Foreword

The papers in this issue of the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand cover a wide policy spectrum – strategic policy, operational policy, programme development, indigenous knowledge, research and evaluation – and they range across the policy areas of welfare, health and justice. The authors reflect this diversity: academics, people from central and local government and non-government organisations, and a deputy head of state.

Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Taisi Efi was a keynote speaker at the first Social Policy, Research and Evaluation Conference, hosted by the Ministry of Social Development in Wellington in 2003, and a paper based on his address, “In Search of Meaning, Nuance and Metaphor in Social Policy”, was featured in Issue 20. He returns in the current issue with a paper about the transfer of traditional knowledge in the Pacific.

High-level policy issues are explored in papers by Paul Killerby and Grant Duncan. Paul Killerby explores the relationships between trust in government, quality of governance and overall life satisfaction, questioning the value of trust in government as a policy objective. Grant Duncan questions whether happiness is a valid and measurable goal of social policy in its own right.

The policy development papers deal with child protection and youth development. Steve Waldegrave and Fiona Coy, from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services (CYF), describe a new model for dealing with care and protection notifications aimed at timelier and more effective responses, and better targeting of CYF resources. YouthGrow is a programme developed by Presbyterian Support Otago that provides jobs for young people with poor mental health or other social disadvantages. Vaughan Milner describes the development of the programme, in which he was very much involved, and explores aspects of partnership between third sector, Government and community.

Two papers focus on health research within Maori communities. The paper by Sally Abel, Dianne Gibson, Terry Ehau and David Tipene Leach examines the implementation of the Maori Health Strategy and the Primary Health Care Strategy on the East Coast, as Maori health provider Ngati Porou Hauora becomes a Primary Health Organisation. Shane Edwards, Verne McManus and Tim McCreanor discuss their use of community and care-worker networks in a kaupapa Maori research framework to study families that have lost a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

The Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE) at Massey University, Albany, is the source for two research papers on alcohol and amphetamine use, respectively. Sally Casswell and Anna Maxwell discuss the effectiveness of a range of policies aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm, and explore some of the political and other factors that influence their adoption. The paper by Chris Wilkins, James Reilly, Emily Rose and Sally Casswell reports on work done for the New Zealand Police, analysing National Drug Survey data on supply conditions, and the use patterns and demographics of the amphetamine-using population.

Greg Newbold argues that having women as officers in men’s prisons plays an important part in inmates’ rehabilitation, and that fears for their safety have proved unfounded. He discusses issues surrounding relations between women officers and male inmates, and efforts on the part of the Department of Corrections to address these.

I particularly want to recommend a pair of very informative reviews of two conferences that may, on the surface, seem too technically oriented to appeal to many readers. Robert Templeton attended a workshop on population projections and micro-simulation, and Chungui Qiao participated in meetings on the measurement of small and indigenous populations. While the conference content was indeed very specialised, the authors have succeeded in making their reviews both enlightening and accessible to the wider social policy, research and evaluation audience. Finally, Amanda Wolf reviews the latest updated edition of a textbook by Christine Cheyne, Mike O’Brien and Michael Belgrave, Social Policy In Aotearoa New Zealand: A Critical Introduction (3rd edition).

I am sure you will enjoy this issue of the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand.

Anne Jackson
General Manager
Centre for Social Research and Evaluation
Te Pokapu Rangahau Arotake Hapori