Putting Well-being Metrics into Policy Action, 3-4 October 2019, Paris, France. More information at: http://www.oecd.org/statistics/putting-well-being-metrics-into-policy-action.htm

1. Legislating for Child
Wellbeing in New Zealand
Presentation to OECD International
Workshop 3 October 2019
Maree Brown
Director, Child Wellbeing Unit
Department of the Prime Minister
and Cabinet, New Zealand

2. 2 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
» Context
» Child poverty and child wellbeing legislation
» Embedding system change
» The first Strategy
» Measuring progress

3. » From early 2000s: growing concern about child poverty
and wellbeing
» Strong focus of 2017 General Election
» Late 2017: New Government, new wellbeing approach
and new portfolio - Minister for Child Poverty Reduction
» March 2018: Child Wellbeing and Child Poverty Units
set up
» Dec 2018: Child Wellbeing and Child Poverty Reduction
legislation passed
3 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

4. 4 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
Requires successive Governments to:
» set long-term (10-year) and intermediate (3-year) targets
» report annually on child poverty measures
» report each Budget Day on how the Budget will reduce child poverty
and on progress towards the targets
» report on child poverty related indicators.

5. Particular focus on:
» children with greater needs
» child poverty and socio-economic
disadvantage
» children of interest or concern to
Oranga Tamariki.
Minister must:
» engage with children and with Māori
» report annually on outcomes achieved
» review the Strategy every three years.
5 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
Requires successive governments to develop a wellbeing strategy that
sets out outcomes and policies to improve ALL children’s wellbeing

6. » A combination of hard and soft-wiring
» Legislative changes supported by Wellbeing Budget approach
» Cross-portfolio and cross-agency ownership
» Authentic engagement and reflecting what matters to people
» A national plan, that gets everyone on the same page
6 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

9. » Annual reporting to Parliament
» 36 indicators to measure change in wellbeing
» monitoring and evaluation of policies and actions
» Evaluation of the Strategy as a whole
» Feedback from children and young people
9 Child and Youth Wellbeing | Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

10. childyouthwellbeing.govt.nz
childyouthwellbeing@dpmc.govt.nz
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