Palmerston North Poverty Action Group

 

14 August 2000

 

The Chairperson and members

Low Income Sub-Committee

Palmerston North City Council

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Monitoring Social Issues and Trends and Developing Socially Aware Policies and Strategies

 

Introduction

Over recent years there has been increasing concern in the wider community at the lack of a social dimension to the work of the Council. This has surfaced in comment on the changing nature and amount of funds going into the voluntary sector and community development generally, the lack of analysis of the impacts of proposed changes to the nature of service delivery on the half of the population of the city that lives on or below the unofficial poverty line, and the increasing call for policies and practices to be more directly linked to the City

Vision.

 

This is considered a major weakness and it is considered essential that this dimension of the Council’s work be restored and that a more balanced approach to policy development be taken.

 

Background

 

The Social Report

Until two years ago the Council produced a Social Report on a quarterly basis. This presented a range of information on the social dimensions of the city with statistics showing trends from a number of agencies operating in the city and from Statistics New Zealand. In addition to this information, one issue was discussed in some depth in each report.

 

In 1998 the Social Report was discontinued in favour of a “more integrated” approach to be taken via “Our City Now” and “Our City Future”. While the information and analysis in “Our City Now” reports is generally useful, the lessening of attention to social issues has been considerable. Experience has shown that the more integrated approach has not taken place and that the monitoring of social issues and trends essentially no longer takes place.

 

Major fields of data are no longer collected or reported and are obviously no longer considered as part of policy development.

 

City Vision Monitoring

As part of the City Vision work, a number of Key Result Areas have been developed. Work on this is in its infancy yet attention to them is already to be reduced in favour of  a focus on outcomes negotiated with key stakeholders.[1] The monitoring associated with the City Vision is very limited both in terms of both breadth and depth; it does not have the capacity to deal with major social issues, or how people respond to them. The work on the KRA’s would complement this work but its reduction will mean a further, major, significant reduction in attention to social issues in the city. Without such grounding, the City Vision ceases to be the  overall goal for the “negotiated outcomes” to fall within. Nor will there be any overall monitoring of the impact of such “negotiated outcomes” on City Vision type goals.

 

Community Development Staff

Several years ago there was a section called Community development. This was disbanded and staff divided between other Council sections. Four years ago there were 22 staff who would have been in this section. There are currently about 7.  The latest loss is the Community Development Planner with all the indications being that the person will not be replaced. While it is a valid view that community development as a process should be an integral aspect of everything that Council does, the fact that no-one will have any specialised responsibility or expertise in the field within the Council is considered serious.

 

This run down of the “section” mirrors the diminution of social awareness and consideration generally within Council.

 

The national Trend

This steady diminution of attention to the social dimensions of the city is occurring at a time when other urban local authorities around the country are paying increasing attention to developing their capacity in the social sphere and in particular to the development of indicators of social well-being for their communities and have set up a national taskforce to achieve these.

 

Some important issues

An indication of the loss of attention to issues of major concern to the city is the absence of any work, analysis or developments relating to, the following specific revelations:

·     Statistics New Zealand announcing that the Manawatu - Wanganui region had the    lowest average weekly earnings in the country, in the June quarter last year.

·     A steady rise in unemployment and under-employment

·     A significant increase in the number of small, medium and large businesses downsizing or shifting out of town

·     An increase in the number of calls to the Citizens Advice Bureau in important areas, and to Samaritans

 

Discussion

One of the essential purposes of local government is to ensure the well-being of the citizens and ratepayers within its boundaries. This goes well beyond the simple provision of services. From this awareness comes the development of polices and programmes concerned with advocacy and co-ordination.

Several submission to this year’s Draft Annual Plan commented that the project investment of Council was not balanced, either at the major project level or the minor project level.

The comment has been made that one of the weaknesses associated with the Social report was that it was not used to drive or inform policy or programme development. This is not a fault of the Social Report but a reflection of the emphasis, expertise and interest within Council. Various comments were made over the years that the Social Report was “for Information” only. As with the City Vision, there seems to be little connection between it and Council policy development or practice/implementation.

Many community groups however, placed considerable store by the Social Report and its material and used its information in their policy and practice development.

Imbalance Examples

The assistance to the Rugby Institute, $66,000 for 21 years to pay their mortgage is inconsistent in relation to Council’s policy of not giving monetary subsidies to attract business ventures. It is also quite anomalous in relation to support for local community initiatives but is consistent with the change in funding for voluntary welfare agencies and community social development projects to a greater emphasis on sporting and recreation projects.

 

Economic development projects receive substantial funding while social development project receive considerably less.

 

Carer and children friendly facilities and considerations are significantly lacking according to the submission to the Draft Annual Plan by the Children’s Advocate Group.

 

Examples of Application

One example given above is that under the overall goal of Citizen well-being, Council has a case for developing Advocacy policies and programmes.

 

That particular aspect could be extended to monitoring the extent to which the voluntary welfare sector is having to pick up the pieces left by the withdrawal of central government from the provision of social services and advocate on their behalf to central government to: increase their awareness of the effects of their policies; for resources to enable them to meet the increasing demands made on them; for more reasonable accountability requirements and compliance costs; consistent treatment across agencies and so on.

 

Alternatively, the Goal of Citizen Well-being could follow through into extending the tentative three year funding contracts to specific voluntary welfare agencies to a “compact” of support for the sector a s whole.

 

Unfortunately, there are no longer the staff available to develop such initiatives, and contracting the development of them out is considered a very second-best approach.

 

A further example is with respect to housing. Under the overall goal of Citizen Well-being and Caring Community - there could be a sub-goal, that all citizens will be adequately housed. With such a goal, the inappropriateness of Council Housing being in the “investment portfolio” and expected to make a profit, would become apparent. Similarly the inappropriateness of charging “market rents” for Council units would also be apparent.

 

Similarly with respect to children, under the main goals concerning Well-being and Caring,  a Children’s Advocate could be established within Council with the effects that the long list of programmes specified in the Children’s Advocate Steering group submission would be acknowledged and addressed.

 

The Council’s Employment Initiatives Fund appears to be a good example of a programme rooted in the City Vision Goals of  Well-being and Work.
 

Conclusions

It is considered that the lack of commitment and attention to social issues within the Council is out of step with other urban local authorities in New Zealand and has lead to imbalances in policy and practice development. This has serious implications for the achievement of the City Vision and also the support of the community for Council and the City Vision.

A renewed commitment to the social dimensions of the Council’s work, the City Vision, community development and the grounding of policy and practice development in a sound understanding of the social issues facing the city and its residents will assist in addressing these imbalances.

 

Recommendation

1.   That the City Manager review the extent to which social issues are monitored and are incorporated in policy and practice development.

2.   That the City Manager report on the extent to which the City Vision drives the range of Council’s policy and practice development.

 

 

Ian Ritchie

Researcher