CORE GROUP MEETING – 11 DECEMBER 2007

Six Mayors attended the Core Group meeting Wellington in December and met with officials and Ministers.

As this was the first meeting after the election new Chair Mayor Dale Williams (Otorohanga) outlined the responsibilities of the Core Group to new members and thanked them for their willingness to be members of the group. Mayor Maureen Reynolds(Tararua) was elected the new Deputy Chair.

Youth Week

It was agreed to allocate $10,000 from the Mayors Support Fund to provide up to $500 to Youth Councils to run an event during Youth Week in 2008. The money would be available on a “first in” basis and be sent to the Mayor. Events must be organised and run by the young people and a brief report provided to the Taskforce on completion.

Tindall Foundation
In a written communication, the Tindall Foundation thanked the Taskforce for their work with the Foundation over the last six years noting that they have valued the partnership to date and are proud of the achievements this innovative project has contributed to. However they had resolved not to continue to fund the Taskforce directly, but to open the funding for organisations to apply directing through the foundation.

Thanks to Mayor Jenny Brash
Dale Williams noted that Jenny Brash had decided to step down from the Core Group and thanked her for her contributions to date. Jenny has been a member of the Core Group since its inception and has played a valuable role in ensuring the on-going success of the Taskforce. Jenny was presented with a gift and said she would continue to support the Taskforce locally and would no doubt be involved in major events in the future.

Patricia Read, Deputy Secretary - Ministry of Social Development
As the new head of Work and Income and the operational arm of the Ministry, Patricia took up our invitation to speak with the Mayors on the direction of the Ministry and her particular focus. Patricia spoke of the focus on youth being event sharper with the low numbers of beneficiaries and skill shortages. Under the Working NZ package there had been a significant policy shift which ensured all beneficiaries were eligible for all MSD programmes regardless of the benefit they were receiving.

There was also recognition that there were wider issues preventing people from participating in the workforce or in their communities, such as health. The Ministry was therefore working closely with Health providers to access services for clients such as quicker surgery or support for mild mental health issues.

Patricia also noted that having Child, Youth and Family within the Ministry meant there was now a requirement for a hand over of clients from CYF or Youth Justice to the benefit system. This will be particularly useful in relation to young people on Independent Youth Benefit. This required the young person to have a plan and a social worker or Work and Income staff member working alongside them. To this end there were now new people in the regions – “Programme Coordinators”, to work with all providers to achieve the best possible outcome for the young person. There was now also a Work and Income Case Manager in every CYF office working on the integrated case management model and using other services, such as strengthening families.

Dale Williams noted the desire of the Mayors and local authorities to be the filter from government agencies to the programmes being delivered in local communities, particularly around the age group of 15-20. Patricia was supportive of looking further at how this might work and suggested we work together with officials early in the New Year. She also said she was driving a change to be not only outcome driven but to be aware of the quality of the outcomes.

AGENCY UPDATES

Ministry of Social Development
Mike Smith noted that there had been significant policy changes this year including:

• Employment assistance to 16-17 year olds, particularly skill investment and transition to work. Up to $1,000 per person is available for these expenses.
• Health related benefits – asking doctors for more intensive assessment – what clients can do and when they may be able to undertake some work. Case managers then work on a plan for the person so MSD is no longer passively paying the sickness benefit. This has required significant staff training with around 2,000 Ministry staff. The policy appears to be working as they are beginning to see sickness befit numbers static rather than increasing as has been the trend.
• The MSD innovation fund - $5 million this year with a further $10million in 2008. This fund was begun in September and MSD is working with DHB’s and PHO’s to be used for health related costs such as drug and alcohol services, pain relief, mental health services.
• Work and Income staff have been trained on identifying family violence and have been working with the family violence networks.
• Youth Transition Services – looking at formalising the expansion early in the New Year.

Career Services
The service has a contract with MoE to work with up to 500 students declined early leaving certificates. This was proving challenging as there was a time-lag between the decline and the notification to Career Services and often the young person had moved on by the time the service had the information.

Career Services had provided the Just the Job DVD on Trades Careers, to all secondary schools. Series two is currently being filmed.

Department of Labour
Most regions now have labour market strategies and are working to improve the linkage between economic development strategies and labour market strategies. EDANZ is working on connecting nation and regional strategies. The current focus is on horticulture/viticulture, food /beverage, ICT,Coastal shipping. The department is working with TEC on the skills strategy, particularly looking at better matching/ information for matching and investment. There is also a Maori Development strategy working with iwi on labour market development – currently with Ngati Awa and Ngai Tahu.

Strategic plan
Dale gave an update on the strategic planning session saying that we are all proud of the achievements and acknowledged the partnerships and relationships which had helped achieve the targets. He noted that Mayors had agreed to continue the focus on youth, with the goal being Youth in Transition – still working on jobs and skill shortages but broadening the focus to include the transition from school into the community thus addressing some of the negative youth behaviour in some communities. The aim was to actively engage with young people and provide positive pathways into vocational occupations, as well as training opportunities and preparing young people for what it’s like in the community.

He noted that Mayors did not believe there was a lack of money but that interagency cooperation was sometimes lacking. This could result in a level of “evaporation” of money before it reached communities. He suggested Mayors and Councils could be a filter between agencies and projects which were being funded.

He also raised the issue of conflicting boundaries between agencies and between local authorities. Officials agreed it was worth looking at service alignment in this respect.

Mayors were also concerned about the prevalence of pilot projects which then had difficulty attracting sustainable funding.

MINISTERS MEETING
Mayors met with Hon Ruth Dyson, Hon Pete Hodgson, Hon Darren Hughes and Hon Trevor Mallard.

Hon. Ruth Dyson said the government was keen to keep the focus on young people with particular emphasis on the most disadvantaged. She wanted movement on Youth Transitions to the next stage. Collaboration between agencies was much better. She supported the filter idea and agreed that all departments would need to be involved and we would need to work out how that could happen. She supported the idea of one funding stream. She would like a collaborative effort, to hear about the best things happening so we can get better outcomes. The Minister further noted that she would like a clear framework with agreed targets and an action plan for the next period of work with the Taskforce.

Mayor Maureen Reynolds asked about sustainable funding for youth workers and in response Hon. Ruth Dyson agreed there was a need to identify good youth workers and youth work practice and develop funding models.