CABQ has been operating in Queenstown for 30 years. Central Lakes Trust has been supporting the bureau with operational grants since 2001.

In our 20/21 year CLT offered many of our long standing social service agencies that experienced increased demand due to Covid, the ability to submit a COVID-19 emergency funding application. In that same year we gave out 16 COVID-19 emergency grants, including to the bureau. This year overall COVID-19 emergency grants have reduced to five, the CABQ being one of them.

Due to the pandemic the demand on CABQ services increased substantially with much more complex enquiries ranging from employment and immigration to tenancy issues. CABQ was listed as a key local agency alongside the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC), Happiness House, Salvation Army and Community Networks Wanaka as part of the QLDC emergency response to COVID-19.

CABQ fielded 4,500 enquires for the year ended June 2021, up on 4,270 the year prior. The total time spent with clients increased from 1,000 to 1,200 hours, an average of approximately 30 minutes per client.

Since the onset of Omicron, in early 2020, CABQ has struggled to offer its full service. Twenty volunteers are required a week and they currently have a pool of eight volunteers. With many volunteers being older people, they are not comfortable working in the office due to a real concern about catching COVID-19.

Due to this demand a COVID-19 emergency grant for 2022 was also granted. This is enabling CABQ to continue providing advice/distributing queries to key volunteers on issues such as specialty employment and tenancy queries along with the rights and responsibilities of the wage subsidy, actual and potential redundancies, tenancy rights and immigration visa enquiries while COVID-19 has been affecting our community.