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Children and Poverty: Moving Beyond Rhetoric

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Children and Poverty: Moving Beyond Rhetoric CHILDREN Summer 2011 • No. 79 Children and poverty: moving beyond rhetoric A Newsletter from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner Contents Editorial: Child poverty 3 News from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner 4 Measuring and monitoring child poverty and hardship 8 P¯ohara, T¯onui, K¯okiri: Imagine a child and wh¯anau centred 17 economy of wealth creation and poverty removal Childhood family income and later outcomes: results of a 24 30 year longitudinal study The economic and social impact of growing up in poverty 29 Children and young people speak out about child poverty 33 Child poverty – our experience at Anglican Family Care Centre, Dunedin 37 The complexity of family life and budgeting 39 The New Zealand welfare state and financial assistance for children 41 Poverty in families with dependent children: an international perspective 49 Ng¯ai Tahu – investing in future generations 57 A way forward 58 Information, resources, conferences 61 Want to be in to win a $25 book voucher? Fill in our quick survey at www.surveymonkey.com/s/childrennewsletter and give us some feedback about our Children newsletter. You could be the lucky winner... Cover artwork courtesy of the participants of the Photovoice project Please note: The opinions expressed by contributing writers for Children may be the opinion of the writer and/or their organisation. These opinions are not necessarily the views of the Children’s Commissioner. 2 Editorial: Child poverty By Dr Jo Cribb, Deputy Children’s Commissioner limitations and challenges in measuring and comparing poverty data. Associate Professor Manuka Henare Poverty. It is a word we have heard a lot in the last presents a Maori perspective on poverty and challenges few months. We have seen the human faces of us on how to think about poverty and wealth. Professor poverty on our TV screens and read the frightening Fergusson outlines his findings from his 30 year statistics in our newspapers. Those faces and those longitudinal study about the impact of growing up in numbers are disportionately children. Because sadly, poverty in New Zealand. David Grimmond, an economist, poverty disproportionately impacts on children. discusses the impact on us all of children growing up in poverty – in terms of the cost to society and impact on While it is promising that child poverty created so much our economy of children growing up in poverty. debate in the lead up to the election – that debate can not be left to die. Just because the rosettes and ballot We can not forget that behind the statistics and trends boxes are back in storage, it doesn’t mean poverty and evidence – poverty has a child’s face. Children’s should be too. views on poverty are presented by Michelle Egan-Bitran from our Office. Nikki Taylor, from the Anglican Family Poverty gets right to the core of political debate Care Centre, tells us about the impact of poverty on the and ideology, about the role of the state, about the children that she and her team work with, as does Darryl economy, about social spending. It is an emotive subject Evans from Budget Services Mangere. that can get right to the core of our personal beliefs. This is cold comfort for the children who will not have dinner There are many challenges, as well as opportunities, tonight and will sleep in an unhealthy house because we facing us as we look for a pragmatic, long-term have no enduring consensus on the way forward. consensus about how we improve circumstances for children growing up in poverty. David Preston presents Poverty is a complex issue about sources and level of an historical account of the current tax and welfare household income, decisions about what income is system which shows how it has grown in an unplanned spent on, cost of essentials, levels and quality of service, and incremental way and is not well placed to meet transport, infrastructure, family support, assets and the needs of 21st century children and their families. debt levels. It is a complex picture about the state of the Other jurisdictions have implemented a wide range of economy and labour market, as well as what happens in measures to address children growing up in poverty communities and within individual families and whanau. with varying degrees of success – as described by Robert There will not be an easy answer. Answers will be even Stephens in this edition. We can learn from these more difficult given the state of our nation’s finances. successes and failures. Just as we can learn from the successful programmes Post-settlement Te Runanga o But we have to find a way forward. A pragmatic Ngai Tahu have put in place to build wealth and capacity way forward. And that will have to include a level of amongst their people, as Fiona McLeod