MEDIA 'OP-ED' COMMENT
Achieving social ‘success’
Will we choose the things that
work; or keep with the things that don’t?
“Imagine not having to find an extra billion or two every year for an additional prison. Think of the health savings with less depression, less obesity, fewer non-accidental child injuries, less drug and alcohol abuse, and less domestic violence...”
17 August 2011
The research is clear: New Zealand now reliably ranks in the
bottom quarter of almost all inter-country, first world, comparisons
of social statistics. Increasing infant mortality, child
abuse, crime rates, imprisonment rates, adolescent morbidity … it’s
rare to come across a statistic and not feel ashamed.
You may be as sick of reading about what should be done for - or
about - people who are ‘failing’ in our society as I am.
Yet there are solutions; not necessarily the
obvious or the ones we keep reading about, but neither are they
obscure, or tested, or especially difficult.
We know what works and what doesn’t.
And it’s time those who actually work in this field put their
money on the table, stood up and were counted. After 27 years’
experience, I can tell you the things we know do not work; and the
solutions that will get positive results if we’re just brave enough
to commit to them.
Let’s start with the ‘solutions’ that don’t work.
- Good intentions and a good heart, solving it for people,
wrapping them in cotton wool, leaving it up to them, and
intervening only when the family implodes;
- Tickling a particular voter base with initiatives that have
already failed here and overseas;
- Coercion and punishment. ‘Getting tough’ on beneficiaries,
making an example of exceptional cases and snatching away
support;
- Short-term programmes, pilot programmes that go nowhere,
single issue piecemeal approaches, providing endless choices,
removing choice, cash incentives, and requiring people to “earn”
help;
- Targeted services – even though they look more cost effective – often carry the self-defeating consequence of making assistance harder to reach and labelling the target group “failures”, thereby acting as its own barrier to help.
- Pretending that gross economic conditions have nothing to do
with individual tragedies.
None of those “solutions” have deflected New Zealand’s downward
statistical trend. We are all having to live with the reality of
being bottom of nearly every table.
The long-term consequences should
be worrying all of us.
Yet let’s imagine, for a moment, that there are
solutions and that we have the power to put them in place.
The savings that await us are immense.
Imagine not having to find an extra billion or two every year
for an additional prison.
Think of the health savings with less depression, less
obesity, fewer non-accidental child injuries, less drug and alcohol
abuse, and less domestic violence.
Think of the savings in welfare payments.
The increased productivity and higher tax take.
But most of all, of the
savings in human lives lived more fully and more productively.
So let’s talk about what is proven to work.
1. Higher wages, more jobs.
The life performance of an individual can be more or less
predicted by the economic circumstances they are born into
(Infometrics, 2011).
2. Cross party agreement.
It’s taken New Zealand 30
years to slide to the bottom of the tables; we aren’t going to climb
to the top again in just three. Every time the government changes,
welfare agencies start from scratch. Funding, quality assurance
mechanisms, direction and intention of social services, early
childhood and second-chance education all get reconfigured and a
year or two is lost. The
costs for everyone, particularly the taxpayer, are prohibitive and
non-productive.
3. Skilled, experienced, research-informed,
and stable assistance, focussed on the family’s long-term goals.
The opportunity for the
family to build trust with their expert.
4. Building independence in families and
individuals via a realistic assessment of their opportunities,
skills, and the challenges in the way, securing their commitment,
and then providing mentoring and training in the skills needed to
reach those challenges – clearing away the clutter of failure
(Duncan et al, 2006-2011). Then extending this independence beyond
families, to streets and neighbourhoods (Putnam, 2008-2010).
5. Prevention.
This is the cheapest solution by far, research validated, and
hugely impactful when aimed at children aged 0-6, particularly when
based on Early Childhood Education with curriculum-based activities,
and broader support for the family built around the child’s learning
progress. It is most
effective when the child learns how to “persist through difficult
circumstances” (Gluckman 2010).
In New Zealand the significant things to solve are a) how to
reach the population that would most benefit from this intervention
b) how to build in skilled broader family support and c)
ensuring the high quality of provision required for this
intervention to be successful.
6. Putting it Right. For the youth and adults who were born into disadvantage a generation or more ago, and are now living out the aftereffects. Typically, these people are related to the children most in need of preventative help (see above), so remediation also helps interrupt the intergenerational cycle. But it is expensive work and requires the long-term investment of rigorous multi-disciplinary engagement – education, mental health, physical health, parenting, budgeting, family functioning and more. Again, few providers are set up to deliver this kind of wrap-around help.
Of course everyone has a story of someone they know or that a friend knows who can’t be bothered, who likes living on a benefit, who wants to be a bludger. And yes those people are out there. However, they are less than 1% of those on benefits (Welfare Working Group, 2009) . 99% of those on benefits want a better life, are prepared to work for it, but need help and a fair go.
Jim Wallis has said that The way you think and feel about the world is shaped by what you see when you get out of bed in the morning. There are too many children, and families in New Zealand today, who get out of bed and see only misery. We all could be doing something about it.
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