Beneficiaries receiving fewer meetings with employment officers, despite more resources

Wednesday, 22 January 2020

Fewer people on a jobseeker support benefit are receiving meetings with case managers designed to help them get a job, because those case managers are being pulled out to work on emergency hardship grants.

There were just 90,000 meetings with an employment case manager in the three months to September 2019. These were split between the 142,931 people then on a jobseeker benefit.

That works out as 0.63 meetings per jobseeker, meaning some people on the benefit went for three months without an appointment.

MSD measures the meetings in terms of 'engagements' which could be a meeting with a case manager, a phone call, or another kind of contact between the person receiving the benefit and MSD.

* Minister responds to Manurewa WINZ queue problem

* Emergency housing stocktake uncovers complaints about gangs, sex workers & dirty rooms

* 'Rat hole' motel investigation sparks emergency housing shakeup**

Viv Rickard, the Ministry of Social Development's Deputy Chief Executive Service Delivery said ' employment-focused case managers' had been diverted to other roles because of increased hardship demand.

MSD has had to shift employment case workers to help with growing demand for hardship grants.

'Over time, the growing demand for hardship and housing support had resulted in employment-focused case managers increasingly being pulled into supporting general case management services,' he said.

The Government allocated funding in the last budget for additional case managers, of which 170 have been hired, increasing to 263 next year. MSD currently hires 463 Fulltime Equivalent case managers.

'In addition to more case managers coming on stream, we've also been making a number of operational changes to free up staff to have more time for each client to be having the right conversations, including on employment,' Rickard said.

He said the additional case managers and spending more time on frontline services were showing ' encouraging results in the number of people coming off benefit to start work'.

'The latest benefit figures, to be released tomorrow [Thursday], will reflect that,' he said.

The Minister of Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni said, 'the government wants a welfare system that is fairer and more accessible for all New Zealanders. That's why we invested in 263 work focused case managers over 4 years in Budget '19'.

Natioanl Louise Upston said the Government was not doing enough to get people into work.

'MSD hired 170 work focused case managers between July and November last year and they're already making a positive impact. 93 more work focused case managers will be hired in the coming months,' she said.

National's social development spokesperson Louise Upston said it showed rising living costs were putting increased pressure on people, causing them to put pressure on the hardship grant system.

'If the government was focusing on reducing the impacts of the cost of living then there wouldn't be so many people taking hardship grants,' Upston said.

'There also wouldn't be as much hardship because people would be earning more because they'd be in a job,' she said.

She said that people had more meetings with case managers under the previous government.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said more caseworkers had been hired by MSD.

In the three months to September 2017, the last three months of the National government, there were 144,026 engagements with employment case managers and 12,726 people receiving jobseeker support. That equates to each person receiving 1.19 engagements.

'Our underlying philosophy is the best way to get out of poverty is though work. The front line staff aren't spending enough time with them to get into work,' she said.

Cost of living has become a contentious political battleground, whilst rents have continued to rise under Labour and fuel tax has increased, other living costs have remained stable or in line with what occurred under hte previous government.

The Consumers Price Index (CPI) which measures the changing cost of living, grew by just 1.5 per cent, while the average hourly wage grew by 4.2 per cent in the year to September 2019.

Meanwhile the Government has beefed up the transfers regime through its $5.3 billion families package

In the three months to September 2019, 15,594 people received a hardship grant to help meet their electricity bills, up from 10,656 the year before. This is despite the cost of electricity actually decreasing.

Data collected by MBIE said that real cost of a kWh of electricity for residential consumers is down 1.3 per cent on last year, and the average household pays $100 less per year in electricity than they did five years ago.

The Government argues that increasing applications of hardship grants are evidence that people know they are now less likely to be turned down.