NZ Single Parents Trust

Family First Media Release 14 February 2010

Family First NZ has posted a reward of $25,000 for information or evidence which leads to a conviction of any person responsible for the murder of the Kahui twins.

“The Kahui twins were murdered almost 4 years ago yet nobody has been accountable for their deaths and no further action is being taken by the police or the Coroner at this stage,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“The police acknowledge that the closing of ranks by the families and the ‘right to silence’ and refusal to be interviewed had made the investigation incredibly difficult, with the Kahui family being referred to as the ‘tight 12’. Yet we now have two victims of child abuse screaming for justice – where are their rights?”

“This should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet. NZ’ers want answers to this case – who killed the twins, why did the prosecution fail, and what were the contributing factors to these murders that need to be tackled to avoid similar cases in the future.”

Family First NZ, with the support of the Sensible Sentencing Trust and For the Sake of Our Children Trust, is hoping that the offer of a reward will be the incentive needed for the information to come out which leads to a successful conviction.

“Somebody within the family knows what happened and who was responsible. It’s time they cleared their conscience, came forward with the truth, and got a decent night’s sleep for the first time in 4 years,” says Mr McCoskrie

“The country was shocked and revolted by this case and the accompanying issues of substance abuse, family breakdown, welfare dependency, neglect, and legal issues affecting the police’s ability to solve the case. Yet the message to child abusers has been that their rights will be given more weight than the rights of children to protection and justice.”

“A reward of $25,000 will be a small price to pay for justice to be served for Chris and Cru who would and should have turned four years old next month,” says Mr McCoskrie

Julie News

I had big plans for single parents over the Christmas holidays that didn’t eventuate. Tickets  sit on my table for wonderful events that have passed, new members joined the site only to be ignored while e-mails and comments received no reply.  Other events needing to be added were never mentioned online either.

I feel just awful to have let so many down and disheartened that opportunities to get to know others were missed. I guess all I can do is apologise and make up for it in this new year of 2010.    Oh, I guess there is one more thing I can do.  Explain what happened and ask for readers and members to be understanding………….Hmm, Ok, here goes …….

At the beginning of December  I was rushed to North Shore Hospital via ambulance in excruciating pain. It was a terrible trip feeling every bump in the road but the ambulance stopped to try and provide some pain relief while they are not allowed to carry strong pain killers.

I vaguely remember the beginning part of my time in  A&E (accident and emergency) and part of the end of the  day. I must have had an x-ray or ultrasound because I remember being in a room and put asleep for a minor type of surgery. I remember being in a patients bed on the surgery ward afterwards, being hooked up to a morphine drip, moving from a room of 4 patients to my own single room, another minor type of surgery and my sons visiting. Oh, I remember the nurse I had.  She was great!

I remember the following morning when I was taken from the surgery ward to intensive care.  I remember a male nurse leaning over me to hook up an oxygen mask saying ‘welcome princess’, and a team of doctors with one saying, “You have a team of 20 and we will work things out together” as well as “You need to breathe through this oxygen mask till 2pm”.
Read more…

Julie News

The stereotype of a single parent is a Maori sole mother under 20 on Domestic Purposes Benefit with kids to different fathers and lazy to boot.

Sole parents are often identified as an economic and social “problem” in political debate and by the media. But these stereotypes themselves affect social attitudes and undermine the mental and emotional well-being of sole parents and their families.

Demographers suggest that single parent families are an inevitable reflection of an
increasingly complex and diverse society. Greater sexual liberalisation has meant that today less than 50 per cent of the adult population is married and 20 per cent choose to cohabit.

And while marriage rates have declined, divorce rates have increased. Only 3 per cent of sole mothers are under 20 and almost 60 per cent are Pakeha. Statistics New Zealand figures project single parent families to increase from 31 to 38 per cent of all families with dependent children, between 2001 and 2021.

The child poverty rate in New Zealand, at 16.3 per cent, is high by OECD standards, but for children in single parent households this figure increases to 47 per cent.

The DPB provides single mothers and their children with a below subsistence level income. In 2004, 60 per cent of single parent families in New Zealand were considered to have low living standards.

