Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 17 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3586. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 I think it is appropriate to just answer a few things that are going around at the moment just so that we are setting it straight. Let us get a few things straight. One I think that member Su’a William Sio should read  
Hansard 
 perhaps. His kind of sympathy 5 minutes that he has taken up—quite frankly certainly not being factual about what was said by me or my interpretation of young people who are out there and actually doing the best they can instead trying to make it sound like we are sort of patronising them and putting them into some sort of box—is simply untrue. We want to stand up and wrap more support around them and actually we recognise that in some cases school has not worked. For all the best intentions of community and family and where they are living and what they are doing they actually need a bit more support. They need for us to actually stand up as a Government and say that we do not think that government is the solution but what we can do is offer the right kind of resource and the right kind of funding to community organisations that are on the ground and that actually know these people and that actually know these youth and can wrap around them. The member himself mentioned Strive Community Trust. Well that trust will be a vital part of the equation of making sure that these young people get the support that they need. 
Is this going to be an easy process? This is complex. These are individuals and instead of a programme—what I have purposefully not developed is a programme where we wrap around and step A leads to step B which leads to step C—what we have done instead is say that these are the outcomes. We are quite uncompromising about them. Let that be up for debate and let that be criticised or encouraged or supported as it is but these are the outcomes we are going to do. 
What we are not going to do is tell the community and those organisations how to do it. We try to set up the tools. We try to put the resources where we think we need them most but we actually give a degree of flexibility to organisations on the ground that know these young people so much better. Jan Logie in her speech earlier raised those youth workers who are on the ground and who know these young people. They actually have the practice behind them and recognise as she said a strengths-based approach. I am putting enough faith in these organisations which have been through a rigorous process to get into actually being one of the chosen organisations that they have got that degree of flexibility and that they do work from a strengths-based model. That is why we ain’t got government doing it to be quite blunt. It needs people on the ground who see these kids as individuals and not as a number. 
Yes we have absolute outcomes that we want from them but how they do it is up to them. Let them actually think bigger and think wider than what we can as a Government where we get quite restricted in bureaucracy and rules and the steps that we must take. Let them pay extra for the bus for the kids. Let them feed them every day because actually food is a motivator for young people to turn up and get there. Let them think outside the box and have the kind of innovation that quite frankly only community can have. That is the kind of backing that we are trying to give them. 
We hear criticisms of how expensive this is. It is expensive because once you start adding it up and recognising the costs that go into paying those workers appropriately like they should be so that they are actually rewarded for being the professionals that they are for the qualifications they have and for what they have done then yes that means actually putting a bit of money behind them and actually making sure that they can do it. 
As I have said I am not going to apologise for National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 being our goal. Will everyone get there? No but it is a goal of ours that we are working them towards education— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: They’ll pick the kids that will get there. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Not if you are paying appropriately; they will not pick the kids who will get there easily. They will actually get paid much more for the ones who need it. 
Can I just pick up also on what Ms Martin said which was that you cannot take a community-based model and roll it out nationally. At some level I agree; we could not pick up the Otorohanga model and replicate that in South Auckland. You just cannot. You cannot take the actual model and the components. What we have done though is taken the key components and the evidence base behind it and we are actually rolling that out with a stronger model that goes along beside it that recognises the value and the costs that go into getting that stuff right. We have got the best of what we know and the best of what is proven will work and we are going to put the model behind it. We are going to put a lot of trust and responsibility in those community organisations that work on the ground while working alongside them and making sure that we fund and support them appropriately.