The pandemic has led to higher levels of mental health strain and food poverty among disadvantaged families.
That's the finding of a poll of state-funded family resource centres across the country.
69% say they've been providing more food parcels, and 51% have been providing more talk therapy.
Claire Cashman, chair of the Family Resource Centre National Forum, says social distancing has made it much harder for counsellors to help families in need.
"The majority of us, our counsellors, provided one to one phone support to people in crisis or in need of direct support.
"But that's as much as we could do because of the confines of the lockdown.
"We keep checking in, every day our family support workers ring the families they work with, in fact we're getting referrals for new families, and we're actually supporting without ever having met which can be quite challenging."
