Involve 08 Conference

Speech notes for Associate Social Development and Employment Minister Darren Hughes' address to the Involve 08 Conference, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

I am delighted to be here to discuss the issues that I see as important to young people and those who work with young people.

I would like to begin by acknowledging my Parliamentary colleagues Nicky Wagner, Dr Russel Norman and Judy Turner.

I would also like to thank NZAAHD for providing a platform to discuss youth issues, and for the work that has gone into bringing together such a large, diverse and passionate group of people from across the youth sector.

When talking about the issues that I see as important to young people or those who work with young people, a brief speech like this one will never cover the topic in the depth required.

With this in mind, I would like to touch on two topics of importance: education and developing the sector, and one topic of current relevance: youth violence.

Education/Transitions

In many respects young people in New Zealand are doing extremely well in education.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (2003) puts New Zealand in the second highest performing group of countries for the reading, mathematical and scientific literacy of its 15-year-olds.  This is something I believe we should celebrate.

Other causes for celebration are our participation and achievement rates which have been steadily improving.  Over 70% of young people are in education and training.  This represents an increase over the last decade and the proportion of young people leaving school with NCEA level 2 or better has increased since 2003, from 50% to 60% of school-leavers.

Despite these achievements, 40% of school leavers are still not attaining NCEA Level Two.  This group is a priority for the government to address.

An exciting policy that we have launched this year is Schools Plus.  The aim of the policy is for all young people to be participating in education, skills or other structured learning, relevant to their abilities and needs, until the age of 18. 

Schools Plus is about building on the strengths of our current education system to transform secondary schooling and its links to other sectors, and give our young people the best possible chance to succeed.

Greater participation in, and achievement from, education will improve the lives of individuals and families and contribute to building stronger communities. Over time, it will impact on problems like crime, poor health, poverty, and the mismatch which exists between labour supply and the economy’s need for a skilled workforce.

Investing in our young people's future means we are investing in our country’s future. However, a good education is worth little if a successful transition to employment is not made.

Research shows that difficulties for young people in making successful transitions between school and work leads to a range of current and future economic and social costs both at an individual and macro level. That is why we have established Youth Transition Services in 18 territorial authorities, with similar government funded services in other areas, to work face to face with over 14,000 young people to help them identify appropriate work or training opportunities and to put them in touch with employers and training providers.

As well as Youth Transition Services, we launched the Modern Apprenticeships programme in 2000, aiming to rebuild trade training in New Zealand.  Now available in more than 30 industries, Modern Apprenticeships have allowed over 15,000 people aged 16 to 21 to earn while working towards a national certificate level 3 or 4 qualification on the job.  

A more highly skilled workforce is developing, which is something we are very proud of.  These young people and the businesses they are working for are crucial to our increase in skill and productivity – and I congratulate them.

Building the Sector

The non-profit sector – of which youth work organisations are an integral part – plays a vital role in achieving social, cultural, environmental and economic goals.

A conservative estimate of government funding for non-profits through contracts for services and grants is $2 billion per annum.

Great strides have been made by Government in the improvement of funding and accountability practice.  This year Government announced $446 million for building a Sustainable Social Services Sector – Pathway to Partnership.  Some of this will be going to improve service provision for young people to improve the quality and sustainability of community-based social services.

Pathway to Partnership provides full funding for essential social services delivered by community organisations, as well as funding adjustments for volume increases and annual cost adjustment payments.  Community organisations will now have more certainty, more ability to plan ahead, attract and retain qualified staff, and improve service effectiveness.

This builds on work already underway, like simplifying funding and contracting processes, and providing multi-year funding to ensure more security for providers.  The increased funding will:

• move existing essential family, child and youth focused services to full funding by 2011
• address forecast volume increases
• provide for annual cost adjustment payments
• focus on achieving outcomes for vulnerable and at-risk young people and their families
• enable providers to build workforce capability and capacity
• support organisations to work more closely together to reduce duplication.

My colleague, Nanaia Mahuta, tells me that as one part of the Pathway to Partnership plan, the Ministry of Youth Development’s youth-focused services will receive an increase in funding of around $9.5 million over the next four years.

Youth Offending Strategy and Youth Gangs Action Plan

Because of the small numbers of young people involved, I think there are bigger issues out there than youth offending, but given its profile it is something that I would like to touch on.

We are very rarely reminded that most young people are law abiding and actively engaged in their communities. Only about 1% of all young people become chronic offenders.

Having said that, dealing with crime is something this government takes very seriously.  Something that I am proud of is that under our tenure the apprehension rate for 14-16 year olds has continued to decline.  But we are not satisfied.  We continue to look at ways to do better. 

For example, we continue to monitor our Action Plan that provided a co-ordinated response to the reported gang activity in Counties Manukau.  From June 2006 to June 2007, Counties Manukau experienced a 4.9% drop in total reported crime, which was the second largest reduction for any region in New Zealand. 

Another example is our work to support Child, Youth and Family’s critical work with young offenders such as:

•  recruiting 109 additional frontline staff
• implementing the Youth Justice Learning Strategy to strengthen leadership and professional practice in the delivery of youth justice services.

This work has an impact. As I mentioned earlier, overall rates of youth offending have fallen in recent years. The apprehension rate for 14-16 year olds has declined by 16% over the period 1995-2006.

Conclusion

I would like to close by acknowledging the delegates of this conference. I’m told that there are over 700 attending this conference, including youth workers, policy analysts, peer support workers, health workers, youth health and development providers, practitioners, clinicians, educators, professionals, young people, counsellors, social workers and many others.

There is seldom a gathering of so many people so passionate about our young people. I am sure that most of you share in my optimism about their potential, a potential that your work assists in realising. I would like to close by thanking you for that.