Day 103 - The Post - Government warned against boot camps for youth with trauma, disabilities

Government warned against boot camps for youth with trauma, disabilities

By: Anna Whyte

The Post: July 1, 2024

Official advice on boot camps warned against traditional military-based programmes for young people who have experienced trauma or have a disability.

Advice given to Children’s Minister Karen Chhour on the introduction of military academies from Oranga Tamariki in December said the traditional military-based approaches for young offenders with trauma or disabilities would not lead to better long-term outcomes.

About 80% of young people in youth justice residences had a disability and/or mental health diagnosis.

It said young people with serious and persistent offending behaviour had high and complex needs and were likely to have experienced trauma, abuse and family violence, have a disability, have issues with addiction and mental health, and/or poor outcomes in education. It added that traditional boot camp models were likely to be detrimental to young people with a history of abuse and family violence.

“International research has shown that boot camps are one of the least effective interventions when it comes to reducing offending and anti-social behaviour among young people,” the advice stated, saying boot camps with counselling and a primary focus on rehabilitation were significantly more effective.

It said that almost all young people in youth justice residences — 97% according to a review in 2021 — had a history in care or protection, and the majority had a history involving significant and chronic physical abuse, exposure to family violence, neglect, sexual abuse, and exposure to adults with mental health issues and substance misuse.

The advice said the youth cohort with serious or persistent offending were more likely to have either a confirmed or suspected mental health or disability related diagnosis (80%), attempted suicide (20%), have significant learning difficulties (90%) and had been physically harmed more than three times in the last year (more than 50% of boys and 25% of girls).

It recommended therapeutic components, trauma-informed approaches and increase support during at the start.

The advice said international and New Zealand research showed military style training would not be effective interventions for young people with disabilities.

It said alternative or significant adaptation would need to be made if a military academy programme was introduced, “to mitigate the known issues for disabled young people and minimise additional harm caused”.

Labour’s mental health spokesperson Ingrid Leary said the advice was alarming.

“Not only are boot camps shown not to work, these documents show the clear danger they pose to the majority of young people who will be forced into them — given the significantly high number of young people in youth justice who have experienced family violence, abuse, addiction, trauma, disability and suicidal ideation.

She said it was “absolutely irresponsible” for the boot camps to proceed.

Children’s Minister Karen Chhour detailed last week how the boot camps would start, saying a pilot would begin soon in Palmerston North.

The initial pilot would see 10 young offenders be sentenced to a year-long programme, based out of Oranga Tamariki’s youth justice facility in Palmerston North. They would spend three months in a custodial setting, she said, followed by nine months in the community.

“Participants will follow a specially created curriculum and syllabus, with daily activities to support their health, learning and wellbeing. This will include military-style activities,” she said.

When the military-style boot camps start, only young offenders labelled as “Serious Young Offenders” in the Youth Court would be eligible for the programme.

Chhour said that label would be an option for people aged 14 to 17 years old, who were deemed likely to re-offend, and who could be sentenced to 10-plus years in jail.

Last week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was asked about the military academy approach. “We’re taking them out of the community so they don’t cause harm in the community, and we’re making powerful, targeted interventions in those young people’s lives and giving them the very best shot to turn their lives around,” he said.

“I don’t care what you say about whether it does or doesn’t work — we could have that intellectual conversation all day long — but we are, dammit, going to try something different, because we cannot carry on getting the results that we’ve been getting.”

The advice stated that “evidence tells us that military academies alone are not effective at reducing recidivism for youth offenders”.

“A military academy could take various forms and involve community and/or iwi Māori organisations.

“Providing rehabilitative and transition support, trauma-informed approaches, and building in components of best practice is considered essential if military academies progress (alternatively other programmes incorporating these elements could be progressed).”

- The Post

Last Updated 02/07/2024

RESOURCES

• https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/350327383/government-warned-against-boot-camps-youth-trauma-disabilities

• Ingrid Leary MP

Day 66 - The Post - The 'dehumanising' flow-on effect of government cuts

The 'dehumanising' flow-on effect of government cuts

By: Hanna McCallum

The Post: Friday, May 24, 2024

When Emily Phillips-McCready talks about her dreams, they are nothing short of the ordinary “fairly simple things” in life.

