By Petrina Wright | Posted: Monday December 9, 2024
An estimated 120 Southland families with high, complex needs will be impacted by a recent significant restructure of Family Works following recent Oranga Tamariki (OT) funding cuts.
Presbyterian Support Southland (PSS) chief executive Matt Russell said the recent OT funding cuts had been incredibly disappointing, particularly given that the critical services Family Works provided made a real difference in the lives of many.
“The cuts would ultimately result in more children in Southland being at risk of poor outcomes or worse,” he said.
Family Works Southland director Judith McInerney said the team remained committed to their clients and the community, and they would do everything possible to continue to meet the needs of the community.
In early August, OT announced front-line service contracts with 190 social service providers would be discontinued and funding reduced to more than 142 others across New Zealand following a government directive to streamline services. This included a reduction in funding for the national Family Start programme equating to about $14m and the disestablishment of the Young Parents Service (YPS) nationwide in addition to cuts to other services.
Family Works, contracted by OT to run the Family Start and YPS programmes in the Southland region, was among those impacted with a reduction in funding of $390,000.
Judith said taking into account pay equity funding, the reduction was closer to $550,000 (an additional payment from OT to cover agreed salary increases for registered social workers).
“We have been working hard to identify how best to make the required changes and subsequent savings in a way that strikes the right balance between the impacts on our people, the services we provide and the families we work with, but we are going to lose a considerable amount of what we can offer the community.”
To address the funding shortfall, most staff had had their hours cut and four staff had been made redundant.
“We decided to reduce hours where we could rather than removing roles, hence the broader impact across the team. However, when things get better, our hope is that we will then be able to flex those roles back up again,” Judith said.
“There is a huge investment involved in the induction and training of staff, so we wanted to retain staff wherever possible, not to mention the impact on our people of their livelihoods being affected.”
Other service areas affected included reducing the number of children supported by the Buddy Programme in Gore and Whakatipu, the Parenting Programme reduced from four courses a year to two and a small reduction in hours for the Dedicated Intake Service.
“During this really difficult time, we highly value and appreciate the commitment of our community funders as without them we would need to make further cuts to what we can offer to the community.
Judith said Family Works had been completely unprepared for the news OT would make cuts to the Family Start and YPS because both programmes work with families with really high and complex needs. These programmes have demonstrated how much they are needed in our community and had achieved positive outcomes. Those we work with in the community who refer to these services also struggled to make sense of why these much-needed services were cut.
“These are very crucial early intervention programmes with evidence they are needed. It makes absolutely no sense at all to cut funding for them.”
The current 15 YPS clients are being supported by other Family Works staff.
There are 22 families on the waitlist for the Family Start programme at present, with an average wait time of three months.
Judith said they had gone out to the community to see if there were other providers who could take some of the families on their waitlist, but in most cases there was nothing in the community that matched what Family Works offered or clients had indicated a preference for Family Works, so staff were doing their best to absorb the families within Family Works.
Matt said PSS had “stridently advocated against the cuts and will continue to do so on behalf of Southland to relevant politicians, sector heads and stakeholders.“