Minister Upston Launches the Child and Youth Strategy 2024-2027
Eva attended the launch of the Government’s Child and Youth Strategy at Parliament on Thursday last week. The Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, Hon Louise Upston, advised that are three key priorities:
Supporting children and their families and whānau in the first 2,000 days
Reducing child material hardship
Preventing child harm.
The Government’s approach includes:
“Setting targets to focus the public sector on delivering better results for New Zealanders, including specific targets for children and young people
Adopting a social investment approach to ensure the [Government] base investment decisions on research, data and evidence of impact
Identifying a small number of priorities to focus coordinated cross-government efforts aimed at addressing the underlying drivers of outcomes for children and young people”.
There are six outcomes being sought for children and young people - they:
Are loved, safe, and nurtured
Have what they need
Are happy and healthy
Are learning and developing
Are accepted, respected and connected
Are involved and empowered.
The strategy goes into detail about why each area is a priority, defining what is meant or covered, sets out examples of issues and identifies current government policies and programmes seeking to address that priority and outlines where the government will focus its interventions. For example, to improve outcomes in the first 2000 days of a child’s life, the Government will “take a cross-government approach to supporting positive parenting practices, development of cognitive and behavioural skills, and maternal mental health.”
The event also featured a speech from New Zealand’s Children’s Commissioner - Dr Claire Achmad, who presented on the importance of a national strategy for children and young people and shared some of the statistics about where the need is – particularly for Pasifika children (the majority) and Māori children (at least a third) living with ‘food poverty’. She emphasized the need to engage children and young people in the policies and decisions that affect their lives, and the relevance of UNCROC (the international treaty New Zealand ratified over thirty years ago, which promotes the rights of the child).
The Government’s Strategy is informed by the Social Investment approach – in particular targets, evidence and priorities – and a study with children and young people conducted by Mana Mokopuna (the Children and Young Person’s Commission). In this study, children and young people were asked about what was important for them and questions that supported understanding what environmental factors they needed to thrive:
“In keeping with the life-course focus of the Strategy review, we asked mokopuna, regardless of their current age, to reflect on what’s important as they grow up, from early childhood to young adulthood. This included exploring:
What kinds of things matter/ed most at different stages?
What gets in the way of feeling and doing well at different stages?
What support/things/people help, or might have helped you?
What is the most important thing adults should focus on to help children and young people to thrive?”
“You need to get in early, as soon as you see people struggling” was one of the quotes from a young person who participated in the study and is mirrored in the Government’s focus on early intervention and the title of the Children and Young Person’s Commission’s report).
The Minister spoke about the need to have cross-party and cross-agency ways of working to eliminate child poverty, and to help children and young people to thrive.
Read the Minister’s press release here and the Strategy here and the complementary report from Mana Mokopuna (the Children and Young Person’s Commission) here.