#WeAreBeneficiaries fundraiser

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 11th, 2017 - 5 comments
Categories: benefits, human rights, welfare - Tags:

From the Give a Little page:

We need your help to cover the costs of printing the report, and travel to Wellington (from Auckland).

We are a group of artists continuing the conversation Metiria Turei started when she was an MP about the social welfare system in Aotearoa.

We asked people who have been on a benefit in Aotearoa/New Zealand to send us 3-5 sentences about:

• Their time on the welfare system, or

• What they wish the welfare system was like, or

• How they’ve been treated as a beneficiary

We’ve used their stories to create art.

The project has amassed over 5,000 likes on our facebook page, and 1800 followers on twitter.

Now that the new government has formed – with new ministers of Social Development, Housing and Disability – we want to take this opportunity to share our stories with them, to help give them a clear picture of what life is like for beneficiaries, and to offer them key recommendations of how to improve.

For our stories head over to:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreBeneficiaries

Twitter: https://twitter.com/webeneficiaries

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearebeneficiaries/

Travel from Auckland to Wellington

Printing the We Are Beneficiaries Report

If you are not familiar with the project here are some sample stories from twitter:

https://twitter.com/WeBeneficiaries/status/922686304759922693

 

 

5 comments on “#WeAreBeneficiaries fundraiser ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Chris 1
    11 December 2017 at 2:21 pm

    These are all stories that need to be told, but they’re the kinds of stories that government can easily dismiss as the bureaucracy making mistakes or as administrative problems that just need a tweak to be fixed. I hope the group’s able to also convey stories that are the consequences of some of the unfair policies or legislative provisions – the bad things that happen to people despite the rules being applied as they’re intended.

  2. greywarshark 2
    12 December 2017 at 9:28 am

    They are all similar in that they it is all top down, ‘dealing’ with you as a problem, prescribing what you are to do. If people are in difficulties then they need short-term help straight away so that they can have assurance for a period, and then have a case manager who will work with them so they can find a meaningful pathway towards a possible goal. There are some people who couldn’t be helped, but for most this would return to the practice of previous years.

    And finding out about people’s sex lives and that snippy nasty little term ‘a relationship in the nature of marriage’ can be dropped like a hot potato. People should be entitled to help whether they have a partner or spouse or not. But if someone is supporting a partner who is a problem, abusive, an alcoholic etc. then help is needed to cope with that so that the beneficiary who may be a parent isn’t dragged down with this partner who is likely to be a toxic influence.

    • Chris 2.1
      12 December 2017 at 9:47 am

      “…and then have a case manager who will work with them so they can find a meaningful pathway towards a possible goal. There are some people who couldn’t be helped, but for most this would return to the practice of previous years.”

      Fuck that shit. It’s treating people like they’re a case to be managed that’s at the heart of a lot of all this patronising treatment in the first place. Working with a fucking “case manager” to find a meaningful pathway towards a possible goal is the last fucking thing I’d ever want to do. Just pay people enough fucking money so they can get on with living in the fucking world with everyone else. If main benefits were enough to live on and people weren’t hassled into non-existent jobs most would hardly need to go into a social welfare office at all. And for the few who still might the numbers would be so low that governments wouldn’t mind shelling out for a special needs grant here or an advance of benefit there. That’s how things are supposed to work and, while it depends on how far you go back, was in fact the practice of previous years.

  3. greywarshark 3
    12 December 2017 at 4:27 pm

    Chris can’t be bothered to read your load of fucking words and anger. P eople need carers advice when at school, people need parental education when they are ignorant newbies, and even when not, there is a lot to learn by everyone. Only you just explode as you think you have the right to have everything land in your hand and be left to make your own way to paradise, perdition or pretending you know it all which gets some con people a long way before they have to face their failings over some thing.

    • Chris 3.1
      12 December 2017 at 9:49 pm

      I began to respond to your comment but think it’s probably a waste of time. So just a few bullet points just in case:

      – You expect clerks trained (badly) to administer benefit system (legislative criteria) to also be psychologists/family violence experts/work brokers/counsellors/social workers and whatever the heck else, when all their job should be is to assess whether criteria to receive help under the Social Security Act has been met.

      – You’ve been sucked into modern welfare post 1991-Shipley/Richardson nasty bastard shit. Just plays into beneficiary blame game, something lacking in the individual – individual needs to be “fixed”, very right wing.

      – Trouble is, no left wing party has ever cottoned on to this. Labour even tried to reinforce it with its hopelessly ill-informed attempt at the single core benefit, which the nats took full advantage of.

      – At best Labour has never made efforts to challenge the “case management”approach as a right wing tool to control blame game, that fault lies in the individual.

      – None of this fundamental shit ever gets looked at, not by any bastard.

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