Labour Party on dangerous ground in criticism of funding allocation for Parenting Programme, says Family Counsellor and Counselling Outcomes Researcher

The Labour Party is on very dangerous ground in their criticism of Social Development Minister Paula Bennett's decision to legitimately allocate a $2.4 million dollar contract to Parents Inc to provide the "Toolbox" programme in the community says Family Counsellor Steve Taylor, Director of 24-7 Ltd.

"Since 1998 it was the Labour Party that was responsible for the $28 million dollars allocated funding disaster that was Family Start, a home-support programme that has resulted in insufficiently trained staff, cancelled programmes, and poor outcome results for families".

"In 2005, it was the Labour Party, in yet another unsuccessful programme fronted by Phil Goff, that unilaterally allocated $14.9 million dollars to the Family Safety Team initiative in the absence of any business or delivery plan, which resulted in a lack of collaboration between the Police, CYF, and Women's Refuge, high staff turnover, bureaucratic patch protection by the agencies involved, and no successful outcome for families".

"In choosing an intra-community-based Parenting programme such as "Toolbox", Paula Bennett has sided with the practice-based evidence of community reinforcement, buy-in, and ownership, and against the ideology of the "one size fits all" programmes that have been imposed on communities without any meaningful consultation in the past".

"Manualised and practice-based evidence-informed social intervention programmes that are bought in and adopted and adapted by communities as their own have been shown by the evidence to a much greater chance of success with families, and such an approach is a core philosophy of the "Toolbox" Parenting Programme"

"Paula Bennett is to be congratulated on identifying and funding a ready-to-go Parenting Programme such as "Toolbox", a programme that is already enjoying nationwide success in both its application and delivery - the Labour Party would do well to support such a programme, and not engage in vacuous discussions about legitimate funding decisions regarding amounts of money that simply pale into comparison to their own misguided, illogical, and evidence-absent funding allocations in the past - according to the information above, the Labour Party now have at least 48 million reasons to now retreat with what is left of their dignity on this matter" says Mr Taylor.

ENDS

Kind Regards,

Steve Taylor | B. Couns., B. Alc. D.S. | Cert. Clinical Supervision | Cert.
Supervisory Management
Director 24-7 Ltd

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