RELATED: Maryborough lags in state’s bottom six.

A Bendigo social welfare provider has called for increased funding in the wake of the Dropping off the edge report, released this week.

The report found areas including Bendigo, Kangaroo Flat and Eaglehawk were among the most disadvantaged in the state.

Bendigo Family and Financial Services general manager Jenny Elvey said federal government funding cuts had contributed to the poor outcomes.

“If you’re trying to help people that are disadvantaged you can’t do it with less when the issues are increasing and a lot of the issues that are there are because of cuts in funding,” she said.

Ms Elvey said her organisation had lost some of its capacity to help improve the standard of living for disadvantaged people through cuts to the Commonwealth Department of Social Services Financial Crisis and Material Aid funding program.

“We’ve lost probably about a quarter of our emergency relief funding and we’ve also lost our financial counselling funding,” she said.

“A lot of the agencies that have been re-funded have been re-funded with less than they were expecting (so) the area has lost funding.”

A spokeswoman for federal Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison said an extra $1.7 million dollars had recently been added to a $100 million funding pool already being delivered for emergency relief and financial counselling.

St Luke’s Anglicare regional director Carolyn Wallace agreed funding cuts had affected service provision, including the Youth Connections program.

“That was a great way of connecting young people to employment and education opportunities and that’s been a significant loss across a number of communities,” she said.

“We run a financial counselling program, but we have two full-time financial counsellors providing services in four local government areas (so) we have waiting lists.”

But Ms Wallace stressed throwing money at the problem wasn’t necessarily the solution.

“It’s about consolidating and co-ordinating funding and making sure there’s local control over how it’s allocated,” she said.

City of Greater Bendigo mayor Peter Cox has responded to the disadvantage in parts of the city highlighted in the Dropping off the edge 2015 report.

Cr Cox said the council played a role in working with the community to understand and address the causes of disadvantage.

“The disparity between areas of advantage and disadvantage is not unique to this region,” he said.

“Many regional cities are a microcosm of capital cities and as they grow larger, so too does the social-economic separation within them.

The city is very aware of this situation and has a range of measures that contribute to addressing it.”