Invest Properly in Early Intervention for Youths

“The Government is currently spending around $37.448 million on home visitation and parent management training programmes that have never been shown to be effective,”according to Alex Penk, co-author of a new research report titled “Broken Boughs: The role of effective family interventions.”

“These types of programme can, if effective, make a real difference to family dysfunction, poor parenting, and resulting problems of child abuse, neglect, and severe anti-social behaviour. But while money is being poured into unproven programmes, too many New Zealand children continue to suffer in dysfunctional homes,” says Penk.

“To achieve real change, we need to invest properly in interventions that are proven to actually deal with the problems,” says Alex Penk. “This means allocating funding to what works, as shown by rigorous programme evaluations.”

“The good news is that the Government is already funding some effective programmes—Early Start, Triple P and the Incredible Years,” says Alex Penk. “However, the bulk of funding is going to unproven programmes like Family Start. We need to re-allocate funding to effective programmes where it will do most good, and commit to carefully evaluating programmes on an on-going basis.”

“We welcome today’s announcement by the Minister of Social Development that she is launching a review of early intervention programmes, which comes after we sent a pre-publication copy of our report to her office. The review will encompass both the unproven Family Start programme, and the effective, high-quality Early Start programme. We trust that the Minister will draw appropriate conclusions about where funding should be allocated and the importance of rigorous evaluations. We also urge the Minister to take note of the full range of recommendations in our report.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media