Government commits to Sanctions, but will this harm or help young people?
The Government doubles down on sanctions for young people, here's three proactive steps they could take instead...
This week the Government has begun to speak about their plans to address the growing numbers of people who are currently in need of a benefit. In an interview with Jake Tame on Q & A this week Minister of Social Development, Louise Upston, shared the figures, there are now 190,000 people accessing the Job Seeker Benefit, 67,000 more than there was six years ago. And, in 2023 there was 351,759 people in need of financial support from the Ministry of Social Development, up 7137 in 2022. She also expressed concern about the number of young people accessing the benefits and stated her intention and commitment to address this issue.
And earlier this week, in a kōrero with Mike Hosking, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon repeated these concerns, again emphasizing concern about the number of young people on the benefit and reiterating his commitment to ensuring that they were motivated to address these numbers.
In both conversations sanctions were presented as the hard-nosed solution that would turn these numbers around. Providing the necessary stick to motivate young people and provide them with a dose of aspiration.
Now I share, the Government’s desire to see those of our young people that can be transitioned off the benefit, supported to do so as swiftly as possible. Yet it is my experience that sanctions are a blunt instrument, ill-equipped to achieve this goal.
In fact, in over a decade of supporting young people who have need of welfare support, I have seen the way sanctions can cause more harm, driving young people away from support, and creating extra pressure leading to a negative impact on their overall wellbeing and mental health.
For a Government committed to getting serious about addressing mental health, this is an important point for them to consider, requiring some critical reflection on how their current policy to address young people on the benefit, may be at odds with their stated goal of addressing youth mental health.
But, it is also important to be clear, that this idea that young people want to be on the benefit is a myth.
Most young people I speak to would love to be free of Government support and long to have a job and be independent. Yet, many of our young people are dealing with huge, hard things, often just trying to survive. The experience of many young people is that the welfare system is already hostile towards them, often making it harder - not easier - to focus on their education or find mahi.
There are steps we could be taking to ensure young people have the support they need to move off the benefit swiftly.
1) Ensure every young person has access to mental health support and health care. Often, young people are facing huge challenges, many dealing with mental ill-health, trauma, disabilities, and poverty. Access to healthcare and mental health support can be difficult and not tailored to the needs of our young people who are in vulnerable situations. Ensuring we invest in Youth Healthcare and Mental Health support, ensuring that access to these services is addressed, and young people are able to access the support they need, could be a positive and proactive step towards addressing this issue.
2) Prioritize addressing Youth Homelessness. A portion of young people on the benefit are housing insecure. When you're living in emergency accommodation, couch surfing, or sleeping on our streets, you’re in survival mode, and finding mahi, or focusing on your education becomes near impossible. We need to ensure we have provisions in place to ensure our young people have access to stable and safe housing. We need a strategy to address youth homelessness, and we need to take responsibility for our young people, ensuring all who have need of housing, can access it.
3) Ensure young people have access to Youth Workers, with low caseloads. Currently, if you're 16-17 (or a young parent - 16-20) MSD provides you with a Youth Worker to support you via Youth Services. This service should be extended to young people on the Job Seeker, and caseloads for Youth Workers should be brought right down. Currently, caseloads for Youth Workers in Youth Services are far too high, meaning many young people are not able to get the support they require, Youth Workers in these roles are often spending more time responding to crisis and completing paperwork, than practicing proactive Youth Development. This is leading to Youth Development Workers becoming burnt out, and resulting in young people being unable to access the support they require to address the challenges they’re facing in their lives.
If we are serious about supporting young people to thrive, then we need to get serious about addressing the huge challenges our young people are facing.
Young people thrive when they feel they have their basic needs met, are supported, connected and loved.
We focus on these things, and we will see a difference in their lives.
A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads Kick Back, a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.