Latest from Social Welfare

Travelling beneficiaries' payments cut

More than 21,000 beneficiaries have had their benefits cut for going on unapproved overseas trips in the last nine months.

Deborah Hart: Breaking the warfare mentality of Family Court

Family disputes are problems to be professionally mediated rather than wars that will be won or lost.

Helplines to merge into single service

Helpline services for smokers, gamblers and other groups are being merged into a new national "telehealth" service - possibly with a simple 111-style number.

Closing the gaps: Longer life expectancy

Maori are living longer and their infant mortality rate will soon be the same as Pakeha - but they're still over-represented in poverty statistics.

Closing the gaps: The ethnic job divide

New Zealand is still wasting its "demographic dividend" of young Maori and Pacific people reaching working age.

Closing gaps favour young

Gaps between New Zealand's main ethnic groups are closing for our youngest citizens - but remain deeply entrenched on many indicators for older children and adults.

Brian Fallow: Playing politics with poverty hides truth

If the issue of inequality and poverty is to loom large in this election year there are a couple of cherished beliefs on both sides of politics that need to surrender to evidence, writes Brian Fallow.

Homeless shelter forced to close doors

Homeless families like first-time mum Lydia Mataiti and her newborn baby will find it harder to find shelter after the closure of one of Auckland's handful of emergency houses.

Times are changing...

Kerre McIvor: Help a hard sell to scared mums

A group of us went up to Kerikeri last weekend to run the Kerikeri Half Marathon.

Kerre McIvor: Grateful there is a net for single mums and children

Live-in mentors eyed for welfare teens

The Government is looking at putting some teenagers who are already supported by welfare benefits into a flatting situation with a live-in mentor to prevent them going off the rails.

Editorial: Living wage could miss its family target

Editorial: Mayor Len Brown's pursuit of a policy that would see the Auckland Council pay the "living wage" to its staff has drawn a variety of objections.

Benefit fraudster jailed

13,000 parents' benefits cut

Almost 13,000 parents with dependent children have had their benefits cut for failing work tests in the first 2 years after sole parents first had to look for work.

Food work payout

Fast-food giant McDonald's has been paid $272,000 by the Government to help unemployed people get back to work.