scholarly journals Scraping By and Making Do: Navigating New Zealand’s Welfare System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Evelyn Walford-Bourke
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Green Party ◽  
Daily Experience ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
State Strategy ◽  
Experiential Expertise

<p>In August 2017, debate over Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei’s declaration of two-decade-old benefit fraud sparked an ongoing discussion around poverty in New Zealand that revealed the fraying edges of the country’s welfare safety net. The perception that New Zealand has a low level of poverty and a fair, coherent welfare system that ensures those “deserving” of support receive what they need is untrue. Instead, there is an extraordinary disconnect between those responsible for running New Zealand’s welfare system and the daily experience of beneficiaries and NGO workers who must navigate the complex welfare landscape to address hardship. Patching together the threads of a fraying safety net, for New Zealand’s most vulnerable, is little-appreciated work, but crucial to their survival nonetheless. In this thesis, I explore how beneficiaries and NGO workers use tactics to manage the gaps between policy, practice and need created by state strategy in order to address hardship. I examine the resilience and experiential expertise of beneficiaries and NGO workers as they work around the limitations of state bureaucracy to address high levels of poverty in New Zealand.</p>

scholarly journals Scraping By and Making Do: Navigating New Zealand’s Welfare System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Evelyn Walford-Bourke
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Green Party ◽  
Daily Experience ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
State Strategy ◽  
Experiential Expertise

<p>In August 2017, debate over Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei’s declaration of two-decade-old benefit fraud sparked an ongoing discussion around poverty in New Zealand that revealed the fraying edges of the country’s welfare safety net. The perception that New Zealand has a low level of poverty and a fair, coherent welfare system that ensures those “deserving” of support receive what they need is untrue. Instead, there is an extraordinary disconnect between those responsible for running New Zealand’s welfare system and the daily experience of beneficiaries and NGO workers who must navigate the complex welfare landscape to address hardship. Patching together the threads of a fraying safety net, for New Zealand’s most vulnerable, is little-appreciated work, but crucial to their survival nonetheless. In this thesis, I explore how beneficiaries and NGO workers use tactics to manage the gaps between policy, practice and need created by state strategy in order to address hardship. I examine the resilience and experiential expertise of beneficiaries and NGO workers as they work around the limitations of state bureaucracy to address high levels of poverty in New Zealand.</p>

scholarly journals Four essays on the child welfare system

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hyslop ◽  
Emily Keddell ◽  
David Hanna ◽  
Claire Achmad
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
The State ◽  
Family Court ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Legislative Changes

The year 2019 represented a watershed moment for Aotearoa New Zealand’s child welfare system, as a public spotlight was shone on systemic ethnic inequities during ongoing legislative changes aimed at centering Te Tiriti o Waitangi and whänau, hapü, and iwi considerations in policy and practice. In the midst of this dialogue, Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Government hosted the “Children, Families, and the State”– a seminar series focused on the historical, current, and future role of the state in the lives of families and children. The seminars, and the discussion it generated, was due to the calls to action from speakers across the system, including leadership at Oranga Tamariki, within the family court, non-profit providers, commissioners and advocates, and academics. The following essays in this edition of Policy Quarterly capture viewpoints from several of the seminar speakers. Despite their different perspectives, common threads unite them. A greater recognition of the structural causes of the historical and current patterns of ethnic inequities in child welfare system contact, a commitment to whänau, hapü, and iwi-centred policy, practice, and partnership, the authors argue, are vital for a more just and empowering system.

Environmental attitudes, beliefs about social justice and intention to vote Green: lessons for the New Zealand Green Party?

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Carroll ◽  
Sally Casswell ◽  
John Huakau ◽  
Paul Perry ◽  
Philippa Howden Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Environmental Attitudes ◽  
Green Party

Where There Is No Formal Social Welfare System for an Indigenous People

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-259
Author(s):  
Eric E. Otenyo ◽  
Michelle Harris ◽  
Kelly Askew
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Entrepreneurial Spirit ◽  
Social Welfare System ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
Ethnographic Narratives

This chapter on “Where There Is No Formal Social Welfare System for an Indigenous People: Entrepreneurship, Watchmen, and the Reinvention of the Maasai Warrior” addresses the transformation of the Maasai moranism (warrior society). As a marginalized indigenous group, the Maasai have not benefitted from any important social welfare or safety net programs. The chapter interrogates the evolution of an entrepreneurial spirit among young Maasai men who have joined the ranks of the massive informal sector to become watchmen (security guards) in cities and small townships in both Kenya and Tanzania. The chapter draws from ethnographic narratives about the “fierceness” of the Maasai in global capitalist expansion and their economic marginalization. The overriding question is: In what ways is the proliferation of the phenomenon of Maasai watchmen a reaction to the community’s marginalization?

How the Predicament Arose

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
Paddy Field ◽  
Urban Economy ◽  
Green Revolution ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Widespread Adoption ◽  
Household Strategies ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Peasant Farmers

This chapter describes how the paddy field-migration predicament has emerged. It argues that the Chinese state has been a major driver of the current situation through its rural policies, which provide both constraints and opportunities with regard to possible household strategies at the nexus of farming and migration. Special attention is paid to the widespread adoption of post-Green Revolution farming technologies that have set free agricultural labour. These transformations are placed into the context of de-collectivization and marketization, the abolition of the collective welfare system, the new urban economy, and loosened migration restrictions – all of which have pushed peasant farmers to migrate and enhanced their precarity, which in turn makes them want to protect their fields as a safety net.

scholarly journals Rising wealth and income inequality in Australia and New Zealand: A radical social work critique and response

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Morley ◽  
Phillip Ablett
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education

INTRODUCTION: Wealth and income inequality is increasing in most societies, including Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, with detrimental social impacts. However, despite professional marginality, the renewal of radical social work critiques with their emphasis on structural issues highlight, the need for alternative practice responses.METHOD: We employed a critical and synthetic review of the literature to examine major trends in wealth and income inequality (both globally, and in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) and the social work responses to increasing economic inequality.CONCLUSIONS: Resurgent wealth and income inequality has reached new crisis points in both countries but individualising analyses and programmes render most social work responses complicit with neoliberal governance. These responses do little to reduce inequality. Alternatives promoting economic equality can be found in radical social work approaches.IMPLICATIONS: At a minimum, effective radical responses to economic inequality must advocate critical social analyses in social work education and practice, including fostering practitioners' capacity for critical reflection, policy practice and political activism.

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