Scheme ‘withering’ from lack of funds

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 20

Scheme ‘withering’ from lack of funds

PA Wellington The Government should pour resources into the Maatua Whangai scheme to help prevent young Maori offenders entering the | prison system, said the Opposition spokesman on social welfare, Mr Venn Young. He said the Maatua Whangai scheme was a farsighted attempt by community leaders and the departments of Maori Affairs, Social Welfare, and Justice to break the cycle of criminal offending. However, the scheme was being left to wither with insufficient funds and, in many cases, inadequate community support. Changes in the Criminal Justice Bill now before Parliament were a clumsy

way of dealing with the problems of Maori offending and imprisonment. “Too many young offenders who spend some years in Social Welfare care and custody continue their anti-social attitudes and finish up in prison,” he said. Mr Young, a former Minister of Social Welfare, said that properly funded and administered, Maatua Whangai could save youths and the community from years of wasteful cost in human and financial terms.

Maatua Whangai needed such resources as generous allowances for families who took in an extra young person. “Schemes to take young people from derelict lives in large cities to learn or relearn the knowledge of their forbears at country

maraes also need all the help they deserve,” Mr Young said. The Maori Affairs director of policy, administration and community services, Mr Douglas Hauraki, said none of the departments involved in Maatua Whangai were allocated specific budgets for the scheme. “Because Maatua Whangai comes from current funding allocations it requires flexibility from each of the departments involved,” he said. “What we are being challenged to do is to make more imaginative use of existing resources.” He said the Maori Affairs Department would not ask for a separate allocation of expenditure in the next departmental estimates.