Val Carter works with Home and Family, an organisation that's worked with Christchurch families for more than 100 years.
She believes child poverty is on a quickly escalating scale and that people are surprised and shocked by the size of the issue.
"If a child has to go to school when they're hungry and haven't got uniform, it very quickly builds into total non-school engagement."
And Carter has a warning for people on all levels of income.
"It's not a huge divide between people that have and have not… it doesn’t take much to find yourself where you'd rather not be."
It would be "nice" to say the coverage of this issue is comprehensive, yet with such a huge range of issues, ideologies and potential causes affecting and stemming from child poverty, it's a challenge to cover it all.
Many issues could be discussed: children’s health – physical illness caused by poor housing or mental health and tripled counselling with many children showing anxiety, not enough money to pay for doctors prescriptions, crippling debt or parents unable to upskill.
However, the Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft believes tackling the underlying issues of inequality and material disadvantage affecting children is the only way forward.
"No New Zealander, no proud New Zealander wants to live in a country of inequality. No New Zealander wants to live in a country where there are 90,000 children at significant material disadvantage. We need to address that issue and we need to really tackle it head on."
He is adamant we all have to get involved to turn the tide on child poverty and the issues that stem from it.
"It's too easy to say someone else has got to solve it, the whole community's got to be behind it," Becroft says.
… And so what happened to Sam?
A community trust gave him a gift voucher for a shoe shop.
For now, he has a pair of shoes to wear to school.
For now, no more gumboots to school.
A normal pair of shoes, like any other child.