Promise of social investment the evidence of success

Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Henare Clarke is chief executive of Genesis Youth Trust, which has delivered wraparound services to south Auckland’s at-risk youth for the past 25 years.

OPINION: Long before he was made Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster was thinking about the precursors to crime and how to prevent our young people from slipping into a life of lawlessness.

As an area commander in Auckland a decade ago, he was ahead of his time in thinking about the complex social issues that can lead to crime, particularly in a young person’s life. He knew that getting ahead of the problem can make a long-term difference, not only for that young person, but for the children they will one day raise.

He worked closely with the Genesis Youth Trust, ensuring the counselling, mentoring and transition to work services we provide to rangatahi and their whānau were strongly supported by his teams.

That he begins a new role as the head of the renamed Social Investment Agency is huge relief to those of us who believe in its clear purpose – to provide evidence-based, long-term social outcomes for the most vulnerable in our society. Coster has always understood that there is a social element to crime, which can be tackled early, saving not only a young person’s future, but enormous Government costs across health, justice, welfare and family services.

Like other NGOs, Genesis is a “top of the cliff” service. When a young person comes to the attention of police, they will be referred to us and we are often the first of a multi-agency approach to make contact with the whānau. Every organisation we work with, from the Police, Oranga Tamariki, MSD and Health NZ has their own strengths in dealing with a young person in need.

Ours is that our staff have often come from the same place as the rangatahi – many of them turned their lives around after early brushes with Police. Over a long period, they will work with the young person and their whānau to mentor, provide counselling, seek work placements for them and offer a new vision for the future. It is painstaking work but enormously rewarding – and the outcomes speak for themselves.

Take Riley (not her real name), a young woman who we first met when her charge sheet was over 40 incidents ranging from shoplifting to assault. Over the two years our teams worked closely with Riley, she returned to school, stopped offending and became the outgoing and socially capable young woman she always wanted to be. This year Riley entered university, the first of her family to do so.

She wants now to be a social worker and we can’t wait to have her working with our Genesis team.

Social investment as a descriptor can get a bad rap. But as an early adopter of a six-year social bonds scheme, we know exactly what the payback is for the state’s investment in programmes that help teenagers like Riley.

From September 2017 to the end of August last year, three of Genesis’ youth programmes were tracked and audited by an external agency and Treasury. We helped 607 young people aged 13 to 17 over that period, providing individual case management plans with a social worker, counsellor and mentor.

We worked with the whole whānau as these were teenagers considered medium to high-risk offenders. For every $1 invested in our programme, benefits to the Crown and all New Zealanders was $9, through things like fewer hospital events, lower consumption of mental health services, less crime and higher income achieved in salaries and wages.

Importantly, we tracked a 60% non-reoffending rate over those six years – that’s 360 young people who gave up on crime. They entered tertiary education, got driver licences and registered their cars. The payback will continue for generations – the siblings who watched them turn their lives around, the children they will one day raise, and the other Kiwis who won’t experience crime at their hands.

The police were an integral part of this programme, as the young people were referred to us by youth aid officers and the police database was used to certify the outcomes. Nine dollars paid back for every $1 invested – that’s why Andrew Coster leading our new Social Investment Agency is such an enormous step for not only the young people we see every day, but for social outcomes for all Kiwis right around the motu.

These are not easy multidisciplinary programmes. They take time, and resource and a hell of a lot of passionate care from people like our Genesis team. There are businesses we work with who will take these young people on in jobs.

Keeping them in work requires work too – we’ve found that 14 months is the date that signals they will likely stay in employment for the rest of their working lives.

The promise of social investment is the evidence of success. If you don’t measure how do you know? Andrew Coster gets that and he knows what needs to be done.