Cut ‘not justified’

Press, 23 May 1977, Page 1

Cut ‘not justified’

The New Zealand Association of Social Workers can see no justification in the $l6 a week reduction in the domestic purposes benefit for the first six months.

“It may well result in substantial numbers of New Zealand children being put in an even worse position,” said the association’s national president (Mr M. A. O’Brien) last evening. “It is usually when a marriage breaks up, or immediately after the birth of an ex-nuptial child, that the greatest financial stress occurs.” Mr O’Brien said financial security was crucial at such times because of major social and emotional stresses that accompanied the situation.

“Family life in New Zealand needs a much wider, more comprehensive approach than temporarily reducing the benefit,” he said.

The benefit review committee itself seemed uncertain about the benefit’s effect on marital breakdowns. On one hand, it said that more extensive knowledge of its availability had been a factor in the increasing number of benefits being paid. But the committee also said there was no way of assessing the main causes of recent “startling increases” in the number of benefits. Mr O’Brien said the committee had suggested a flexible system, while the Minister of Social Welfare’s

decision showed little of that flexibility“Further, the committee suggests a reduction for three months, not six months, for unmarried mothers,” he said. “Benefits are designed to meet the needs of individuals and families who — for various reasons — are unable to support themselves financially. They are not a means of making people behave in a particular way.”

The committee’s recommendations had done nothing about the anomalies of larger solo-parent families, or such families with teenage children. There had to be effective counselling, but social workers did not see their job as keeping families together at all costs. Staff were already heavily over-burdened, in both social work and benefit fields, “and this leads to unnecessary delays in examining cases of hardship,” Mr O’Brien said. “It should not require several weeks for an application for additional assistance to be processed.”

Recommendations could not be implemented without more staff. “The association looks to the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Walker) to secure Cabinet approval for staff increases in his department with as much willingness as he has shown to implement the reduction of the domestic purposes benefit,” Mr O’Brien said. He said the association agreed with other aspects of the review committee’s

recommendations, such as involvement of both marriage partners at the time of the application for a benefit, and the need for skilled counselling to help an unmarried mother decide the future of her baby.

The Government’s new domestic purpose benefit policy was an attempt to force married women to stay in bad marriages and unmarried mothers to give up their babies, said the Women’s Domestic Purposes Benefit Action Group yesterday, reports the Press Association.

The action group described the new policy as yet another attack by the Government on solo mothers.

"Mr Walker admits that people no longer see motherhood outside of marriage and the break-up of marriage as shameful, and so his solution is to make it almost financially impossible for women and their children to survive in the difficult first six months after the birth of a baby or the break-up of a marriage,” the group said. The supplementary benefit for those in “genuine need” also came under fire from the group. “The experiences of solo mothers in the past have shown that supplementary benefits are hard to get, even now, and in the future it seems that payment will depend on whether social workers think a woman deserves to leave a bad marriage or to keep her child,” the group said. Further report. Page 2