Bermuda’s needy population continues to rise despite a number of donors, according to the social agency Family Centre.

Executive director Martha Dismont said that “the picture is not a pretty one” for families in difficult straits.

She added that the number of individuals and families needing basic support for food and clothing at this time of year seemed to be “greater than ever before”.

Family Centre has provided toys for children, plus hampers and food vouchers, courtesy of its donors, but they continue to hear of struggling families, she said. “While we must be very grateful for these many gestures of love and support, we have to also begin to question why our need is so great.”

Bermuda’s high cost of living comes with “little or no safety net”, she noted, while unemployment has taken a toll on middle income as well as low income households. Ms Dismont said families had resorted to exhausting their savings and the support of others in their bid to “stay afloat without work”.

While she said employment would restore the dignity of those hit by hard times, Ms Dismont singled out “the areas of our population who need better education, life skills, and job training, in order to take advantage of any economic turnaround that we might see within the next year.

“Otherwise, we will be a community that must, once again, bring in overseas workers to take up the jobs that are being created.”

She said Family Centre would sustain the spirit of altruism evidenced by the support it had received but said the Island needed to build on it with a greater emphasis on “providing jobs, skill training, improved education and more nurturance of our children”.