November 13, 2018
Evidence demanded for Māori programmes
The New Zealand Māori Council wants all social services for Māori to be developed by Māori in partnership with others.
To that end it has formed a research partnership with the Centre for Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation, a Massey University think tank that works with communities around the world.
Council executive member Matthew Tukaki says change is afoot in agencies like Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Social Development and Corrections, and Māori need to be part of it.
He says if existing policy development frameworks were working, there wouldn't be a need for such a partnership.
"And when we speak to the crown and we speak to the government, a lot of them are telling us these other organisations have great evidence-based frameworks and evaluation methods behind them so we are cutting that off at the pass as an argument and this world first partnership will provide us with not only the evidence-based frameworks we need to test the programmes that are being developed but also the evaluation of them," Mr Tukaki says.
He says whānau ora commissioning agencies are collecting an extraordinary amount of rich data that can help inform policy.
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