Poor outcomes predicted

"We've seen a series of decisions taken around benefit levels, around Working for Families, and if anything that will become more difficult and tighter and meaner, and more poverty-creating.

"In the next three to five years … the impact for me, in terms of what that means for low-income households, individuals, low-income disadvantaged communities, doesn't bear thinking about really."

O'Brien, also the social security spokesman for Child Poverty Action Group, says the social investment approach promised by the Government will not work to improve outcomes for those in hardship.

"The individualised targeting that they've been talking about will not take us anywhere in terms of shifting the dial on incomes, on poverty, on housing affordability, which is what determines what happens for so many individuals and families and communities."

He says targeting hard-to-reach people and groups at the fringe is one thing, but disagrees this should be the central approach.

Individualised approach an improvement

But Maria English, the chief executive of data analysis company ImpactLab disputes this, arguing an individualised approach makes sure people don't fall through the cracks.

"It's about designing services in ways that meet the daily needs, aspirations and priorities of those using the service, rather than what often happens, which is that the users of the service are expected to adapt and organise their lives around the way that those services work," English explains.

The mindset of aiming to deliver social value for every dollar spent was championed by former finance minister and then Prime Minister Bill English (Maria's father) and underpins the work of ImpactLab (of which he is the chairman).

English says her experience with social investment is that having local providers on the ground to deliver these individualised services is critical.

"That trust they have is essential to supporting those people who engage with services.

"An example of this is we worked with a group of nurses and a doctor who tracked how many times a nurse needed to visit a family before they were willing to engage with us, for example, to get their kids immunised.

"And they found for some families, it was five visits, but for some families it was 40, and the contract stops at five - they don't get funded to do 40 visits.

"But actually, that's the level of trust-building required for people who have experienced a lot of trauma, who don't trust the system."

But what about the big issues?

O'Brien says that works for those individuals who can be targeted for a specific need (if they can actually be found), but misses the big structural issues around why the system isn't working for those families in the first place.

"All you're doing is continuing what we've done for goodness knows how long.

"For example, if you really want to make a difference to low-income households, the most valuable thing you can do is improve their incomes and you do that around benefits, around taxes, around jobs that are solid jobs with good prospects.

"And you don't do that just simply by dealing individually case by case, on repeat with people with inadequate income and avoiding and dodging those really key questions."

Another concern O'Brien has is with finding these individuals in the first place, and this includes issues around privacy and stigma.

"If you've got a framework in which you've got those core issues taken care of around housing, around jobs, around incomes and so on, I don't know that your data is going to get you very much further on.

"Because the group is relatively small and relevant and quite heterogeneous in many ways and so it's going to need a lot of individualised attention and individualised responses.

"So I'm not sure that the data work is going to help you when it gets to that level of individual data."

His fear is that the heavy emphasis placed by the Government on using social investment as the guiding light for social spending is that the other broad-base support won't be there.

"The difficulty with the way it is developing, is that that is all there is."

Data quality

The quality of data is something English says could and should be improved - but it can only be done by using it in the first place to see where the gaps are.

"An example of this is we've just done an exercise with Manaaki Rangatahi, who are the youth homelessness collective for New Zealand, and they had a really simple question which is, how many young people in New Zealand are homeless?

"We came up with an initial estimate, which was around 20,000 are in some version of homelessness and probably at least 5000 were in severe homelessness, like without shelter, or not in any kind of safe accommodation.

"And what I found remarkable was that we hadn't done that exercise before and there was some simple things we learnt, like different government departments use different age brackets.

"So it's actually very difficult to identify that population of young people without caregivers who are homeless, because we can't even see them in the data because of the way we categorise them, and we only figured that out, because we tried to actually count them."

Stigma

O'Brien says the issue of stigma is also problematic with individualised responses, giving the example of the free school lunch programme.

"If it was only for those who needed it … those who get school lunches wouldn't take them up because they don't want to embarrass themselves by saying, you know, we don't have enough food."

But English argues stigma can be addressed.

"I think it's important to distinguish between the analytical tools and the way services are delivered. People delivering the services understand their communities and families they work with, they're able to make sophisticated and complex judgments in an evolving situation."

In other words, the stigma will only be on paper.

O'Brien isn't convinced: "Good luck with that", he says.

"A lot of school lunch programmes are delivered locally by local communities currently so there's nothing different about that.

"This is about real people and no matter how fancy you get with what you do around delivery, there's stacks of evidence around the world about the way that stigmatising leads to low take up."

Measuring success

A key part of the social investment concept is the ability to measure whether something has worked and how that success is quantified.

The Social Wellbeing Agency has been tasked with designing standards for government departments to know if their investments in social services are working. Read more

• Emma Hatton is a political journalist at Newsroom

As reported recently by CathNews, church leaders met, March 11, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni and Housing Minister Megan Woods to discuss issues of mutual concern.

The churches' position papers have just been released.

"We seek tika me pono (truth and justice) to right wrongs in our history that continue to lead to disparities which see poorer health outcomes for Maori and Pasifika. We cannot be healthy unless all are healthy", the church leaders said.

Acknowledging the impact of COVID-19, the church leaders said the virus has exposed new forms of inequality and thrown new light on old and ongoing injustices.

