Whänau Ora supported but what about Mainstream?

“The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services (NZCCSS) supports kaupapa Māori provision of social services and sees Whānau Ora as a necessary component of the way New Zealand families are supported” said Vaughan Milner, Convenor of the NZCCSS Child and Family Policy Group. “The Māori Party and their National Government partners are to be congratulated in developing a more holistic approach to supporting whānau. We hope that this approach is applied across the wider social services sector”.

One hundred and twenty million dollars of the Pathway to Partnership funding that had been earmarked by the last government for properly funding social services is being allocated for the Whānau Ora initiative. The National Government, at the last Budget, had ‘ring fenced’ this funding to be used to support social services.

“To see some of the funds ring fenced for social services being used to support Whānau Ora is not unexpected. Although the large proportion of this funding being used for Whānau Ora does beg the question of what funding will be used to support all social service provision”, said Vaughan Milner. “Under the last Labour Government social service providers had been on a pathway of moving towards fuller funding for their services. The National Government has put this progression on hold. Some temporary funding has been made available to help providers meet some of the demand arising from the recession – but temporary support is not sufficient. We need to be able to plan for the future in order to meet the needs of our communities”.

“Prior to the introduction of the Pathway to Partnership programme social service providers had experienced ten years of static funding, not even getting CPI linked cost of living increases. This meant that even before the recession providers had been struggling to meet the needs of their clients, often they were delivering twice as much support than what they were being funded for,” said Trevor McGlinchey, NZCCSS Executive Officer. “Now, with the recession really biting hard, providers are inundated with additional clients and not having any surety about future funding is making meeting these pressing social needs really difficult”.

“While we support the use of some of the Pathway to Partnership funds for Whānau Ora we will be looking for real and long-term support for all social services from the Government in the next Budget,” said Vaughan Milner. “We want to see annual cost of living increases indexed to the CPI, we want to be adequately funded so we continue to provide quality services and an effective ‘hand-up’ to New Zealand families.”

“Our members want the remaining Pathway to Partnership funding to be made available so that vulnerable families can be supported to achieve and maintain their independence,” said McGlinchey. “They will be very concerned if the process for achieving this is not detailed in the next Budget”.

ENDS

© Scoop Media