10. Question No. 10—Social DevelopmentHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social DevelopmentQuestion No. 10—Social Development10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Does MSD have sufficient capacity to respond to requests for its services and what extra capacity if any is being put in place to ensure all New Zealanders have access to support?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): During the lockdown period the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) have continued to help very large numbers of New Zealanders. To give a sense of this in the week to 5 April MSD responded to more than 90000 contact centre calls and our case managers carried out almost 80000 phone-based appointments and calls. In response to this demand and in anticipation of more New Zealanders needing MSD's support since 18 March MSD has hired 279 new service delivery staff. We have also streamlined services to ensure that more can be done by phone and online like the approvals of benefit applications. Where possible we have worked across departments like the IRD and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to establish initiatives like the wage subsidy and leave payment scheme. MSD has worked quickly to be responsive in an environment that has changed rapidly over the past months. I will be monitoring closely as things continue to change to ensure MSD is well supported to respond to New Zealanders during this unprecedented time.Hon Louise Upston: What is the average time between an initial call and receiving a hardship grant?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: A hardship grant from memory—last week when I got information on Friday I think 73 percent were responded to so received it within 2 days.Hon Louise Upston: How many calls have been dropped?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don't know if any calls have been dropped recently. On Friday also when I was speaking to the chief executive I think that the average wait time was around 54 seconds—that might have been for the day before on Thursday. A couple of weeks back the demand was overwhelming. Some people were on the phone waiting for two hours at which point they would have dropped off and I think the average wait time during that period was around 44 minutes. So it has improved significantly from an average wait time of 44 minutes to an average wait time which last got reported to me of 54 seconds.Hon Louise Upston: What discussions has she had with the Salvation Army to follow up on their report that said People are still struggling to access WINZ and MSD online support."?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I respect the reports that are coming from the Salvation Army and the work that they are undertaking alongside many of the other social services that are out there. I have had at least one meeting with the Salvation Army and a range of other organisations—or Zoom meetings—and I do believe I've got another one coming up and I think that may be part of the church leaders social service group that I'll be meeting with. I take on board any constructive criticism that is sent our way. Our intention is to do the best job that we can possibly do for New Zealanders and if constructive criticism comes from social services then I accept it and we look at how we can do things better.Hon Louise Upston: How many people who can't get through to MSD are turning instead to local emergency operations centres' welfare centres for support?Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don't think that we would have had an issue with people trying to get through to MSD in the last week at least and potentially the last two weeks. There was just that week where we experienced a huge increase in demand and that has petered off to a certain extent. Also with the civil defence emergency management (CDEM) response on the ground what we have an agreement on with those localised efforts is that when they do the outbound calling or when they take inbound calls they do establish whether or not people are eligible for MSD support first and then put them in touch with MSD. In instances where they say that they haven't been able to get in touch with MSD I've heard of cases where they've said "Well let's try. Let's do this now." and where the CDEM efforts are actually doing that."