The latest child poverty monitor makes for grim reading (Simpson et al., 2015). It shows an increase to 29% of New Zealand children now living in poverty, or nearly a third of all children in this land of milk and honey living below the poverty line. There have been various disclaimers that this measure is inaccurate, that it’s somehow ‘artificial’ as it’s obtained due to the median income and housing costs rising, while the incomes of poorer people remain the same. But that’s the point really – that if median incomes and costs rise, and the incomes of poorer people remain constant, then a greater proportion of those families will be unable to purchase basic necessities. This is poverty.
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The holiday mood is a seductive one, with its many competing discourses of hope, indulgence, generosity and belonging. We don rose coloured glasses to look back at our successes and dare to keep them on while looking forward. We fully expect that in the next few weeks, when our toes are firmly in the sand and our rosy glasses are at their most glorious tint, we will receive the promised report of the CYF ‘overhaul.’ This seasonal blog post is in anticipation of this. It is written by Bobby Bryan, a new social work academic at Te Kuritini o Waikato (Wintec). Bobby has worked for Child Youth and Family, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, Ministry of Health, Department of Corrections, non-government Youth Health Services, Kaupapa Māori family violence services, and as a social services consultant. He looks back on the good times of social services in Aotearoa New Zealand with the hope that the memory of these will provide strength for social workers and for Child Youth and Family in 2016.
The Modernising Child, Youth and Family ‘Expert’ Panel’s Interim Report is rhetorically powerful at times. The form of the report expands and contracts like a concertina and is replete with what Noam Chomsky (1989) refers to as necessary illusions and emotionally potent over-simplifications. In order to consider the ideological underpinnings of this document it is necessary to dig beneath the surface façade.
This two-part guest blog post is by Iain Matheson. Dr Matheson is the inaugural director of a soon-to-be-launched not-for-profit research centre for residential and foster care. He is a social sector management consultant, researcher and evaluator, with a background in statutory child welfare management in both New Zealand and Scotland; he started his post-qualifying social work career in residential care. His recent doctoral research was on the experiences of New Zealand university students who were formerly in state care. (Disclosure: Between 2002 and 2004 Iain was the Child, Youth and Family national manager for residential and foster care, and has since undertaken work for Child, Youth and Family and the Ministry of Social Development).
Part 1 comprised of an introduction and a discussion of the interim report’s strengths (the good). This post addresses its weeknesses of the report (both the bad and the potentially ugly)
This two-part guest blog is by Iain Matheson. Dr Matheson is the inaugural director of a soon-to-be-launched not-for-profit research centre for residential and foster care. He is a social sector management consultant, researcher and evaluator, with a background in statutory child welfare management in both New Zealand and Scotland; he started his post-qualifying social work career in residential care. His recent doctoral research was on the experiences of New Zealand university students who were formerly in state care. (Disclosure: Between 2002 and 2004 Iain was the CYF national manager for residential and foster care, and has since undertaken work for CYF and MSD).