By Dan Satherley
From today, the Government will be forcing solo parents it deems "work ready" to find work, or risk losing their benefit.
There are currently around 43,000 solo parents on a Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) with no children under the age of six, and under the new 'Future Focus' law, they will be legally obliged to seek employment.
The Government calls it "voluntary proactive engagement", but beneficiary advocates have a different view.
"This punitive change to welfare law is an attack on the underlying principle that welfare is the provision of assistance to all New Zealanders in their time of need," says Kay Brereton, advocacy coordinator at the Wellington People's Centre.
"The changes add sole parents with their youngest child older than six, to the 60,000-plus unemployed who face sanctions on their benefits if Work and Income doesn't think they are trying hard enough to find jobs."
Around 4500 parents have been selected as guinea pigs, and will be the first called up to discuss their circumstances with WINZ case managers.
Originally the new law was only going to be enforced in areas deemed to have jobs available, but this is no longer the case.
"We are working with these clients across the whole country," WINZ spokeswoman Zoe Griffiths told the New Zealand Herald.
"It's a big change, and for some people it will be scary," says Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who herself was once received the DPB. "But I do not accept this is a reason not to do it."
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