July 26, 2016
Families report bureaucratic box ticking
The president of the Maori Women’s Welfare League is questioning the value of a report which attempted to track ethnic differences in the way families are faring.
The Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit or Superu says its annual update on family well being will be an important contribution to policy formation.
Prue Kapua says it reads like box-ticking, with arbitrary ethnic distinctions and findings that are obvious without pointing to any solutions.
Community groups including the league were not consulted.
"We do work with whanau on social services provision, not on the scale of others but we do work in our own communities. I see most of the people they spoke to were government departments and you wonder about the value of that because it's supposed to be about where policy goes in future. They're not talking to the community that is affected by it," she says.
Prue Kapua says the report fell well short of the sort of advocacy Superu practiced in its previous incarnation as the Families Commission.
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