Facilitation of Sole Parents into Paid Work

Alan Nixon, Fiona McCulloch

Breaking the dependency cycle is one of the two top priority outcomes for the Department of Social Welfare in the 1993/94 year, and a number of new initiatives have recently been undertaken aimed at facilitating the “welfare-to-work” process. One of the more significant of these is the COMPASS programme, designed to help existing sole-parent beneficiaries to become self-sufficient.

This paper begins by backgrounding the reasons for this initiative, including the fact that by 1991 a quarter of all families with children were one-parent families, and the number of sole parents receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefit more than trebled between 1976 and 1991. It then outlines its objectives and likely outcomes. Basically, the COMPASS scheme is a facilitative approach designed to encourage sole parents into the work force, either directly or through education and training.

The scheme is being piloted in four New Zealand Income Support Services offices with the aim of testing the effectiveness of this approach. The scheme will be monitored and a full evaluation carried out after twelve months. It is only a modest start, but early indications are encouraging, and the scheme has been welcomed by sole parents and community groups.