Moore Markhams New Zealand is supporting 37 Kiwi kids to have their own bedding packs to ensure they get a warm and healthy night’s sleep.
We’re supporting Variety – the children’s charity’s Beds for Kids programme in response to the increasing rates of respiratory-related hospitalisations among New Zealand’s most-at-risk children and young people.
Dreams look very different when you’re sleeping on the floor. Many of the children Variety supports, sleep on the floor or chairs or on couches. Others share beds with their family members, which means they share illnesses. These beds are often just mouldy mattresses.
We invite you to join us and support this
great work that Variety undertakes.
One in 10 children in New Zealand’s poorest communities do not have a bed of their own. As a result, they are far more likely to contract preventable illnesses like rheumatic fever, bronchiolitis, or suffer with general respiratory illnesses, and skin infections. Over 28,000 children are hospitalised each year with preventable illnesses that are linked to poor sleeping environments.
These same children are three times more likely than other children to be hospitalised again, and 10 times more likely to die.
- 73% of these hospitalised children had inadequate bedding
- 20% shared a bed
- 24% had no bed
- 18% had no mattress
- 41% had mouldy bedding.
Poor sleep can lead to hyperactivity issues as early as age five. In teenagers, anxiety and depression are linked to poor sleeping habits. Kids who don't sleep well, don't grow as well as their peers. Conversely, children, who benefit from good sleep tend to get sick less frequently, achieve better grades, have improved emotional health, and a healthier home life.
Health issues during childhood not only have immediate consequences, such as missing out on school, parents taking time off work to care for them, and spending scarce resources on visiting the doctor, but can also have an impact on long-term health outcomes, continuing well into adulthood.
Variety partners with the Ministry of Health through the Healthy Homes Initiatives (HHI) to deliver brand new mattresses, bedframes, cots, pepipods / wahakura and bedding to children throughout New Zealand who need it.
Partnering with the Ministry of Health through the Healthy Homes Initiative enables Variety to speed and scale up impact and ensure meaningful outcomes that enhance the life outcomes and wellbeing of vulnerable children. The HHIs estimate that through their various interventions, there will be savings to the public healthcare system – estimated at $10.4 million. It is expected that $30 million in healthcare costs will be averted over the next three-years.
Learn more about the work that Variety undertakes
here.