Family stress prevalent, says welfare report

Press, 22 September 1984, Page 12

Family stress prevalent, says welfare report

By OLIVER RIDDELL In Wellington Family stress is widespread in the community and creating extra work for the Social welfare Department, according to the department’s annual report to Parliament

Much of its social work was done in a context of rapid social change, which could be stressful for many people. Six aspects of the changes were specially important: © A high incidence of families where the main bread winner was unemployed or on a very limited income. ® More single-parent families.

® A growing awareness of multi-cultural issues.

© The suggestion that serious offending was occurring at a younger age. ® Drug offences, abuse of substances, video parlours, and the emergence of “street kids.”

@ The emergence of com-munity-care organisations. There was a considerably increased demand in the big cities about problems associated with unemployment, the report said. Family stress where there were unemployed youths, low incomes, and

other factors became more severe where the main breadwinner was unemployed. . Family stress in these circumstances exacerbated normal family tensions to the point where some form of intervention became necessary, the report said.

The department wanted to know more about “street kids” and why there was an increasingly widespread incidence of unsupervised young people in the big cities. Until it knew more, it was unable to assess what it needed to do to help alongside other agencies, groups, and individuals.

Applications for unemployment benefit increased almost 8 per cent for the year to March, 1984, according to the report, the Press Association reports. A total of 220,000 applications, including emergency unemployment benefit, were received, compared with 204,000 the previous year. However, the report said there were encouraging signs of a decrease at the end of the year. The number of benefits in force, excluding emergency benefits, peakea at 56,543 in

August last year. By January this year it was down to 54,039 and by the end of March to 47,465. Though the department hoped this trend would continue, further initiatives were being taken to help staff cope better with unemployment benefit workloads and provide a better service.

These included revision and simplification of the application form and a pregrant interview at which the applicant would be told the outcome of the application.

The total expenditure on the Social Welfare vote was $4OOO million, of which $2526 million, or 63 per cent, was spent on National Superannuation.

Benefits and pensions took a further $1321 million, or 33 per cent, while administrative and social work services took 2 per cent each.

To March 31 this year, 47,624 women were receiving the domestic purposes benefit and 2606 men, or 5 per cent of the total.

Five per cent of oneparent families on the domestic purposes benefit had four or more dependent

children. • The number of Maori children appearing in juvenile courts dropped dramatically between 1978 and 1982, according to the department’s office of child care studies.

The report showed a 30 per cent drop’ in Maoris aged under 14 appearing in the Children and Young Persons Court, but the Maori rate was still 12 times higher than the nonMaori rate.

Legislation divides juven-. iles into children (aged up to 14) and young persons (14 and under 17).’ The reduction in both categories was particularly marked for Maori girls, with a drop of 20 per cent, while in the 10 to 13 female Maori group there was a reduction of almost 50 per cent.

This decline has led to an increase in the over-all ratio of male to female, court appearances. In 1978 there were 3.4 male appearances for every female, one whereas in 1982 this ratio had risen to 4.3.

For males in the 14 to 16 age-group the Maori rate stayed steady while the nonMaori rate “edged up.” ;