Unsurprising if we consider that half of all single parent families rely on the DPB as their only source of income, and that the level of this income is set below the income poverty threshold.

To read more click READ MORE under this sentence
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Julie News, Research, Separation

MP Paua Bennett

Long-term unemployed and solo mothers receiving a benefit were put on warning today by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett that they will have to find work – once the recession is over.

Following a week of controversy after Ms Bennett released the income details of two solo mothers, Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston, who criticised cuts to the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA), she has remained staunch in her position.

Ms Bennett said the women could continue with their tertiary study without the TIA.

“I can certainly say from experience that it’s going to be hard work,” she told TVNZ’s Q+A this morning.

While she supports women who chose to stay at home with their young children, Ms Bennett believes women should be working at least 15 hours once their children are at school.

Ms Bennett said parents on the Dependent Persons Benefit (DPB) should work 15 hours a week once their youngest child is six.

“I mean I’d actually like to see, since we’ve got 20 hours (free early childhood education) there as well, that we have those sorts of training opportunities for women to be (at) while their children are having that 20 hours of early childhood education.

“That we get them skilled up, so that by the time they get to that youngest being six-years-old they can get that sort of part-time work that hopefully fits in with the hours that the kids are there.”

Ms Bennett, who famously put herself through university while a single mother on the DPB, said she was a “better mum” when she was working.

“It suited me. I actually needed the adult stimulation and my brain to be ticking over.”

To read more click READ MORE under this sentence
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Julie News, Research, Separation, Study Assistance

The topic of managing work, self and family arises from the ever-increasing emphasis on the economy and economic life as the only valued and visible expression of human activity. It is also a gendered dilemma which rests on men’s and women’s relationships to the unpaid work of reproduction and care provision and the mainstream economy.

The split between work and family was once distributed mainly on gendered lines, leaving women financially dependent on men’s earnings, and men separated from the hands-on unpaid work of cleaning, laundry, shopping, and personal care of infants and sick and aged relatives. Women’s increased participation in the paid workforce from the mid-1970s onwards has, to some extent, dismantled the rigid separation of gendered roles.

Women and mothers now expect to work, and fathers are increasingly expressing a desire to spend more time caring for their children. In practice, working hours for many full-time workers have been steadily increasing and men have not been overly enthusiastic about actually doing domestic work, but women’s growing presence in the workforce is emptying the population of unpaid care providers, or stretching their time ever more thinly.

Unpaid care work is economically invisible, unrewarded and unvalued, yet the personal relationships forged in unpaid care work – with our partners, our children, our parents – are the bedrock of our personal and social lives. Without the care and work of another human-being, none of us would make it to adulthood. Every adult is an expression of endless parental hours of feeding, soothing, changing, washing, teaching, helping and protecting, and as old age and illness strike, there is again a need for many hours of care provision.

To read more click READ MORE under this sentence
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Julie News, Research

Be very aware of job offers online

The Federal Trade Commission wants you to know that counterfeit cheque scams are on the rise. Some fake cheques look so real that bank tellers are reporting being fooled. The scammers use high quality printers and scanners to make the cheque look real. Some of the cheques contain authentic-looking watermarks; are printed with the names and addresses of legitimate financial institutions. And even though the bank and account and routing numbers listed on a counterfeit cheque may be real, the cheque still can be a fake. These fakes come in many forms, from cashier’s cheques and money orders to corporate and personal cheques. Counterfeit are being used in a growing number of fraudulent schemes, including foreign lottery scam, check overpayment scam, Internet auction scam, secret shopper scam and help wanted scam.

Check overpayment scams target consumers selling cars or other valuable items through classified ads or online auction sites. Unsuspecting sellers get stuck when scammers pass off bogus cashier’s, corporate or personal cheques.

A scam artist replies to a classified ad or auction posting, offers to pay for the item with a cheque, and then comes up with a reason for writing the cheque for more than the purchase price. The scammer asks the seller to wire back the difference after depositing it. The seller does, and later, when the scammer’s cheque bounces, the seller is left liable for the entire amount.

To read more click READ MORE under this sentence
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Julie News

The recent furore over the generosity of income support paid to sole parents on the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) is symptomatic of an undercurrent of discontent within our society. Put bluntly, taxpayers are sick and tired of supporting people who could and should be working for a living. To their credit, National appears to be listening.

