Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Reality on the front-line

Politics and reality not infrequently bear little relation to each other.

My last two posts have been about the Maori Party's determination to retain the CYF whanau first policy.

The new boss of CYF was recently at the Otara office facing questions from front-line staff. For example:

Will you solve the foster-parent drought that makes it impossible to find placements for our mokopuna?

Note the questioner wasn't asking for specifically Maori placements. More importantly, the question implies that they aren't enough whanau carers available anyway.

The main difficulty in recruiting foster parents, I expect, is the temporary nature of placements which is very unsettling for the children and, in turn, the carer. The vetting processes may also be off-putting or rule out potential carers for possibly trivial reasons. But more 'foster parents' will step up as the home-for-life rules become better known. I hope.

8 comments:

Redbaiter said...

Hi Lindsay,

Are you going to do any analysis of the Nat's claim that their policies to reduce the number of teenage mothers on welfare are working?

Seems to me that their claim is pretty superficial, and there is more to this than they are saying.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

No.
I'm tired of it.
The teenage birth rate has fallen dramatically.
There are multiple reasons for this, not least Rodney Hide's suggestion that teenagers are having virtual sex instead of real sex.
Far fewer teenage girls are becoming teenage mothers so there are fewer available to even become beneficiaries. Most still do.
What influence government policy is having? Who knows.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I didn't mean to sound rude Redbaiter. Other priorities occupy right now. But thanks for asking.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/whose-research-to-believe.html

Redbaiter said...

Hi Lindsay,

Thanks for your reply.

I didn't think you were rude:)

Your response more or less agrees with my own thinking on it anyway, and I already knew about the falling number of mothers.

Its pretty hard to think of a way to measure policy success, or even to work out what the objective of that policy might be.

If it is to get young mothers off the dole, then one would need the figures showing how many signed on to the Nat's program, and how many of those stopped receiving the dole because (presumably) they went to work. Naturally the Nats don't give these figures.

As you say, its quite a complex issue.

Nevertheless, I think my suspicions that the Nats are trying to take credit here for something that is mostly nothing to do with them is probably right.

Thanks for the link.

Now get back to your other priorities. :)

Lindsay Mitchell said...

If you want more in-depth reading about contributing factors try this:

http://www.superu.govt.nz/sites/default/files/Teen_Births_Report_0.pdf

(Though you can never trust Waikato University to be unbiased).

Redbaiter said...

Thanks again for your responses Lindsay.

Ending up doing my own post.

Anonymous said...

Trust us, you could never offend Redbaiter. Thousands have tried before you. He offended most of them.

Hi Red.