Latest fromSocial Welfare
Unemployment rate falls to 6.6pc, dollar jumps
New Zealand's official unemployment rate has fallen from 6.8 per cent to 6.6 per cent, says Statistics NZ.
Move cuts help to anti-violence groups
Women's refuges say some women fleeing from violence may no longer be able to get...
Boarding house horrors
Children are living in tiny, damp and sometimes squalid boarding houses, while Housing NZ staff are discouraging people who are seeking help from formally registering their need, saying they have no business interfering.
Starving boy eats roach
Welfare agencies alarmed at extreme lengths some people go to just to eat. One desperate case of a Bay of Plenty child and his three siblings has been offered as a stark example of the degree of poverty in our communities.
Andrew Gawith: Policy on welfare in need of inspiration
A flat tax could create a system that benefits everyone, says Andrew Gawith
Quake-support packages needed for more than 20,000
Applications for financial support following last week's deadly Christchurch quake are flooding in.
Massive welfare overhaul proposed
Mothers with young babies and sick and disabled people on benefits would be forced to look for work under a proposed overhaul of NZ's welfare system, which would see all benefits replaced by a 'jobseeker payment'.
Key: Work-testing when child three makes sense
Prime Minister John Key says he is open to work-testing beneficiaries when their youngest child turns three.
Govt rules out cutting the dole
The Government won't consider reductions to main benefit levels including the sickness, invalid's, unemployment and domestic purposes benefits as part of any welfare overhaul recommended by the Welfare Working Group tomorrow.
GPs develop plan to get invalids off benefit
A consortium of North Shore doctors has a radical proposal to use health professionals to help sickness and invalid beneficiaries back to work.