For too many years welfare has been regarded as the sacred cow of New Zealand politics, fiercely guarded by the welfare lobby, feminists and other do-gooders who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. As a result, it has been almost impossible to have a sensible debate about the fact that the welfare system is now seriously out of kilter with the realities of modern-day New Zealand society.

This time, however, the revelation that many sole parents are getting far more money on the DPB than they could get in the workforce ignited public anger and outrage. The public now realise taxpayers (they!) can be saddled with paying for women who could and should be working, to stay on a benefit for almost a lifetime. Under the current rules sole parents on the DPB are not work tested and as a result are entitled to collect the benefit until their youngest child is 18 years old!

At the end of June, out of the 310,296 registered working age welfare beneficiaries 104,400 were receiving the DPB. Over half of those DPB recipients were Maori or Pacific Islanders, and three quarters had been on a benefit for longer than a year.
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Julie News, Research

This above picture is what our children will soon learn in primary school. This picture is shown on the back of buses in America.

This small essay focuses on the need for local Government to follow through on gender equality when providing guidance and well being in community services for the public.
To identify more clearly the opportunities and threats involved in such a stand it is useful to follow a PEST analysis of local government and its well-being services to the public. Pest is simply a framework for analysing the political, economic, sociological and technical environment within which local government operates.

To date, there has been popular debate on how best to produce true equality and equity between the sexes while New Zealand has passed laws deliberately enforcing accountability on gender discrimination. It is time for New Zealand to recognise this in the public community sector as all laws in New Zealand are carefully drafted to be gender neutral.

The main question that needs to be answered is whether males are deserving of the same rights and care as women in our societies when dealing with domestic violence. Finding answers to this question entails providing laws and policies, researching information on the way we deal with this in the present day and why, presenting documented reviews from interested parties and looking to the future.
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Julie News

By NAOMI ARNOLD – The Nelson Mail

Last updated 13:00 23/07/2009

Nelson man Rob van Nek had a tough time when he suddenly became a single father.

“She left, and I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. Can I work fulltime and raise three boys? Can I find enough time?’. I felt I needed support, and there wasn’t anything out there.

“I thought, ‘I mustn’t be the only one in this situation’.”

He wasn’t. Mr van Nek’s experience reflects the results of a new Families Commission study that finds newly separated fathers can’t find the help they need from community services.

The study, Pathways Through Parental Separation, analysed discussions with 20 separated fathers in Nelson and Christchurch. Nelson-based researchers David Mitchell and Philip Chapman talked with two focus groups. They found there was an “urgent need for male-friendly services”, and for existing services to engage with fathers.

To read more click read more after this sentence.
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Julie News, Research

Below is the information from both sides of the debate for the upcoming anti-smacking Referendum.

The VoteNO.org.nz website has information you need regarding the ‘NO’ side including
frequently asked questions,
quotes of interest,
summary of polls,
summary of media releases on this issue,
how to enrol,
background of the Referendum
even a cartoons page!

But there are also
FREE downloadable brochures and posters
(and banner adverts and sidebar adverts for your blogs and website). The brochures are even in other translations including Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Fijian, Chinese, and Hindi! Download them – photocopy – and distribute to family and friends!

Family First can also make the videos available to show to your group including Simon Barnett, Referendum proposer Sheryl Savill and Maori Child Advocate Bev Adair – simply email us admin@familyfirst.org.nz for the files.

There’s also a blog, they’re on Twitter, and a group of supporters have started a Facebook group

……………

The yesvote.org.nz website has information you need regarding the ‘YES’ side including
frequently asked questions,
their side of the referendum,
resources
media releases on this issue,
public awareness and attitude to the law
background of the Referendum
history of the child discipline law

But there are also
videos
free stuff, posters and stickers
banner ads
media kit

There’s also other websites, they’re on Twitter, and have a group of supporters.

So GET THE WORD OUT on what this Referendum is all about.

From Julie.

I seriously encourage you to have your say on this important issue. After all, single parents make up the most of CYFS clients.

Julie News, Research