Uniting Vic.Tas (Uniting) is a community service organisation which provides emergency relief services throughout Victoria and Tasmania. Each year, Uniting delivers emergency relief support to more than 10,000 people from more than 20 locations across Victoria and Tasmania, with service providers reporting a significant increase and unmet demand for emergency relief services. 

Despite being a critical service that provides immediate food relief and other essential items to those in acute need, emergency relief services are themselves experiencing precarity. While a necessary infrastructure or safety net, in Australia they are neither well-funded nor secure in their capacity to provide food, let alone meet the extent of need for food and emergency relief.

To better understand the precarity of emergency relief and the factors underpinning it, this research was conducted through a study into eight Uniting emergency relief services (both metro and regional).

Key findings

• Heavy reliance on in-kind costs occurred both to cover service delivery costs as well as material aid costs.
• Staffing of services is heavily reliant on unpaid labour.
• Overall, financial analysis shows that the current levels of Commonwealth government funding contribute to only a small portion of the total cost of delivering emergency relief services.
• Infrastructure influences the level of material aid and drives greater impact.
• To increase the stability, reach and efficiency of emergency relief services, there is a need for a change in investment design.