‘Inequality is deepening’: demand for Australia’s support services rockets as cost of living bites

Isis Khalil has spent years of her life trying to help people navigate through poverty. A financial counsellor, she has seen how quickly people’s lives can collapse around them through no fault of their own – and the devastating effects that unexpected debt or a sudden change of circumstances can wreak on whole families.

But with the cost of living increasing, helping people out of hardship is getting more difficult.

“People are now in a worse position than they were when I first met them,” Khalil says.

Related: Australian CEOs pocket 15% pay rises as average worker wages fail to match cost-of-living increases

“I’ve got clients with very complex circumstances – some of them I’ve had for a few years because their situations are so complex. I work with people who are experiencing or in the process of becoming homeless because their rent is going up so much that they cannot afford to pay it.

“It’s so much more complex than just increases in petrol and food. And the cost-of-living situation at the moment makes everything so much worse.”

The need for help is only rising. Ask Izzy, a free online directory for support services around Australia, has found searches for assistance on its platform skyrocketed in May to the highest levels since it launched in 1996.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Run by the tech not-for-profit Infoxchange, Ask Izzy provides the public with information and contacts for services relevant to their needs and in their area – everything from housing assistance and legal representation to public toilets.

In May, people searched Ask Izzy more than 170,903 times – the largest number of monthly searches on record. About 14% of those searches – or 23,918 – were for food relief alone.

The search rates have gone up over the last 12 months too: there were 1.736m Ask Izzy searches over the past year, compared with 1.631m in the preceding 12-month period, an increase of 6.4%.

Ask Izzy’s search data also suggests the need for mental health support services has grown significantly, with 316,343 searches for mental health and wellbeing assistance in the past 12 months, compared with 238,000 in the preceding 12-month period – an increase of 33%.

More than half the searches overall last month were for hardship-related assistance, including food, financial assistance, emergency relief and material aid.

Infoxchange chief executive, David Spriggs, says the data just adds to the compounding evidence that the cost-of-living crisis is pushing more and more people to the brink.

“Since the launch of Ask Izzy, this is the highest level of requests for hardship services and emergency relief that we’ve seen. This is putting greater pressure on not-for-profits and local community organisations who are at the front level of responding to these records level of service demand,” Spriggs says.

“Our data tells us how inequality in Australia is deepening as the cost of living soars, and it is critical we can provide the most vulnerable Australians with the support they need.”

Related: Shrinkflation – it’s here and it’s getting bigger (smaller) | First Dog on the Moon

Khalil works for Mission Australia, just one of the charities and services that may pop up for people when they search Ask Izzy. She says the support services and the people they are helping need more assistance than they are getting.

“We definitely need more resources. I know the government has recently lifted the income support rates, but it hasn’t lifted enough,” Khalil says.

“A lot of clients when they face hardship like this, they become really desperate so they end up taking out loans from third-tier unregulated lenders, or loans that are very high on repayments. We need to let people know that there are other options there for them.

“We also need more food vouchers, petrol vouchers, rent vouchers … we need to be looking at hardship situations in a different way, and having policies that protect people who are really vulnerable.”