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:3577. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development) 
: 
 There are no two ways about it change is on the way and this is certainly going to be a completely different way in which we work with young people. Certainly this first bill of our welfare reforms the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill is going to show us putting an attention on those whom we see at times as being most vulnerable that they have never had before. 
There was absolutely no doubt about it when we looked at who was going on to benefit. It had not really been done before. When we looked at the pipeline of who was going on and how long they were likely to stay there it will not be rocket science to know that the evidence said that the younger you go on the more likely you are to stay on welfare for long periods of time. If you go on as a teen parent then you are more likely to have subsequent children while on benefit and to be there for very long periods of time. I would not say it is easy but it is one thing to turn round and ask how you are working with those who are on welfare where you are setting the age of when you work test and when you are making sure that you are putting the right work tests around people; it is quite a different scenario to ask how we are going to work with them before they even get there. 
That was a big call. It was a big call for the Government to look at it quite differently because in some respects—from Work and Income’s perspective if you like and from a welfare perspective—if you wanted to be pure they were not our problem. They kind of were not our problem until they came on at 18. But of course that is not the Ministry for Social Development’s approach to this and that is certainly not this Government’s approach to this because in some respects working with them earlier was going to make a difference. 
Often when I talk about this stuff I think that we could go back really early because the reality for most of these young people at 16 and 17 years old is that for many of them they have had a poor upbringing for many of them school has not worked—if it had they would still be there—and for many of them they are the lost and ignored and forgotten. It just seemed wrong to me that they might get picked up ad hoc if we were lucky. But the information was not flowing between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development. I would say that we have taken the components of what we know works and then expanded it. 
I make no apologies for my concentration on 16 and 17-year-olds although there will be some room in this for providers to work with 15-year-olds as well. No matter which way you look at it it is expensive but this is where you ask whether it is expensive that they spend 10 years on welfare and on benefit. Is it expensive that we actually try to work with them when they are 21 or 22 or when they are 30? It is expensive to work with them when they are 16 and 17-year-olds when you add it all together but in effect the opportunity that we have to change their lives is an investment that we want to make. 
So as we say there are about 3000 young people aged 16 and 17 and young parents—teen parents aged 18 as well. There are about 3000 of them. Add to that if you like about 11000 what we term “neets”—not in education employment or training—and all together you have got about 14000 I count who are “neets” as such. And yes we are going to give a different amount depending on their risk because otherwise you see providers just working with those who are easier to put in. So we make it outcome-based. We say to the organisations that are working with them: “These are the outcomes we want.” 
The Opposition member picked up on National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2. I make no apologies because every bit of evidence—international local upside down sideways—tells you that those young people gaining that kind of educational achievement is the best chance that they have of having a successful life. The best chance they have of staying off welfare and of actually getting a job that is meaningful that will actually take the ups and downs of lives and economies and everything else is if they have that education behind them. I can say to you now that not every kid is going to get NCEA level 2 but quite frankly to think that they deserve for us to strive for something less than that for them is appalling. We will strive for NCEA level 2 for them with everything that we have and we will incentivise and reward those providers that get them through to NCEA level 2. Some will take longer. For some it will take a long period of time for those young people to get there. What we are asking is for them to head towards it. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: They can’t. They stop being funded at 17. You’re not giving them time. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: They are getting time actually. The member is yelling out that they are not getting time. Actually we are going to work with them for years. Actually we are going to work with them for years. That is the reality. When you look at the funding that is coming from the Youth Guarantee on which we have over 10000 places now these are the very young people who are going into them. Then you add to that the substantial thousands of dollars that are going into the support that comes alongside of them whether that is making sure they are picked up in the morning and taken to that course or training or making sure that it is actually engaging because their brains work quite differently and in some respects need to be turned on in a different way if you like so that they can get that buzz of learning and education that leads to those sorts of qualifications. We see fantastic examples of it. Whether it is via trades training and is more hands-on whether it has got work-based experience in it whether it is in a different environment that actually gets their brains thinking we have tried to make it valuable. I make no bones about that. What we have also done as I said is pay more for those whom we consider high risk. 
This is different. How many times and in which ways? There are payment cards and the benefits for those 3000 are going to go on to a payment card. That provider is going to work alongside the young people. I have been out in the last few weeks really talking to them about what this means and how it looks for them. Some of the young people themselves—as much as I do not like to admit it to some of those fantastic workers—think it is quite exciting they are not going to have to go to Work and Income as much. They kind of like that they get to have a real relationship with a provider that they know—that is basic. I mean I know what that means in the context of it all but for them they sort of see that as a more welcoming environment and they have someone advocating on their behalf. So they get that kind of connection there and they are pleased about that. 
There is assistance with the budgeting programmes. Look at how new this is. We have never had social obligations like this attached to a benefit before and these are. There are going to be obligations on teen parents for example to be doing a parenting course to have their children engaged with a primary health organisation and to do their Well Child checks. Never before has that been so directly linked to the benefit system. It will be in this case and that makes major changes that we have not seen before. 
I come to the commencement date. I mean here we are in the Committee stage now. We want to give people once we go through the process and everything we need to do at least 2 weeks to be getting all of the notice they need for the change that is coming up. Actually the providers are ready we hear when we speak to them but the extra training that will go in so that they can pick it up will be well needed from them they tell me. Their contracts will start on 1 August so they are not going to miss out on any payments. They see that time as really getting ready for when it turns over on 20 August and having the opportunity to do that. I think that that is the right way for us to go. 
It is one thing for us to say there was this fantastic programme that was running before and yes we are funding parts of it through Work and Income in different ways but when did they last work with kids who had severe disabilities and needed help that was quite different? When were they working with young people who have convictions or have drug and alcohol dependency problems? They are high risk and they need far more intervention and they are expensive. With all respect to some of the programmes that we saw they were not working with those really difficult kids whom we see particularly in the bigger cities in high numbers. So they are going to take a different approach. How do we get a more cultural element to it that is going to actually engage those Maori Pacific and Asian kids who need it quite differently actually than what we see otherwise? 
The change in the law for information sharing is a vital vital part of the change that we are making and is something we have not seen before. What we had in some respects was a relationship with schools where they did pass on information but none of the schools felt particularly comfortable about it. They were not sure they had permission how it looked and whether they should be. And it never happened in real time. So you could literally have a young person dropping out of school at 15 16 or 17 and there being if you are lucky months in between a provider actually then knowing and in many cases they did not know at all. With this change it will be happening in real time. Information will be passed on to that provider via the Ministry of Social Development and via Work and Income that provides good information and good knowledge on what is happening. The sooner we pick them up the bigger difference we can make. 
Is this going to be perfect? Of course it is not. We are going to have to work our way through and it is not just a partnership because that always sounds like two people. It is going to take that whole community approach to see it and we are going to need to keep that relationship—we are going to need to keep tweaking as we go. One of the things we have done is we have said we will have Work and Income in with the actual youth provider for the first few weeks so that we do not mess up their benefits at all and we make sure there is sufficient—