outlines. consensus amongst the nation’s leaders. Chopping and changing policies and working in a piecemeal way does Rod Oram concludes this edition by helping us frame not serve our children well. a way forward. And we have to find a way forward. A pragmatic, enduring consensus. We owe it to our The aim of this edition of Children is to present the children. statistics and research evidence about child poverty, and discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for N¯a t¯o rourou, n¯a taku rourou, ka ora ai te iwi making progress with the issue. It is also to clearly signal that children growing up in poverty will be a focus of the With your food basket and my food basket, the work of the Children’s Commissioner and our Office over people will thrive the next few years. Bryan Perry, a Principal Advisor at the Ministry of Social Development, outlines the available statistics and trends on child poverty and hardship as well as discussing the 3 News from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner By Audrey Barber, General Manager, Office of the Children’s Commissioner Highlights Dr Russell Wills and Dr Jo Cribb have been working on the 1 strategy for the Office for the next 4 /2 years of this Term and have taken up speaking opportunities with Police, Child, Youth and Family, health and others. A recent focus for the Office has been on leading discussions around the Green Paper on Vulnerable Children. The Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and staff have presented and facilitated numerous meetings to encourage debate and submissions on this process. These have ranged from meetings with individuals to presentations and workshops to large audiences – like the Plunket conference and the North Shore Council of Social Services. Dr Sarah Te One, Michelle Egan-Bitran and Rebecca Blaikie have been consulting with children and young people in schools and youth networks around the country, capturing their views to be packaged into a Green Paper submission to complement those coming from the Office and other agencies. Zoey Caldwell, Marlane Welsh- On 12/13 December the Young People’s Reference Sauni and Tom Ratima will be moving around all nine Group met in Wellington, joined by some visiting residences over the summer, to give the young people in youth ambassadors from Te Wananga O Aotearoa for custody an opportunity to have their say on the issues discussion – and some Christmas fun. the Green Paper raises. A farewell to Dr Nicola Atwool On 23 November, several Office staff attended the launch After six years as the Office’s Principal Advisor on all of UNICEF’s For Each and Every Child He Taonga Tonu matters relating to the child welfare sector, Dr Nicola te Tamariki at the children’s section of the Wellington Atwool decided to leave the Office at Christmas. Nicola Library. The Office is proud to be the principal sponsor is taking up an opportunity to return to the academic of this remarkable book, describing children’s rights in world, at the University of Otago, where she will take English and Maori, beautifully illustrated by New Zealand a position in the Department of Sociology, Gender and artists. Two members of the Young Persons Reference Social Work. We acknowledge the work Nicola has done Group spoke on behalf of the Office at the conclusion of to improve the wellbeing of children and young people the ceremony. in New Zealand/Aotearoa. We know her shoes will be difficult to fill and we send her off with our thanks and best wishes. Spotlight on the monitoring team The Office has a wide mandate, set out in the Children’s Commissioner’s Act 2003, to advocate for the best interests of children and young people. An important specific role is to monitor, assess and report on the services delivered by agencies exercising any function or power conferred by the Children, Young Persons 4 and Their Families Act 1989. The services are primarily Introducing the monitoring team members concerned with responding to child abuse, neglect and offending by children and young people and the Office focuses on the policies, services and practices of Child, Youth and Family. While the operationalisation of this monitoring responsibility is not spelt out in the Act, the Office and Child, Youth and Family have agreed on a monitoring framework that details how that monitoring will be carried out, how feedback will be given and suggested improvements made. We monitor Child, Youth and Family by: > considering complaints about services to individual cases from Child, Youth and Family, received by our Child Rights Line advisor (On 0800 224453, Press 1, available 8.30-5pm Mon-Fri) Zoey Caldwell, born in the USA, but raised in New Zealand; Zoey is a qualified social worker who spent most > receiving and analysing Child, Youth and Family policy of her front line practice as a youth justice social worker and procedure documentation in the UK and New Zealand.
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