They included having consistent access to nutritious food, healthcare, adequate heating, a safe and secure place to call home and the mobility to connect with others.

Phillips-McCready is a solo mother and like many in her position, she is resilient and does everything to “make things work” for her two young children – one of whom had additional needs.

But speaking at an online conference organised by Fairer Future, a coalition of anti-poverty groups, she said it was hard to stay upbeat with “the avalanche of cuts” introduced by the Government in recent months.

The conference provided an opportunity for people accessing income support, disabled whānau, young people, and low-income workers to share the impacts of Government’s cuts and spending decisions on their lives.

Cuts in the public sector had seen impacts on services such as budgeting, disability support, beneficiary support, mental health and youth.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Social Development announced further proposed cuts, now set to total more than 700 jobs – or 7.5% of its workforce.

Solo mum Emily Phillips-McCready says she is having to make difficult decisions to access basic needs such as power for heating and food.

VERONICA-JEAN PHOTOGRAPHY / SUPPLIED

“It’s really salt in the wound to have continued budget cuts that take away from recognising people’s humanity,” Phillips-McCready said.

The difficult choices she had to make were often small but cumulative – turning on heating or choosing what food she could afford for her children – “[they] really beat you down, day by day and make it really hard to hold hope”.

“Not only are we receiving support but being participants in society, we are contributing in a huge way as well – having that recognised and supported is a vision.”

Mojo Mathers, chief executive of advocacy group Disabled Persons Assembly, said the Government’s introduction of restrictions to disability support funding in March amounted to “very drastic cuts to disability support and access to essential equipment”.

Without any prior consultation or warning it caused ”immediate distress and anxiety for our community as we were scrambling for information”, she said.

“Overnight … we felt like we lost the progress of decades.”

Mojo Mathers, chief executive of advocacy group Disabled Persons Assembly, is calling on the Government to reverse restrictions for disability support funds announced in March. (File photo)

DOUG FIELD/STUFF / TIMARU HERALD

Some people were having daily panic attacks. The cuts meant a loss of independence, stability, wellbeing, and the ability to purchase, repair and replace essential equipment like walking frames and wheelchairs, Mathers said.

“These are things that government should be providing for disabled people, without question – there should not be any restrictions in accessing essential equipment that enables independence and flexibility.”

A recent poll by ActionStaion showed strong public support across different voters to reinstate funding for Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People.

An open letter by the Disabled Persons Assembly called on ministers to fully reverse the restrictions, fund disability support services after decades of underinvestment, and to recognise people with disabilities were the experts on the barriers they faced.

Fairer Future spokesperson Nick Stoneman, who was also a recipient of the supportive living payment, said people on income support were “really, really struggling”.

“It’s such a scary experience, being on the benefit and turning on the power and watching the power bills roll on.”

Individualised support was important and would make a big difference within the system, Stoneman said.

Brooke Pao Stanley of Auckland Action Against Poverty says people in need are facing harsher scrutiny to access support, which was often a dehumanising process. (File photo)

ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY / STUFF

Brooke Pao Stanley of Auckland Action Against Poverty said the process to access living support was dehumanising.

“Constantly needing proof that you don’t have money is actually really tiring … and speaks to the lack of respect and inherent dignity all of us have as people.”

Successive governments had contributed to the issue of treating people with a lack of respect, Stanley said.

But she had witnessed agencies “coming down a lot more harshly on people on job seeker and requiring a lot more evidence to support what people were going through.

“It’s a lot harder to access really simple things like food grants, the dehumanisation is still there but it’s all ramped up with this Government.”

Te Kahukoka Rose Harawira Yelash, 20, spoke about the challenges finding work as a rangatahi Māori.

She was on the benefit and on a “healing journey”, recently reconnecting with whānau.

Yelash was involved with Kick Back, a youth homeless organisation, and was currently taking a Māori course to find pathways into work.

“It’s awesome, just to be surrounded by people who are eager to get out there in the workforce,” she said.

She did not agree with the Government’s plans to reintroduce youth boot camps.

“[They] will not help our people ... We work with our rangatahi one-on-one and we get them out there in nature, we get them out there to heal because that’s what it comes down to, is healing.

