Pacific families show resilience as they transition down Alert Levels

Updates / News , 15 Sep 21

A month on since the Covid-19 Delta outbreak and the Pasifika Medical Association (PMA) through Pasifika Futures (PFL) – the Whānau Ora commissioning agency for Pacific families – has utilized $7.8 million to support Pacific families during this current community outbreak.

To provide some insight into what this level of investment equates to, PFL have distributed 24,074 packages of support to 17,247 Pacific families, made up of 88,667 Pacific individuals. The scale and delivery of this operation was only made possible with PFL partners who stepped up to provide food, utility and welfare support for their local communities.

With the rest of New Zealand, aside from Auckland, currently in Alert Level 2 PFL and their partners outside of Auckland have noticed a considerable drop in demand for food parcels and immediate support services.

PFL CEO Debbie Sorensen credits this growing trend to the resilience and fortitude of our Pacific families to step up and move into a form of normality as Alert Levels go down.

“What we are seeing is the typical strength and resilience of our Pacific families to move forward and adjust their lives to changing circumstances. Our Pacific community have always risen to the challenges they face and this includes the impressive increase in Covid-19 testing and vaccination rates.

When the country went into Lockdown, we offered immediate support for families and many took up this opportunity. But with more members of the family back at work, many of the families are heading back into a space of normality which is great”.

The focus now for PFL remains with the Pacific Auckland community who are still in Lockdown for at least another week. The PFL Partners in Auckland continue to experience high demand for not just food packages but also utility, rental and mental health support. PFL will continue to resource their partners to ensure the current pace of delivery remains the same.

“Auckland is still in lockdown, so their circumstances have not changed and as the lockdown continues to extend so too does the level of anxiety and stress for many of our families. We want to reassure our families in Auckland that there is no limit to our current support and that if families need assistance with food packages and other services such as rental relief – we will mobilize this as fast as we can.

Although our priority is with Auckland – if there are families that are in urgent need outside of Auckland, our partners will still provide the necessary support if required”, says Mrs Sorensen.

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Date: Wednesday 15 September 2021

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