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Blunt Welfare Reform Will Put Children At Risk
22 February 2011
For Immediate Release
Blunt Welfare Reform Will Put Children At Risk
The education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa is warning that young children will be the ultimate losers from blunt welfare reform which forces sole parents back into work.
The Welfare Working Group is recommending that sole parents on the DPB be required to look for a job once their youngest child turns 3. However women who had more children while already on the benefit would be expected to look for work when the baby was just 14 weeks old.
NZEI says without good quality and affordable early childhood options in every community, such a policy makes no sense and would only serve to put families under pressure, and in turn put children at risk.
€œParents of young children can only work if there is suitable quality and affordable early childhood education available. It is ironic that the welfare working group is saying there needs to be more investment in early childhood education, when the government has just made huge cuts and moved to make quality early childhood education more unaffordable for the vast majority of families, says NZEI National Executive member Hayley Whitaker.
Sole parents with young children would also need flexible working hours as well as good sick leave provisions to care for their child when they need to.
Ms Whitaker says €œfinding jobs and employers who are willing to accommodate that is hard and then there would be the added difficulty of trying to find good quality locally based early childhood care to match it. The risk is that parents will leave their children in care which is not suitable.
€œSome of the recent tragic child abuse cases have involved sole parents working, sometimes long or unsociable hours, and leaving children with unsuitable people who do not have the skills or commitment to look after a child.
NZEI believes all children deserve to be loved, well fed and well housed so they can learn.
€œThis policy unfairly removes a parent€™s choice about when and how they return to work when their children are at a vulnerable age without any consideration to the wider social, educational and workplace implications,Ms Whitaker says.
ends
NZEI Te Riu Roa
New Zealand Educational Institute
NZEI Te Riu Roa members work in every community in New Zealand, leading and advocating for quality public education.
We are the 50,000 principals, teachers and support staff who work in primary, area and secondary schools as well as early childhood centres, special education and school advisory services. We come together as NZEI Te Riu Roa - New Zealand's largest education union, a Treaty based organisation and a powerful advocate for quality public education.
We have the most important job in New Zealand - educating for the future.
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