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

My research explores, in the inner lives of Pacific women, how their relationship with God can affect their wellbeing, and how their image of God relates to their relationship with their parents.

How we name, visualise and describe God is most often directly correlated to our relationships with attachment figures such as a caregiver or parent.

The way we talk about God and how we perceive God is also influenced by our upbringing, religious involvement and commitment, religious artwork in churches, museums and on social media.

Pacific peoples see religion and spirituality as important for wellbeing, alongside relationships with the physical environment, family, and culture.

Yet there is much we don't know about religious belief in the Pacific.

The disciplines of Christian theology, indigenous studies, psychology, and sociology are yet to adequately investigate specific religious practices, their theological basis, and how this affects mental wellbeing for Pacific peoples.

For my doctoral studies in theology I had the chance to speak with, and learn from, 64 young Pacific women in Tamaki Makaurau about how their images of God and cultural identity affected their mental wellbeing.

I met young mama who were working and studying at the same time, women who were deeply immersed in their language and cultural reclamation journey.

I met women who had been clinically diagnosed with a mental illness, women who were angry at the church, yet also those who wholeheartedly were serving in the church.

I met women who, when faced with a physical illness equally sought traditional Pacific healing methods, Western medicine, and prayer.

In our talanoa (free discussion), we laughed, cried, untangled our family and village connections, and talked about how church communities in Aotearoa might better engage with Pacific congregations to talk about and support mental wellbeing.

What struck me is how much Pacific women carry - emotionally, socially and psychologically. They need to navigate how to express their cultural identity in a Western, secular context.

If they aren't fluent in their native tongue they could be mocked by their wider extended family, unable to understand conversations and so feel inadequate.

They must also fulfil their families' expectations of what it means to be a Pasifika woman, whereas their male family members may have more social freedom. They may be responsible for caring for family members, as well as having to study and work.

And they feel obliged to succeed because that's what our older generations moved to Aotearoa for - educational opportunity, more employment options and a different future.

These young women were also grappling with what their Christian faith meant to them in light of being able to learn more about our cultures before colonisation and the harm churches caused in their compliance with racist colonial regimes.

• Dr Therese Lautua is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Theological and Religious Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland.
• First published in Newsroom

In a recent statement, the pro-life advocacy group Right to Life argues that while taxpayers have a moral obligation to contribute their taxes, they should not be obligated to fund "the murder of the innocent."

The group asserts that while the government upholds the killing of the unborn as a "reproductive choice for women," it denies taxpayers the right to choose not to finance abortions.

The comments come in a Right to Life budget statement about abortion as healthcare.

Right to Life says the government should abandon the notion that abortion is a healthcare service. It should also cease using taxpayers' funds to support the termination of innocent lives.

The organisation calls for greater consideration of the sanctity of unborn life and the moral implications associated with allocating public funds towards abortion.

The group's comments respond to the New Zealand government's 2023 "Wellbeing Budget".

The budget claims to support the present while building for the future. However, Right to Life argues the government's future well-being focus does not align with safeguarding the welfare of unborn children.

The organisation states that since 1977, when abortion was declared a core health service by a National government, subsequent administrations have consistently classified abortion as such, granting the "health service" unlimited funding and eliminating waiting lists.

Highlighting that $13 million has been allocated in the budget to support an estimated 13,000 unwanted unborn children, the group argues that the government is not prioritising the wellbeing of unborn children.

Drawing attention to the significant increase in healthcare spending since 2017, with the vote health budget nearly doubling from $76 billion to $136 billion, Right to Life points out the incongruity in the health service, where essential healthcare services struggle to meet their objectives while the termination of unborn children receives unfettered financial support.

While Right to Life commends the government's aim to reduce child poverty, it implores the administration to recognise what it calls "the greatest poverty" - the denial of life for unborn children.

The organisation questions how the well-being of future generations can be effectively promoted when approximately one in five unborn children's lives are prematurely terminated, representing a significant proportion (20%) of the unborn population.

Source

• Supplied: Right to Life

The Army considers Sunday church services an ‘essential service', as they offer spiritual health; a vital component of wellbeing.

They say that as frontline welfare responders to the economic and social effects of the Covid-19 crisis, they have seen first-hand the struggle many New Zealanders are facing with emotional and financial needs and societal and family disconnection.

The COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill makes no allowance for or trust in religious gatherings, "which further indicates this Government's low view of spirituality as a fundamental part of overall wellbeing," Salvation Army Maori Ministry director Lt-Colonel Ian Hutson says.

Hutson says the Bill shows a lack of trust in iwi, hapu and community groups to work within the Covid-19 guidelines, despite the proven leadership of Maori in protecting the health and wellbeing of whanau during Levels 3 and 4.

A range of academics has called for public consultation given the nature of the new law, backed by the Human Rights Commission which said there was a risk of "overreach" when sweeping powers were granted in times of national emergency.

"Mistakes are made and later regretted. This is precisely when our national and international human rights, and Te Tiriti, commitments must be taken into account."

The law will sit on the statute books for two years, but Parliament will have to actively renew the Act every 90 days.

The government has bowed to pressure and will now allow public scrutiny of the law by means of a select committee.

Source

• scoop.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• rnz.co.nz
• newshub.co.nz
• Image: healthnavigator.org.nz

Easton, who's recently published a user's guide to economic inequality, says inequality is difficult to measure.

One indicator might show it going up while another has it coming down or staying the same, 'so it's easy to choose the indicator you want'.

But, he says, all the indicators are that New Zealand suffered a sharp rise in inequality as a result of policy changes to tax rates and benefits 30 years ago and is now in the company of those OECD countries with the biggest gap between rich and poor.

'The simple way to put this is that in the 1980s we were in the bottom half of the OECD as far as inequality was concerned. Those above us had greater inequality.

'By the mid-1990s we were in the top half — among the most unequal parts of the OECD — and it's still like that.' Continue reading.

Cecily McNeill has edited Wel-Com, the newspaper for the Wellington and Palmerston North dioceses, for the past eight years, and worked as a radio journalist for 20 years.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: mimosaplanet.com