Thousands of solo parents on benefits must from today look for employment. Simon Collins reports on a sweeping welfare change.
Work and Income officials have selected just over a tenth of the country's 43,000 sole-parent beneficiaries with no children under 6 to be the guinea pigs for a work-testing scheme starting today.
The agency has picked 3600 "work-ready" solo parents and 900 with more "complex needs" for what it calls "voluntary proactive engagement".
The new "Future Focus" law, which also includes a revised medical certificate to assess beneficiaries' capacity for work, means that all 43,000 sole parents with no children under 6 will be legally required to look for paid work.
The 4500 picked for initial proactive engagement are being called in to meet case managers over the next few weeks.
Work and Income spokeswoman Zoe Griffiths said the agency had dropped plans, outlined in a Cabinet paper in March, to start only in districts where jobs were available.
"We are working with these clients across the whole country," she said.
Only Canterbury has been given a last-minute exemption, until next March, because of the earthquake.
Drake recruitment special projects manager Maurice O'Brien said the job market had picked up in all regions in the past year, although it was still hard to find unskilled and part-time work.
"If someone is skilled and able to work fulltime, then the market is buoyant and they should have no problems getting a job," he said.
"But if they are unable to work fulltime, then a permanent placement would be difficult and we would have to look at temping."
He said there was a huge market for healthcare work, ranging from unskilled homecare and housework up to skilled nursing.
The new policy recognised from the start that some sole parents would need more help than others to find jobs, even in a buoyant job market.
The March Cabinet paper said Work and Income would focus initially on "work-ready" parents, but would gradually bring in more longer-term beneficiaries such as former teen parents.
Ms Griffiths said the 900 "complex" cases picked for the first group included some former teen parents.
Meanwhile the new "work capacity medical certificate", which doctors have been asked to use for patients seeking sickness or invalid's benefits, has been rewritten to seek information on what the patient can do, rather than what they can't do.
Application forms for domestic purposes, sickness and invalid's benefits have also been rewritten.
DPB applicants with no child under 6 will have to agree to "take any offer of suitable work, including part-time or temporary work or work that is seasonal or subsidised".
Pam Apera, of Glenfield's Beneficiaries Advocacy and Information Service, said case managers would have discretion to decide what was "suitable work" for each client.
"I've got grandparents raising grandchildren who say they have received these work-test letters," she said. "They are calling people who have given up their retirement to care for kids.
But Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said there would be "room for compassion with those difficult cases".
"It's a big change and for some people it will be scary," she said. "But I do not accept this is a reason not to do it."
ON THE WEB
workandincome.govt.nz
RULE CHANGES
* Sole parents with no children under 6 must seek "suitable work".
* Revised medical certificate assesses all beneficiaries' capacity to work up to 15, 30 or more hours a week.
* Sole parents and invalid's beneficiaries can earn up to $100 a week before benefits cut.
* Income limits for childcare subsidies are lower.
