Time for action to stop Pacific children from being left behind

One in four Pacific children still living in poverty compared to one in ten children in the overall population.

5,000 multi-generational homes, 30,000 insulation upgrades needed to improve the lives of Pacific children

If New Zealand is to deliver lasting improvements to the health and wellbeing of all Pacific children, we need to turbo-charge actions, including building thousands of homes and upgrading tens of thousands more, says a new report commissioned by Pacific child advocates Moana Connect.

A 10-year action plan - Tamaiti Ole Moana - has been launched today ahead of the Pacific Child Wellbeing Conference being held in South Auckland this week.

"Last week, official statistics showed that one in four Pacific children live in poverty, an alarming statistic little changed from 2019 despite the Government’s child poverty agenda. Pacific children are being left behind, and something urgently needs to change," said Moana Connect Chief Executive Jacinta Fa’alili-Fidow.

"Today, we launch a plan to make a real and sustained difference in the lives of all Pacific children and their families. We urge the Government to embrace what we believe are practical and proven initiatives.

"We have focused on four key areas - access to quality housing, boosting incomes, and improving access to quality care, health and education - and we have targeted existing policies which we believe can be easily scaled to achieve a meaningful improvement for all Pacific children.

"Many Pacific families continue to struggle because today’s solutions are only benefiting a small number of children. That’s why we have set ambitious targets. We need to be brave, or we will keep applying small, piecemeal ‘solutions’ that will not make a material difference.

"We need better housing for our children, we need better education, better healthcare, and we need to build incomes and intergenerational wealth, to lift our families out of poverty. All of Aotearoa New Zealand benefits if our Pacific communities are strong and thriving.

"Better housing is not just healthy and affordable, it’s culturally appropriate, with homes large enough to accommodate our multi-generational families so that we can raise our children with their elders.

"Most importantly, we need to empower Pacific communities to deliver the solutions. We have an existing range of amazing providers deeply embedded in our communities. We know our people best, so our message to the Government is simple; trust us and work with us."

The Towards 2033 10-Year Action Plan recommends the following policies:

Healthy uncrowded homes:

o Building a minimum of 5,000 multi-generational homes through the Government Build Programme - state houses, community housing provider homes, and KiwiBuild - that will work for Pacific families.

o Insulate and ventilate the homes of 30,000 families.

Higher incomes for families - lift income support and raise the minimum wage to Living Wage.

Better care and health care - expand funding for free GP visits, dental care, and prescriptions, improved access for children in state care and empower Pacific care providers to improve access for families.

Education to sustain Pacific culture and support families - expand the number of Pacific childcare centres and the Pacific ECE workforce.

"We urge the Government to commit to our action plan so that our children can grow up in healthy homes that can accommodate their families; so that they can have adequate incomes to give them a good start in life; and so that they can get health care and education from Pacific-based providers who are in touch with their culture and needs.

"Improving the lives of Pacific children today will shape a better future for our people and this country. Now is the time for bold action," said Jacinta Fa’alili-Fidow.

Note

Tamaiti Ole Moana report is available here: https://pacchildconf.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Tamaiti-Ole-Moana-Pacific-Children-March23.pdf

The Pacific Child Wellbeing conference programme can be found at www.pacchildconf.co.nz.

Background on Pacific children

The Pacific people population in Aotearoa New Zealand is young. A third of Pacific people are under the age of 15, compared to 20% of the total population of New Zealand. Pacific children are more likely to live in overcrowded, damp, and insecure housing; their families are more likely to struggle financially than other New Zealanders and educational achievement remains a major hurdle to creating intergenerational well-being for Pacific people.

Latest child poverty statistics for the June 2022 year released by Statistics NZ show:

1 in 4 (25.6 percent) of Pacific children lived in households experiencing material hardship, with no statistically significant change compared with 2019. This compares to one in ten children in the overall population.

1 in 5 (19.5 percent) lived in households that had less than 50 percent of the median household income before deducting housing costs

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