The implementation in this parliamentary term of the Welfare Working Group recommendations 27: Parenting obligations, 28: Support for at-risk families, 30: Income management and budgeting support, and 34: Employment services.
What are they?
Recommendation 27: Parenting obligations
a) The Welfare Working Group recommends that every recipient receiving a welfare payment who is caring for children be required to meet the following expectations:
i. ensure their children are attending school when they are legally required to;
ii. ensure their children participate in approved early childhood education once their child reaches three years of age; and
iii. ensure their children complete the 12 free Wellchild/Tamariki Ora health checks, which include completion of the immunisation schedule, unless they make an informed choice not to;
and that failure to meet these expectations after efforts to address reasons for non-compliance would result in the recipient’s income being managed by a third-party or some other means, such as a payment card; and
b) The Welfare Working Group recommends that systems be put in place to measure and monitor the compliance with the expectations set out in a) above.
Recommendation 28: Support for at-risk families
The Welfare Working Group recommends that:
a) all teenage parents under the age of 18 and other parents of at-risk families be required to participate in an approved budgeting and parenting programme and that access be provided to these programmes free of charge;
b) an assessment of risk to the well-being of children should form part of a more systematic assessment of long-term risk of welfare dependency and provide a basis for intervention through participation in intensive parenting support;
c) at-risk families and whānau with complex needs be provided with wrap-around services, preferably by single, integrated providers which address family and whānau needs as a whole. These programmes need to be responsive to Māori through culturally appropriate, holistic, and whānau-centred solutions. In addition, they need to meet the needs of other parts of the community, such as Pacific, migrant and refugee communities; and
d) at-risk families participating in an intensive early intervention parenting programme have access to quality early childhood education and childcare services from 18 months of age, as currently provided through Family Start.
Recommendation 30: Income management and budgeting support
The Welfare Working Group recommends that in situations where a parent receiving welfare has shown they have a clear need for budgeting support due to repeated difficulties in managing their budget, such that their child or children’s well-being is put at risk:
a) the person be given access to budgeting support services;
b) Government consider using a third party to manage the person’s income, on the understanding that that this income management would cease once the person has demonstrated their capacity to manage their assistance; and/or
c) this may entail provision of a ‘payment card’ programmed for use only on essential items, to ensure that children’s needs are properly met.
Recommendation 34: Employment services
The Welfare Working Group recommends that:
a) employment services be based on contestable, outcome based contracts; and
b) contract referral processes and contract payment structures be designed to financially incentivise contractors to achieve positive outcomes for those with greatest risk of long-term dependency.
A lot of this is already in place.
Private contracted employment services that work with the hardest to place. At August 2011 150 service providers were contracted to assist around 15,000 clients to find employment.
Contracted budgeting services. In 2009 83 members of the NZ Federation of family Budgeting were contracted to MSD to provide budgeting services.
Payment cards is National's policy for young beneficiaries. Once they are available I have no doubt they will be extended to other beneficiaries as per the Australian operation.
Beneficiaires are already sent to parenting programmes. I had a client who went on one (which seemed of dubious quality.)
Analysis of the Family Start programme based in Christchurch showed some gain for children of beneficiaries but not for parents. As I blogged a couple of days ago intervention that is not wanted (compulsory) can further entrench parents in a siege mentality which may put their children at greater risk. So I am very dubious about complusion. I concluded that post with the following:
But I keep coming back to two broad propositions for the state, which will continue to monopolise the problem for some time yet. It has got to stop incentivising childbirth and start incentivising prevention. Stop paying people to have children and start paying them not to. And it has got to stop counselling against adoption and get more children into stable and loving homes from the outset.
The massive escalating intervention - private, public or a mix - is usually too much, too late.
The concessions extracted by ACT represent more intervention and more paternalism which it can be argued are necessary on the back of an extensive benefit system that pays young women to become mothers.
They do not represent a reduction of the benefit system itself.
National's policy of worktesting mothers when their youngest child is 5 (or 1 if the child has been added to the benefit) better represents a reduction in the availability of benefits. ACT should have (and may have) pushed for the age to be lower, afterall they have extracted the promise that parents on benefits must ensure their children participate in approved early childhood education once their child reaches three years of age. Or time limits which was always part of their policy in the past.
Between them there is still no resolve to actually stop the welfare incentives that give New Zealand the second highest teen birthrate in the developed world.
3 comments:
We are paying solo parents to stay home and look after their children and paying for childcare. Early childhood education is not rocket science. If they are not capable of reading to their children, teaching them how to count and use scissors, then surely they are not capable of parenting their children?
The most important "concession" for welfare- and for everything else, is the spending cap. We have an aging population; health costs in real terms increase at about 5% above inflation every year (new drugs & equiptment); and are facing a Euro & US meltdown that's already going to cost Treasury another 20 BILLION next year.
That's what will drive welfare rates down, and bludgers off the rolls.
There are only two real welfare reforms possible"
1. reduce the about paid in nominal terms
2. reduce the absolute number on welfare.
The government has GOT to change the benefit system to make it clear
that there is a threshold. I would put it at three children.
If you have more than that, you're on your own. It's up to you.
Don't expect the taxpayer to support your efforts to breed enough children for a cricket team.
If the government doesn't do that, then everything else is just pissing in the wind.
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