Kathy Wolfe: Early Childhood NZ CEO on the modelling for the FamilyBoost payment being incorrect

It comes as no surprise to some the Government got the number of families eligible for the full FamilyBoost payment wrong. 

New data shows 249 families have received the maximum payment of $975 dollars a quarter since the scheme came into effect last year.  

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says IRD got the modelling wrong, as 21,000 families were thought to be eligible. 

Early Childhood NZ chief executive Kathy Wolfe told Francesca Rudkin the sector always knew the scheme was flawed. 

She says it doesn't reach the families it should, and there are a lot of hoops those eligible have to jump through to get access. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Concern from early childhood educators that proposed reforms would put
business over children. The government has recognized that current ECE
regulations are outdated, but the sector says changes could love
with the standard of teachers. Early Childhood New Zealand CEO
Kathy Wilf is with me now, thanks for your time
this morning, Kathy, marenna, do you feel listen to from

(00:20):
the results of this review where you're happy with the
general gist of it that we will.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Look we call for the review and the general gist
of it in terms of addressing some of the cumbersome
and complicated processes and overburdensome administration. Yep, there's some good
things in there. However, some of the recommendations are nine
and definitely recommendation ten is something that we're not very
happy about.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
At all, and you can for more detail on this.
How concerned would it move away from qualified teachers?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Be very concerning. Qualified teachers are trained to educate our
youngest children and they understand the development emotionally and intellectually
for children from a vreative vive and for school children
to be prepared for school, they need that education and

(01:11):
the qualified teacher is what is required to provide them
that education.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
And why do you think there would be a move
away from this? What's the reasoning behind it?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's mostly about funding. They are also saying it is
around teacher shortages, but there's absolutely no link to teacher
shortages and qualifications. The cause and effect of teacher shortages
is that we just haven't had a decent workforce strategy
that managers supply and demn't How do you want.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
To see the balance between business and children struck here
when it comes to looking at these reforms.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Look, every early childhood service is a business, whether you're
in community based service or a for profit service. At
the end of the day, you've got to run a
viable business in order to give back to the ken community,
but also make short children not educated well, so you know,
and we're also publicly funded and we have to be
accountable for that public funding. So for us, it is

(02:09):
really important that that is the key thing about the
public good and upholding the public good of education and
at each other.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Because it was a long it was it was quite
a fight. Wasn't it a while ago to get you know,
more qualified teachers into early childhood education. I can remember
that and of course, the big at that time, the
big negative it was going to cost us more because
we have to pay qualified people and things. But I'm
pretty sure that most parents out there would really like
the workforce to remain qualified absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
I mean, if you want, if you put your child
into an early childhood service, you want to know every
single day that your child is not only getting the
best care and their well being is looked after, but
they've been educated with a qualified person who understands how
a child develops. And that can be the difference between
an unqualified person who could have an impact on a

(03:01):
child through a perverse situation, where a qualified person would
absolutely know how to deal with the situation, and that
impact on a child can last for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
And can you any other major issues with the reforms.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
At this stage, It's just going to be really about
working with the government and the ministry around the changes,
especially around the criteria for the licensing, So that'll be
a work in progress, as seymore mentioned, over the next
next week, while the qualification one is going to be
a very big focus for the sector and there will

(03:36):
be very big pushback on this one.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Kathy, I'm just wondering while I've got you if I
can ask you about the data and the Herald this
morning that revealed the government's estimate of the number of
families eligible for the full Family Boost payment was wrong.
Just year, two hundred and forty nine out of the
twenty one thousand the government seed were eligible have actually
received that maximum amount. The real number of families eligible

(03:58):
is unknown. What are your thoughts about that?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, we always said that the Family Boost was flawed.
It doesn't reach the families that it should reach. And
also there's a few hoops the families have to jump
through to even get access to that, and they only
get accessed after that paid three months and then they
get repaid for that, and many families don't have that
money upfront. So we're hoping that Minister Seymour really has

(04:24):
a look at the funding for early childhood and we
really make a fitful purpose for both early child and
services as well as parents and really get the system
fixed and working how it should.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
We thank you so much, Katy, really appreciate your time
and your thoughts as wonder. That was k Thank you, Kathy.
That was Kathy from Kathy Will from Early Childhood, New Zealand.
You see that was a bit embarrassing those figures that
were released, But Nicola will have said that the iod's
advice was based on its best estimates at the time.

(04:58):
Unfortunately they got that wrong. But the ID found the
modeling for Family Boost challenging because it didn't have reliable data.
So apparently now they are trying to get as much
reliable data. But there's other things that complicated as well.
There's a possibility that some people went, oh, it's not
worth applying for it because I'm not going to get
a huge amount back, or they haven't got around to
clicking up all those receipts and applying for it yet.

(05:18):
But hopefully they'll be able to get that sorted as
soon as possible.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
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