CHILDREN living in poverty in Dorset need more emergency help than ever before, according to charity Barnardo’s.

This year it is set to hand out more than £56,000 in crisis loans in the south west, more than four times the level of just three years ago.

Recent grants include £200 for two single beds for two children – one had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor and another sharing a sofa bed with her mum.

A grant of £300 was given to a family of five children whose father had lost his job and was unable to afford oil to heat their home and a single mum-of-two received £200 for a cooker after leaving her partner due to domestic violence.

Applications for grants in the area are rising at a higher rate than any other region in the UK.

Heather Colbeck, director of Barnardo’s South West, said: “There are in the south west a considerable number of families who live in poverty. We’re particularly concerned about working families living on very low wages. We feel that’s where the financial crisis will really hit hard.”

Emergency food banks in both Bournemouth and Poole have also seen a dramatic increase in demand from families who can’t afford to put food on the table.

The Bournemouth Food Bank is currently handing out about 25 bags of food every day to families in crisis. Manager Vicki Lent said many are being forced to choose between food and fuel. A spokesman for Barnardo’s South West said a wide range of people now need help, echoed by Vicki who said: “They might be the people next door, looking as if they are coping perfectly well but they are living on credit or hand to mouth and not coping very well.”

Barnardo’s is now calling on the government to offer more financial help to families in need in next week’s budget.

It is urging ministers to consider taking away universal benefits such as child benefit and winter fuel allowances from some people and to target the cash in a different way.

“If this mounting pressure on poor families is ignored we are storing up even greater trouble for the future” chief executive Anne Marie Carrie told the Daily Echo. “Employment is the only long term route out of poverty yet the government has created disincentives to work which need to be re-assessed and fast.”

She said the average grant is £256 and added: “Families need financial help now.”