunch scheme say it is reaching children who live in poverty. Despite initial revolts against vegetables, they say children are enjoying the meals and more centres should be included. More than 8000 two to five-year-olds at more than 300 early childhood centres have been receiving food through the scheme this year. They were included at a cost of $4 million a year when the government revised the free school lunch scheme to cut per-meal costs and save $130m a year. The early childhood scheme pays charity KidsCan to send ingredients to participating centres, which then cook the meals including vegetable curry, ravioli, and tuna pasta salad. Jo Edmonds, the owner of Manaaki Tamariki Early Learning Centre in Rotorua, said the scheme was a big improvement on the lunches parents had been providing. "Their behaviour is different because they've got nutritious meals. With lunchboxes there's a lot of packet stuff so we have found that there's not a lot of sugar so behaviour has changed," she said. Edmonds said the children also had more conversations and interactions when they had lunch. "We eat like a family, we brought that homely feeling into the centre with all the children sitting down and having a meal together." Edmonds said families were noticing a difference too. Children were eating food at home that they had previously refused and one parent with two children at the centre said it was saving her $70 a week. "Also, we're not having children not attending because they don't have lunch. So attendance is higher," she said. Mel Jeffcoat - the operations leader at Kids Campus, a community-owned non-profit centre in Tauranga - said some of its families were struggling with poverty. She said prior to joining the scheme, families were expected to supply food for their children, but some were unable to do so. "We had about seven children that we were actually supplying food to because they weren't having anything. We didn't want food, kai as we refer to it, to be a barrier to them coming so we just supplied it," she said. Jeffcoat said in the past she probably would not have agreed that the government should feed children, but she supported the scheme and wanted it extended further. "My view has changed because society's changed and poverty is so real and I think that people don't really understand, particularly if you're not working with children or you're not living in a community where that's really evident," she said. Matt Dol, the owner of Little Parrots in Mount Maunganui, said children attending the centre used to bring lunch from home and initially some were not happy with the vegetables in the free lunches. "At the beginning it was a little bit disheartening because we were having a lot of wasted food that was served and they weren't touching. Now it's amazing. There are great conversations going around the table about food, there's great social interaction as well," he said. Mikayla Manston, the owner of Kai Kids Preschool in Kaitangata, said the centre used to provide lunch itself but now it could use that money to provide more resources for the children. She said children had definite favourites such as a vegetarian version of butter chicken made with chickpeas. KidsCan founder Julie Chapman said the scheme was reaching more than 8000 children, in addition to about 6000 KidsCan was already feeding. She said the inclusion of profit-making centres in the scheme had attracted criticism, but their children deserved it as much as those at non-profit services. "Even some of those that are privately-owned are barely washing their face in terms of being able to cover costs and resourcing and the children that go to those centres are living with this food insecurity," she said. Chapman said the programme cost about $2 per meal per child and there had been no food safety problems or complaints. She said the scheme would soon be extended to more centres to bring the total number of children to 10,000. Chapman said the ministry used its equity index, based on data about children's socio-economic backgrounds, to identify centres that could be included. She said KidsCan had identified about 60 more centres that needed its help and it would be interesting to see how many of those were tagged by the index. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
28 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Thousands to benefit from FamilyBoost changes
politics national 43 minutes ago The Finance Minister says several thousand more families will benefit from the changes to FamilyBoost. Nicola Willis spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.
RNZ News
42 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Thousands to benefit from FamilyBoost changes to be announced today
Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii The Finance Minister says several thousand more families will benefit from the changes to FamilyBoost. Nicola Willis is set to make an announcement on the government's FamilyBoost scheme on Monday morning. We'll be livestreaming the announcement at the top of this page from about 9am. Head of the announcement, Willis told Morning Report the changes inlcude increasing the amount of rebate families will get from the scheme and increasing the range of families who can access it, including higher income families who will be able to get a higher amount. "Overall, the amount of money we put into the sceheme is not on track to all be used so that gives us an opporuntity to look at how we can spread that cash further, ensure it's getting into people's pockets, into their bank accounts, and not staying with the government." She urged people who were eligible for Family Boost to put claims in. The Finance Minister] promised to review the scheme which provides rebates for early childhood education, after government figures showed just 249 families had consistently claimed the full amount - well short of the 21,000 families initially estimated. At present, to qualify for the full amount, families must be paying more than $300 a week in childcare costs, but also earning under $140,000 a year. Families earning up to $180,000 a year can get smaller amounts, while those earning above that cannot claim the rebate. More to come... Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
