Poverty, social work and social services
Mike O’Brien
As history shows, it never is a good time to be poor, but right now the climate is more hostile and dangerous than it has been for many years. There is quite a long list – attacks on beneficiaries, reductions in the calculation of benefits through changing the basis of adjustment, weakening of child poverty reduction targets, attacks on public housing, tightening of eligibility rules for assistance, dogmatic assertions about paid work as the route out of poverty despite the evidence to the contrary, funding cuts and contract cuts for the social services, cancelling of equity focus in health especially in relation to tangata whenua – and that is only a beginning of the list. Perhaps equally significantly is the fact that in the government’s quarterly list of targets, reducing poverty, especially child poverty, has never appeared, suggesting that this is not a priority and does not matter.