6. SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this
to the Minister for Social Development and Employment
What advice, if any, has she had as to whether invalids and sickness beneficiaries with, or recovering from, mental illness are being pressured into paid employment to the detriment of their health?
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment) Link to this
I am advised that most people want to work, and with the right support they can. This Government is committed to understanding and responding to people’s individual circumstances. We certainly do not compel into jobs people who are too ill to work. However, we will not stop somebody who wants to have a go.
Why was a disability resource centre in Whakatāne given a $400,000 contract to place around 20 people with, or recovering from, mental illness in local pack-houses, when they had no experience of working with people in that kind of situation?
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
What is important in that example, in Ōpōtiki in the pack-house, is the network of services available to both the employer and the workers who have gone to work there. Everybody who is on that scheme undergoes a full screening assessment before he or she goes into the programme. There is a full 2-week pre-employment training programme and daily contact with those providers while in the job, including right down to ensuring there is transport for the people involved to get to work each day.
Martin GallagherWhat has the Government done to strengthen the ability of Work and Income to provide support to clients who wish to work?
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
The focus of Working New Zealand is on supporting people to gain the skills that lead to work, provide effective support to keep them in work, and make sure that it leaves them and their families better off. That includes collecting more accurate information to better match people to appropriate services, consulting with general practitioners to help us design a new medical certificate, and developing our staff training packages to increase our expertise so we can work better with clients.
Judith CollinsCan she explain why in just 5 years the number of people receiving a sickness or invalids benefit for depression has increased from 4,825, in 2002, to a staggering 11,690, in 2007, and the number of people on a sickness or invalids benefit for stress has increased from 5,014, in 2002, to almost 7,500, in 2007?
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
Because more people are being diagnosed with those conditions. So the next important question is what we then do to help those people in those conditions to have the support they need to get back to work, and that is what the Government is focusing very hard on. But it is true that there are more people in our society and community today diagnosed with those conditions.
Why, if the support for these beneficiaries being pushed to work in the pack-houses was so good, were they sent there without the responsible agency or Work and Income consulting the relevant psychiatric medical staff in relation to whether these people were actually fit for work?
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
I think the first point is that all those who are participating in this programme have volunteered to go on it. They have said they want to work, with the support to do that, so they have made a decision for themselves that they want to do it. That is when the network of support across those mental health services that I mentioned kicks in. But I do understand that a couple of people have approached the employer directly and not gone through Work and Income, and it may have been that they have not been connected up with the services that are available. We are working to ensure that we identify people in that situation and offer them the services that are there, because we want this to work for people who are living with a mental health condition but may be able to undertake some employment.
Does the Minister not understand the kind of power and control that a Work and Income case officer can actually exert over a person with a long-term mental illness or recovering from a long-term mental illness; and is the Government so desperate to get invalids beneficiaries off its books and into the pack-houses that it does not care that, for example, one such affected person ended up back in the acute psychiatric unit at Whakatāne Hospital, because the person tried to work and became unwell because of the pressure that Work and Income had exerted to force the person into this inappropriate job?
Hon DARREN HUGHES Link to this
I just repeat that people who participate in this do so voluntarily. Nobody who is too ill to work is being coerced or compelled to work, and the supports are meant to be there for them if they make that decision to go into that employment situation.