Parents welcome chance to speak.

<>Parents should be aiming their cursors at the Families Commission website in huge numbers to add their thoughts to a new study, suggests a recently formed lobby group for parents, Parent.org.

<>“For a whole generation parents have been pretty much ignored by government,” says spokesperson, Steve Gore. “Business has had two decades of government listening to them, responding to them, and creating an environment for them that gives them every opportunity to do well. For parents the opposite has happened. Successive governments have ignored the nation’s parents. Parents have been left to fend for themselves and their needs subjugated to that of every other group. Finally, someone is asking parents what works, what the problems are and what they need to succeed. This is a good start.

<>“While government's relationship with business is based on success their relationship with parents is based on failure,” stated Mr. Gore.

<>The group points to the fact that there are around eleven cabinet ministers mandated with ensuring business's needs are met but none to look after parents as a group. Government has over sixty agencies helping business succeed with research, information dissemination, leadership development and creating opportunities. The only agencies outside of the Families Commission tasked with dealing with parents are Child, Youth and family, WINZ, the Police and the Courts, none of whom have in their mandate to ensure success, but rather to cope with failure. Parent.org points to this discrepancy as one of our greatest failures, and a huge missed opportunity.

<>If we created an environment for parents in which success, at all levels, was the expectation – as it is with business, sports and culture – we would see fewer social problems and, in time, create a society that is prosperous, harmonious, and creative. We waste so much every time we allow a parent to fail. We could do so much better as a country if we took the view that parents are the key to success, not part of the problem.

<>Parent.org hopes that the results of this study gets widely disseminated, so that the issues facing parents get a good airing – at last!

<>Parent.org can be found at http://www.parent.org.nz

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