United Future
Hon Peter Dunne

Information on the Families Commission Bill

·        In 2001 there were 591,712 families with children living within New Zealand households.  Eighty-one percent of these contained dependent children (aged under 18 years and not in full-time employment), that is, 479,334 families.

·        Most one parent families were headed by a sole mother (83 percent, or 117,015), while the remaining 17 percent (23,160) were headed by a sole father.

Ministry of Social Development: ‘The Social Report 2003’ – (census 2001)

United Future believes families are a clearly the cornerstone of our society, and their health and well-being has significant impact on the state of NZ society.

The Commission’s main functions

1.            To advocate for the interests of families generally

It is important that we have a body to do this regardless of political whim of the Govt of the day.  Particularly now as the oppositions parties’ rhetoric claims to support families but they have not supported this very significant piece of legislation.

2.            The Commission will not advocate for the cases of particular families.

3.            It must have regard to factors that help to maintain/enhance:

(a)         families’ resilience

(b)         families’ strengths. (see below)

Family resilience and strengths-based perspectives are now accepted by the social service sector as the key models underpinning intervention work.

Other Functions

(a)   to encourage and facilitate informed debate

(b)   to increase public awareness & promote better understanding of matters relating to the interests of families

(c)   to encourage and facilitate the development/provision of policies designed to promote or serve the interests of families

(d)   to report and make recommendations on matters relating to families referred to it by any Minister

(e)   to stimulate and promote research

(f) to consult with/delegate to official bodies

(g) to carry out functions incidental to main function (of advocacy)

It is time that the promotion of values that support families were placed back at the centre of civic life.

Family resilience:

·        Resilience has been defined as “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity”.  It is about finding the factors that enable families to make most of adverse situations. 

·        Studies of intervention programmes suggest that it may be possible to boost the resilience of families, but that much still remains to be learned about how best to do this.  The Commission will be a catalyst in developing this research.

      (‘Family Resilience and Good Child Outcomes: A Review of the Literature- Ariel Kalil)

Family Strengths Perspective:

·        A strengths-based social work approach builds on family strengths and resources as the best means of achieving sustainable change for families and their children.

·        The previous approach of services towards social work and family studies derived from the ‘deficit’ model, which identifies problems and focuses on managing or reducing risk. Whilst important, this does not in itself lead to long-term change within families as it relies on external control.

·        It recognises that sustainable change can only come from within families.

How we have responded to Opposition criticism of the Commission

·        “The Commission is a waste of money”

The $28m the Commission will cost over 4 years is not expensive at all considering-

(a)   other Commissions with research functions are significantly more expensive

(b)    a conservative estimate of the cost to the taxpayer of family breakdown is between $5 and $6 billion a year.

(c)   There have been repeated calls recently for agencies involved in child care and protection work to achieve integrated service delivery, there is always calls for more resources and increased workforce levels  – our response to these needs to be underpinned by informed and evidence-based policy -  the Commission will ensure that the research and consultation necessary for effective policies that support families is undertaken.

·        “The Commission will not do anything to protect and strengthen families”

This kind of opposition comment is completely blind to functions of the Commission and the need out there for a range of research and advocacy for the family.  It reflects why we need a Commission – until recently a consistent voice promoting and advocating for family interests has been noticeably lacking in political debate – and it is time we addressed this.

·        “The Commission will be focussed on struggling families only”

While the part of the Commission’s role will be to examine what factors cause some families to struggle, its function is to advocate for families generally – this means it is focussed on all families – to celebrate and learn from the good things that are present in our families.

Debate on the definition of family

Defining “families” has undoubtedly been the most controversial aspect of this Bill. 

The first version of this clause (clause 10) read:

Cl 10 Diversity of New Zealand families and family groups

(1)     In the exercise and performance of its powers and functions, the Commission must have regard to the kinds, structures, and diversity of families and family groups.

(2)     A “family group” is defined as a family group (for example, an extended family)-

(a)           whose members have biological relationships or legal relationships with one another; or

(b)           whose members have significant psychological attachments to one another; or

(c)           that is a whanau or other culturally recognised family group.

Submitters raised concerns that gangs and other similar groups would also have “significant psychological attachments” to each other and could be recognised as “family groups” – falling within the scope of the Commission’s role.

Responding to these concerns, we have worked hard to amend this definition -  to ensure a commonsense approach, one that provides a non-exhaustive definition of the family.  The core function of the Commission is “to advocate for NZ families generally” - and therefore the Commission needs to be able to recognise the range of family situations that exist in NZ.

United Future believes that this inclusive approach acknowledging the diversity of families is vital for one central reason: children.  Children are born into all types of family situations and the Families Commission is underpinned by the desire to ensure that parents are supported in their role – recognising that parents hold the responsibility to create healthy family environments that nurture and protect their children.

As a result of our efforts this clause now reads:

Cl 10 Diversity of New Zealand families

(1)     In the exercise and performance of its powers and functions, the Commission must have regard to the kinds, structures, and diversity of families.

(2)     In this section, family includes a group of people related by marriage, blood, or adoption, an extended family, 2 or more persons living together as a family, and a whanau or other culturally recognised family group.

(3)     However, persons are not members of a family for the purposes of this section solely because they have as their common objective…the achievement of some outcome of a community, domestic, professional, recreational, social, vocational, or other nature (eg. Crime)

(4)   Subsection (3) is for the avoidance of doubt.

This definition avoids the problems of using the term “significant psychological attachment” and for the sake of clarity, specifically excludes gangs etc.

The focus here on the family, rather than just the individual, accords with the Agenda for Children’s “whole child” approach to policy and service development that recognises that a child’s behaviour and development can be profoundly affected by interactions that happen between the settings in which they live – for example, how well a child does at school may be influenced by the support they have to do their homework.

Some comments from the Hon Peter Dunne and families spokesperson Judy Turner:

‘What became obvious in the discussions we had is that many people when asking for a better definition of family are actually asking for a definition of the “ideal family”.  The truth is that if most NZ’ers lived in “ideal families” we wouldn’t need a Commission. 

As Peter has said before, ‘the Families Commission is not being set up to serve the cause of families as they ‘should be’, but families as they ‘really are’”.

However, accepting that families come in all shapes and sizes does not stop us from having strong convictions about the benefits of healthy traditional models.

Establishing a Commission around a definition that excludes large numbers of parent/child environments, is to disempower and exclude many of the people we are trying to help.’