"Many want to get back to ‘normal', but we don't want a ‘normality' that returns to an everyday life which is indifferent to the poor and to the environment, and just exposes us again to the next pandemic."

During the pandemic, church and state cooperation has ensured wide-ranging support - from connecting with kaumatua/isolated elderly people, finding accommodation, providing necessities, supporting migrant workers and temporary visa holders.

"We seek ongoing engagement in this regard," New Zealand's church leaders said.

Two issues — housing and welfare — "have been priorities for decades in these meetings of Church Leaders and Government, but remain urgent and pressing issues in the context of the pandemic."

COVID vaccinations

Confirming their support for vaccinations, the church leaders offered to:

• Contribute to public messaging about Covid-19 as an ethical choice for the common good.
• Support and encourage church members to be vaccinated.
• Provide access to church facilities as vaccination centres.

They asked for:

• Information about the vaccination priority settings for church workers like hospital chaplains.
• Clarity around the process of setting priorities for border entry for non-citizens and residents.
• Recognition that there are circumstances in which church workers are essential workers for immigration purposes.
• Recognition of family reunification as a priority when border restrictions can be relaxed.

Welfare, Income and Wellbeing

The church leaders said they want:

• To provide input into policy and programmes that support New Zealanders making significant permanent changes to work and careers because of Covid-19 outcomes, including retraining and psychosocial support.
• To work with Government and other agencies to provide access to psychosocial services for those affected by COVID-19 health or economic effects.
• Government to recognise the benefit levels do not meet basic needs and should be lifted.
• To continue the dialogue about addressing food insecurity.
• To encourage the Government to continue to push a wellbeing approach to better integrate social, economic and environmental dimensions to grow inter-generational wellbeing and resilience.

Housing

The church leaders would like to see:

• A long-term balanced policy approach to the housing crisis is needed. The pressure is building as homeownership reduces, and rent increases.
• The Government partnering more and sharing development investments with community housing providers.
• The Government committing to a balanced tenure policy of social housing, secure renting and affordable homeownership, with access for lower-income households.
• Priority access for Maori and Pasifika households.
• Housing support assistance reviewed so lower-income households are realistically better off and can afford essential housing costs.

Source

• Church Leaders meet with PM and Ministers (PDF)
• Image: BBC

Figures obtained by the lobby group under the Official Information Act show since the Government's first tranche of welfare reforms were introduced in July last year, 377 beneficiaries with dependent children faced sanctions on their benefits.

Changes under the Future Focus programme required people to reapply for the unemployment benefit after one year, solo parents with children over six to be work-tested and sickness beneficiaries assessed. It introduced a graduated sanction regime which cut benefits by 50 per cent for a first work test failure and 100 per cent for ongoing failure.

A year after the changes, 12,500 people had their unemployment benefits cancelled, saving the Government $17 million, and a further 13,000 went off the domestic purposes benefit.

Figures indicate that from July 2010 until August this year, 234 solo parents had their benefits cut, along with 129 on the unemployment benefit who had dependent children. A further eight on unemployment benefit training and seven on the sickness benefit with dependent children also faced sanctions.

In 84 cases the youngest child in the family was younger than five and in 63 cases the benefit cut lasted more than four weeks.

Child Poverty Action Group's director Michael O'Brien said benefit levels provided a subsistence level of support at best.

"These children almost certainly lead very impoverished lives already. We know poverty can have life-long consequences on children's health, education and well-being."

"In a period of high unemployment and rising costs this amounts to state neglect."

It is estimated there are 270,000 New Zealand children living in poverty.

The second tranche of the Government's reforms came into effect this year and include ensuring sole parents with children five and older are available for part-time work, sole parents with children 14 and older are available for full-time work and those who have another child while on a benefit are available for work after one year.

Full Story : Stuff

Image: True Productions for Kids Can

His reforms are a trial run for what a local welfare working group chaired by economist Paula Rebstock has recommended here.

Rebstock had a rather narrower assignment - to "reduce long-term benefit dependency". She took what she called "an actuarial approach", recommending "investing" in unemployed people early so they could contribute to the economy. Yet this different approach led her to almost exactly the same proposals as her British counterpart.

Lincoln University economist Paul Dalziel, in a recent critique, says Rebstock fails to address the policy shift 25 years ago away from full employment and other policies such as low-interest home loans that helped low-income working families.

"If we follow the welfare working group's example in failing to address the historical forces that have given rise to the current situation, but only put more pressure on beneficiaries through lower income support and more draconian job-search requirements, the result will be an intensification of poverty," he says.

In Britain, the Archbishop of Westminster has written to Iain Duncan Smith expressing his concern over the potential impact of new and planned government welfare policies on the most vulnerable members of society.

In a strongly worded letter, Archbishop Vincent Nichols refers to the department's own figures which show 50,000 families losing £93 a week as a result of the welfare reforms. He also referred to reports from the Caritas Social Action Network regarding growing concerns over the repercussions of the changes and the effect they are having on making social problems worse.

The Archbishop quotes the De Paul Trust, a member of CSAN, reporting homelessness increasing for the first time in 10 years and youth homelessness rising by 15 per cent in the last 12 months.

Sources

• New Zealand Herald
• Independent Catholic News
• Image: The Telegraph (Getty)