The Salvation Army says it has been the toughest Christmas on record for Kiwi families with almost 16,000 children needing emergency aid.
Across New Zealand it has handed out more than 14,000 food parcels and other charities' are experiencing similar increases for help.
Salvation Army's Pam Waugh says the holiday period is hard for children living in poverty.
"We have children saying, ‘I just wish I could find some money for my mum and dad’, or ‘I wish that my mum didn't cry so much because she doesn't have enough food’," she says.
Clinical psychologist Dougal Sutherland says there’s a lot of pressure on parents to buy children presents, and kids are affected by what their friends have.
"So if you don't have it, it becomes quite a salient point, ‘why don't we have it? oh it's because we're poor’."
He says warns the effects of poverty on children can be long-term.
"The stress from poverty is one of the major factors in adolescence depression and adolescence suicide, and that's from that loss of optimism, that loss of self-worth, and that loss of hope," Dougal Sutherland says.
And charities expect the number of people needing help to rise again in the New Year as back-to-school costs heap pressure on already struggling families.
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