CPAG – Advocates concerned the government has downgraded food security and housing quality in Child and Youth Strategy refresh

The Minister for Child Poverty Reduction released a new Child and Youth Strategy yesterday (21 November 2024).

Child Poverty Action Group is concerned by the direction represented in the refreshed strategy, particularly with the Minister downgrading the importance of food security and dropping a measure related to ‘housing quality’ altogether. These indicators have been replaced with ‘children in benefit-dependent households’ and ‘school achievement’ measures.

Previously, one of the five official child poverty reduction indicators was ‘the percentage of children living in households reporting that food runs out often or sometimes’, as reported by the Ministry of Health’s New Zealand Health Survey. It is now been downgraded to a supplementary ‘strategy indicator’.

The demotion of food insecurity is particularly concerning given the latest New Zealand Health Survey results for 2023/24 showed one in four of our children (27%) lived in households that did not have enough food on a regular basis. Up from 21.3% the previous year.

CPAG Spokesperson Georgie Craw states, ‘Overall, you get the sense that some of the harder goals have been removed and replaced with goals that are easier to artificially achieve. For example, the number of children without access to adequate food is indisputable, but the number of families receiving a benefit can be adjusted more easily. That is, the government can create barriers for people to access income assistance, and then claim success. But fewer people accessing support doesn’t necessarily mean the need for income assistance has disappeared. This is a question of optics and doesn’t solve any of our systemic problems.’

‘We are already seeing this in action, with the Minister choosing to introduce additional benefit sanctions designed to make it harder for people to access support. Although these sanctions can appear, at face value, to “make sense”, in reality they only increase the churn of people in and out of welfare’, adds Craw.

‘Housing quality’ – a previous child poverty reduction indicator that measured the percentage of children living in households with a major problem with dampness or mould – has been dropped completely. Yet we know how important growing up in a warm, dry, healthy house is for children’s physical, mental and spiritual health.

As CPAG spokesperson Professor John O’Neill states, ‘It is not difficult to imagine the effect on children’s self-esteem and wellbeing of living for years in a succession of mouldy, damp, cold, overcrowded, poorly lit, barely furnished houses. In addition to a range of entirely avoidable physical illnesses and infections, poor quality housing is associated with higher incidences of unhappiness, stress, depression and other forms of mental illness. Learning doesn’t just happen at school. Children spend three quarters of their day not at school, and most of this where they live. Children will certainly learn in these conditions, but the learnings are hardly those most of us would want for our own children.’

When the Child Poverty Reduction Act was designed the Child Poverty Reduction Indicators were intended to ‘relate to the wider causes and consequences of poverty, and/or outcomes with a clear link to child poverty.’

• housing affordability (the percentage of children and young people (ages 0-17) living in households spending more than 30 percent of their disposable income on housing);

• housing quality (the percentage of children and young people (ages 0-17) living in households with a major problem with dampness or mould);

• food insecurity (the percentage of children (ages 0-15) living in households reporting food runs out often or sometimes;

• regular school attendance (the percentage of children and young people (ages 6-16) who are regularly attending school): and

• potentially avoidable hospitalisations (the rate of children (ages 0-15) hospitalised for potentially avoidable illnesses).

The new CPRIs are:

• children in benefit-dependent households (as measured by the number of children and young people (ages 0-17) in families receiving a working-age main benefit);

• housing affordability (as measured by the percentage of children and young people (ages 0-17) living in low-income households that spend more than 30 percent of their disposable income on housing costs (where low-income refers to the lowest 40 percent in the equivalised, disposable household income distribution);

• school attendance (as measured by the percentage of children and young people (ages 6-16) who are present more than 90 percent of the term);

• school achievement (as measured by the percentage of school leavers with at least NCEA Level 2 as their highest level of attainment); and

• avoidable hospitalisations (as measured by the rate of children and young people (ages 0-17) experiencing potentially avoidable hospitalisations).