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December 09, 2013
Benchmark set for measuring child poverty
Waatea Team
Posted On December 9, 2013
Maori child advocacy group Te Mana Ririki is welcoming today’s release of the first Child Poverty Monitor.
The monitor is a collaboration between the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, the University of Otago’s Child and Youth Epidemiology Service, and the JR McKenzie Trust.
It estimated that last year 265,000 children or a quarter of all New Zealand children lived in poverty, with 30 percent of Maori children living in poor households.
Ririki director Anton Blank says by creating a set of standard child poverty measures, the monitor will allow people to see if their actions are making a difference.
He says in recent years there has been a lot more awareness of child poverty, and a lot of good work is being done at community level.
"What we need to see as well as that work on the front line is we need to see changes to government policy so that number one our kids to better when they go to school and number two that there are jobs waiting for them once they move into adult employment," Mr Blank says.
He says for Maori, the focus must be on creating Maori driven and led initiatives in areas like education, because they are what has proven effective.
Copyright © 2013, UMA Broadcasting Ltd
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