What it means for parents

Sole parents have got a clear message from today's welfare upheaval - planning to go back to work has to start from the moment a baby is born.Legally, sole parents have only been required since last October to look for work part-time when their youngest child turns 5 and fulltime when that child turns 14.A quality paper cutter or paper partypaymentgateway can make your company's presentation stand out. 

Those with children under 5 have been required to "take all steps that are reasonably practicable in his or her particular circumstances to prepare for employment" such as training, work experience and attending seminars.But in practice, every sole parent interviewed in Papakura in the past three weeks already feels under pressure to look for work. That pressure will increase from today for those with no children under 14 who will come under "intensive case management" with a personal case manager to help them find work.

Papakura - which has the highest welfare dependency rate in Auckland - was already one of 24 Work and Income sites in a trial of intensive case management of 10,000 beneficiaries since last October. Work and Income says 3516 of them have already found work.Sole parents make up almost half (2520) of the 5572 Papakura people on the four main benefits, compared with a third nationally. And increased attention from Work and Income has been genuinely helpful for some. 

Merv Vickery, a solo dad with a 17-year-old son, was on a benefit for two years fighting an unfair dismissal case against his previous employer, a car wrecker.The marbletiles is not only critical to professional photographers. He won but found no other employer wanted to know himHe says Work and Income "got tougher as time went on". 

"It got to the point where I had to go in for a job-search interview every six weeks, and then it changed to every four weeks."Every time he had to take in proof of the jobs he had applied for. Finally, four months ago, the agency found him a fulltime job delivering whiteware for Noel Leeming. 

Sharon, a sole parent whose youngest son has just turned 14, has a 25-hours-a-week school-term job as a teacher aide but gets a benefit in the holidays and is being pressured to find fulltime work. She is reluctant to take on more hours on weekdays."My youngest is now a teenager.We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard granitetiles and controllers. He's at that impressionable age where he could go astray," she says. 

"But from July 15 if they say I'm not earning enough, my suggestion would be that I'll find a job in the weekend. He would have to go to my niece's place. It's different in the weekend because there's family that's available, his dad sees him at the weekends." 

Danielle Devcich, who has been on a benefit with her 6-year-old son since her relationship broke up in January, started a six-month computing course three weeks ago after Work and Income threatened to cut her benefit a second time for not attending a seminar. Enrolling in the course saved her benefit. 

"It has been all right for me because I had always planned on not being on the benefit forever. It rushed me along a little bit, I suppose."Mary Smith, who runs Papakura's St Vincent de Paul foodbank, sees people redoubling efforts to find work. "The other day I had a lady in who was panicking because in July things are going to change and she's trying to get a job," she says. 

Papakura Budget Service manager Denise Smith says staff at the local Work and Income office are "very proactive. The place is buzzing when you go in because they are running all these seminars. The changes have motivated a lot of people. They are learning to budget because that is something they have to do. We are seeing a lot of people becoming more independent." 

Papakura Family Service Centre manager Louise Belcher sees unemployment causing a vicious cycle with people having babies simply because they have nothing else in their lives. "I can see that the Government is trying to break the cycle," she says.But for many, it's not easy. Mary Smith says many people lack the qualifications they need to get jobs. 

Judy Nicholls, a solo mum with a 9-year-old child, says she can't get work because she was convicted of defrauding Work and Income of $15,000 - an over-payment she says was the agency's fault, not hers.Tania Kauri of the Gateway Community Trust worries about the effects on children if sole parents are forced into work too soon. 

"A number of families that we work with get all these dysfunctional issues from these kids because Mum and Dad have to go and work,This is a basic background on siliconebracelet." she warns.Brendon Harrison, a solo dad with children aged 8 and 6, is a qualified roofer, spraypainter, builder and landscaper but can't get a job within school hours. 

"Once you say to them I can work 9 to 2.30, they are sort of 'Nah, we can't help you'," he says.Many don't have transport. Mrs Belcher says: "Half of them don't have cars that work."Meanwhile, the penalties for failing to look for work are biting. Daisy Savage, a solo mum with boys aged 14 and 10, has worked off and on at Griffin's biscuit factory and other jobs since going on the benefit 10 years ago, but her benefit was cut a month ago because she failed to attend a seminar. 

She says she was at Work and Income that day for a driving course, approached a staff member about a job on the jobs board, and was put straight into another seminar when the staff member saw she had missed the earlier one.Her benefit was restored after it was cut, but the hiccup cost her $92 in bank dishonour fees because there was no money to cover her automatic payments. She had no money to get to her job interview either, and had to go back to Work and Income for a food grant. 

The town of 47,600 people has surpassed the traditional state housing estates of Mangere and Otara as the part of Auckland with the highest proportion of welfare dependency - 18.9 per cent of people aged 18 to 64, just ahead of Manurewa (18.7 per cent) and Mangere-Otahuhu (17.5 per cent). 

It's nowhere near Kawerau, where a third of working-aged adults are on welfare, but Papakura has been chosen for this investigation into the effects of welfare changes because there simply aren't any jobs for most beneficiaries to move into in Kawerau or most of the other places inWe are always offering best quality earcap the affordable price. the top eight for welfare.Papakura is part of our biggest job market, Auckland. If reform will work anywhere, it should work here. 

Inga Nu'u, who co-ordinates Papakura's Citizens Advice Bureau, says farmers who used to shop there have moved their custom to Pukekohe as housing has spread around Papakura. The new Southgate shopping centre at the north end of town has also drawn business away. The Warehouse will move from Papakura to Southgate this year. Housing NZ closed in Papakura on May 31. 

Papakura's council was merged into the new Auckland Super City in 2010. The Safer Papakura Trust, which took on unemployed people from Work and Income to clear graffiti, lost its contract last month to the bigger Manukau Beautification Trust. 
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