I can see many obvious benefits in decentralising WINZ call centre and case management functions to local community groups, at the same level of funding. So why do we still need WINZ offices at all?
Because if we didn't have them, the benefit system would go the same way as the mental health system. It's much easier to get away with de-funding those community groups by 1000 cuts while expecting the same outputs, than to do it to WINZ.
(1/?)
People do need a place they can go for help, if they con't wait on hold, or send an email, or use MyMSD. Successive governments making this harder to access is one cause of NZ's polycrisis of chronic deprivation; poverty, homelessness, whānau breakdown, mental illness, malnutrition, chronic conditions, return of infectious diseases, loneliness and elder abuse, etc, etc.
But it doesn't need to be a WINZ office. In fact, as anyone who's used one can attest, it would be better if it wasn't.
(2/?)
What I envision is formalising what that urban marae in Tamaki Makaurau was doing for their community. A one-stop-shop for WINZ, Kāinga Ora, Whānau Ora, Oranga Tamariki, Te Whatu Ora's disability and mental health services, and so on. As well as locally-run services.
(3/?)
Each Social Wellbeing drop-in could be run by and for the community using it, like the way Whānau Ora works. But its expense fully funded by the state. Staff could be employed directly by the state, as public servants. But with final hiring and firing decisions made locally, within the guardrails of employment law and Public Services Commission oversight.
Overall, a return to the logic of 'social welfare', not the "social development" of "human resources" as mobile 'labour units'.
(4/4)
Strypey