“Healing is so important especially if you’ve gone through so much and chucking rangatahi into boot camps isn’t going to help.”

Last Updated 28/04/2024

RESOURCES

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Day 4 - The Post - Disabling good lives - it’s long past time for the big conversation

Disabling good lives - it’s long past time for the big conversation

By Jonathan Mosen

March 22, 2024 The Post

Jonathan Mosen is a senior leader and advocate in the disability sector.

OPINION: “Nothing about us without us!” It’s the plea, the demand, the expectation of disabled people when it comes to decisions being taken that directly affect us. It is often appropriated by non-disabled officials in an attempt to demonstrate that they identify with our cause.

The current controversy regarding the changes to purchasing rules for disability support and equipment modification services are disturbing for two reasons. First, the changes were delivered in a culturally inappropriate way. Disabled people, and those who provide support to those of us who require it, were disrespected. That is not OK. It is not consistent with the principles of “nothing about us without us”.

Second, both the reality of the cuts and the speculation about them that has filled the vacuum are causing immense distress and anguish. Officials may try to euphemistically label what has happened a “pause”, but if funding was available only a few days ago, and it’s not now, that’s a cut, even if it turns out to be temporary.

As a disabled person with a public policy background, I want to focus on how it came to this. How is it that in a First World country, successive governments have put creating a cohesive, consistent framework for supporting disabled people in the too-hard basket?

We have not had the big conversation as a country about what disability-related provisions other than the Supported Living Payment should be available without any funding cap, Jonathan Mosen says.

While any government clearly must live within its means, there are provisions deemed so important they are not rationed. Work and Income payments come to mind. If someone finds themselves out of a job and in need of support while they search for another, they don’t have to worry that the appropriation for the Jobseeker Support payment might run out. Indeed, for those eligible, the Supported Living Payment for disabled people works the same way. Yet we have not had the big conversation as a country about what other disability-related provisions should be available without any funding cap. Such entitlements are an economic investment in some cases, and a moral statement about who we are as a country in all cases.

Disability encompasses a wide range of impairments. For people like me, who are active, holding down a job, living in the community and having raised a family, the support I require involves practical things like specialised equipment that is often expensive, and active work to remove attitudinal barriers that might make finding a job more difficult. I’d like to think that any government would see that as investment in capacity-building. Fund those things on an as-required basis, and many of us will return the investment by contributing to the tax base and using our discretionary dollars at local businesses. The present Government wants more disabled people working. I do too. That requires investment on the demand and supply side.

Even with such investment, we must accept that what constitutes a good life will vary markedly within the disability community. Human beings are much more than mere economic units. Some of us require intensive support, a considerable amount of which is coming from family members who are often stressed and exhausted. They too should receive support and compassion. Rationing the meeting of those needs is a conscious choice, and it is an ethically dubious choice.

The Enabling Good Lives model has been designed by disabled people. Our sector has been chronically underfunded by governments of all political persuasion for decades. Little wonder that a framework that seeks to meet our needs fairly has exposed the magnitude of that chronic underfunding.

The disability sector comprises a huge number of organisations. Some of them are large and have well-established independent sources of revenue through charitable giving, others are small and struggling to make ends meet thanks to government contracts that have not kept pace with inflation while provider costs continue to skyrocket. On top of that, the services a disabled person is entitled to will depend on whether you acquired your impairment because of an accident or through a medical condition. Now there is even more variation, depending on whether you are located in an area where individualised funding has been rolled out.




Jonathan Mosen: “Officials may try to euphemistically label what has happened a ‘pause’, but if funding was available only a few days ago, and it’s not now, that’s a cut, even if it turns out to be temporary.”

SUPPLIED / STUFF

The top priority is for the current stressful situation to be resolved with urgency. Then I urge all parties in Parliament to form a group to discuss an end to rationing, the abolition of anomalies around entitlement based on the cause of someone’s impairment, and funding for the sustainable roll-out of individualised funding, which can be transformative for disabled people and those who support us.

And one more thing. Not one major political party had a recognised member of the disability community in a winnable position on their party list for the 2023 election. If there were a disability caucus in Parliament, I can tell you now, disabled people and their supporters would not have had to endure what we have this week.

- The Post