The Child Poverty Action Group has issued a stocktake on government's unsatisfactory implementation of the WEAG's recommendations. A WEAG panel member said on radio, one in seven children are on a welfare benefit and that they "can't wait." From the report:
A background paper to Whakamana Tāngata, entitled The income support system, noted that 168,275 dependent children were living in families receiving main benefits in March 2018...Children cannot wait for more resources, as their minds, emotions, bodies are constantly developing and are often permanently adversely affected by toxic stress and lack of essentials. Our inadequate and ineffective welfare system continues to entrench poverty for children.
The number had risen to over 217,000 by July 2020.
But wait. In 2019 over 6,000 babies were added to an existing benefit.
Information released to me under the OIA shows that 6,190 caregivers had added one or more 'subsequent children' aged less than 12 months to their benefit during 2019. That represents one in ten of all babies born last year. For Maori the ratio doubles to one in five.
If their existing children are indeed experiencing "toxic stress" why are the parents having more?Perhaps their existing children are not experiencing "toxic stress"? Perhaps parents don't recognise that their existing children are experiencing "toxic stress"?
Whatever. It isn't the welfare system that "continues to entrench poverty". It's parents who continue to produce babies in the full knowledge a benefit is their only source of income for the forseeable future.
It's an inarguable fact and yet we are constantly bombarded with bullshit messages to the contrary.
In the same vein a Stuff article has a Maori advocate saying that health services are failing mothers who continue to drink during pregnancy!
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On a related note, the comments on truancy (below) are from Maori Principals Association President Myles Ferris as reported in Stuff:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/123514144/marked-absent-the-attendance-freefall-in-new-zealands-schools
"Myles Ferris says he also doesn’t like to advocate punitive measures because they often impact Māori disproportionately. However, back-up support from other agencies would help when attendance services reach the limit of their abilities, he says. “I hate to bring them into it, but whether it’s the justice department, whether it’s Oranga Tamariki - I don’t know what the solution is.” When non-attendance stems from trauma, though, sanctions and prosecutions will not work. “You can’t punish trauma out of a child or out of a whānau.”
So what is causing trauma in these Maori children, their whānau?
Maybe I am just an old white guy.
But it seems to me that New Zealand is heading down a road to apartheid.
ie separate development.
A combination of white wokeness and Maori radicals is not doing NZ any favours.
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