An Open Letter to Anne Tolley, the Minister for Social Development - a Ministry that is systematically broken.

Dear Mrs Tolley,

I am writing this open letter to you to inform you of how the Ministry of Social Development has failed the standard; to tell you about the poor service I received between December and March while I was in receipt of a Job Seekers Benefit which completely negated the empathy your staff was able to provide.  I am also writing to ask how you intend to fix the multiple systematic failures that I and many others encounter ona daily basis when dealing with the Ministry of Social Development.

During 2016 I began my Masters of Education.  I supplemented the Student Loan allowance I received with relief teaching when my studies allowed.  This allowance ended in early November, meaning relief teaching was my only form of income.

In December the school year finished, meaning I had no primary source of income until some time in February when schools required relief teachers to cover illness, classroom release time, professional development and other such absences of classroom teachers.

Consequently I made contact with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in mid November in order to kick start the process for the Job Seekers Benefit.  I met with a client manager at the Cambridge office on November 29th and discussed that I was a short term project with my intentions being to return to study in 2017 to complete my Master’s dissertation and relief teaching.  

I had with me some of the documents I had been asked to bring and could obtain, and discussed which documents I still needed to supply in preparation for relieving drying up by the second week of December (due to depleted school budgets for relieving).  It did take several weeks to supply my documentation, but one thing I am very certain of is that I supplied my current and correct residential/mailing address on my form applying for the Job Seekers Benefit.

I made a second and possibly a third trip into the Cambridge office during December to drop in documents, as well as emailing some that I was unable to print due to technical difficulties.  I was assured that I was accepted and the Job Seekers Benefit would start the week before Christmas.  I awaited written confirmation.  It did not arrive.

In the end I made a phone call to MSD in the week leading up to Christmas asking when I would be paid and the amount.  I was told I would be paid $212 each Thursday, including the amount to cover a regular expensive prescription I require - expensive because I don’t get the generic.

My family spent Christmas in Whitianga.  On Boxing Day I went to town to do an errand for my parents and one of the shops I visited had a job vacancy advertised on the door.  I approached the shop keeper and asked her about the job.  I emailed her my CV, she phoned me, and I secured the position which was minimum wage casual hours to relieve her more experienced casual worker over the busy summer holiday period.  I had never worked in retail before, so I was looking forward to the experience.

After the stat days ended, I contacted MSD through their 0800 number.  I explained that I had secured a position and that it was casual hours.  They explained there was an $80 gross cap and then they would deduct from the total of my weekly benefit.  I believe that this $80 gross cap has not changed in many many years despite increases to the minimum wage, rents, and general inflation and that it takes no account of the fact that the job will be secondary taxed, that my student loan repayments must be paid and that I have KiwiSaver.  

I was told that as long as I rang by the end of Friday with my hours worked for the week that my following week’s payment could be adjusted, even if I just guessed the hours I would be working on Saturday and Sunday of that weekend.  

Remember, this is the week between Christmas and New Years, and I’m ringing on the Wednesday after two stat holidays, with the full knowledge that there would be two more stat holidays the following week.

So on the last Friday of 2016, I rang MSD, with my guessed amount of hours I would be doing before the end of Sunday coming and the person who answered the phone told me I should have informed them of my hours on Wednesday just gone due to the stat holidays the following week.  Because I had earned over $80 gross, I was now in arrears with MSD and would have my benefit reduced by $10 a week in order to recover the arrears.

I asked for written confirmation of this.  They said they would mail it to me.  I asked if it could be emailed to me as I was working away from home.  They said they couldn’t do that and it would be sent by snail mail.  Please note: when I returned home for two days two weeks later, there was no mail from MSD at my home.  Not one letter in over six weeks of dealing with MSD.

I continued to work in this shop throughout January, finishing on Wednesday 1 February as I had secured a new job back in Hamilton to start on Friday 3 February and in anticipation of oodles of teachers becoming ill or needing CRT or PLD eventually.  I also needed to start sorting out my re-enrollment at University.

During January, my Job Seekers Benefit was never the same week to week.  The hours I worked in the shop were never the same and lessened towards the end of January as the holiday makers drifted back to their homes and schools.  I never received each week from either the casual job or the benefit combined the amount I was meant to receive for the Job Seekers Benefit, $212.  

Consequently, what I did earn covered my petrol and food.  I didn’t do anything exciting or excessive during that time, but I was in no position to pay my cell phone account, meet the minimum payments on my credit cards, pay the cost of the service and WOF of my car in January, pay my HP or pay the cost of the storage unit where 99.9% of everything I own (including teaching resources) is stored in.  Several times, after my automatic payments for insurances went out, I was left sub-zero, and once I had to ask the shopkeeper I was working for to urgently pay me early so I could survive the weekend.

I was quite stressed out with the amount of arrears I was building up and certain health conditions were exacerbated, and I still haven’t combatted them now.

So let’s just recap on some important points here:

• In November in my initial application I supplied my current residential/mailing address.
• I had received no written documentation by mail from MSD at any point since 29th of November and it is now February.
• I was not given the correct information about when to ring MSD to provide my hours of work during the first week of my temporary casual position when there were stat days changing the normal pattern of how it is done.
• I am now in arrears with MSD and my benefit is accordingly reduced by $10 per week to recoup the arrears.
• There was barely a week in January I received the $212 I was supposed to get if I had of just sat on my arse receiving a benefit instead of working as casual position.

These points above are very important, because over the next five weeks, the calamity of systematic disasters that is MSD just pile on.

I began my new position on Friday 3 February.  It is ten hours a week, flexible days to work in with the work I am required to do as well as my study and relief teaching.  Best of all I was being paid about $10 more an hour than the casual retail position I had over January.

On Tuesday 7 February (Monday being a public holiday called Waitangi Day), I rang MSD to inform them I had finished working in the shop in Whitianga and was now working in a new position for ten hours a week in Hamilton.  I informed MSD that I did not know when I would start being paid by my new job (turns out that it wasn’t until March due to numerous technical issues) and that I was currently in the red to the tune of $72 and that the next Job Seekers payment would not get me back into the black as it was about $69.

The person I spoke to was excited about my new job.  She looked into my situation and was able to make the next payment bigger so that I was $70 in the black rather than the red the next day, and informed me I would need to see a client manager as soon as possible, but that she could not make an appointment that day as the MSD booking system had ‘fallen over’.

After speaking with MSD, I began to ring everyone I was in arrears with to bargain with them over paying what I owed.

The following Tuesday I rang MSD again to book an appointment with a client manager.  I explained again that I had started a new job in Hamilton.  I was told I had an appointment the following Tuesday at 2:30pm.

On Tuesday 21 February I arrived at the Cambridge MSD office for my 2:30pm appointment.  By this time, MSD had the security people acting as quasi-receptionists.  They checked my ID and were confused about me having an appointment.  I went in and sat down.  I was approached by an MSD staff member who informed me they had no record of my appointment.  I insisted I had an appointment.  The staff member went away.  The staff member came back and said my appointment was for the Te Awamutu office.  I replied that at no stage during the call on the previous Tuesday did the call centre staff member say “Te Awamutu” and I expected my appointment to be Cambridge because all my previous dealings were with Cambridge.

By this stage I’m pretty pissed off, emotional and extremely thirsty.  I tell the staff member I have had to leave my place of work to come to this appointment and I am not leaving without seeing the appointment through.  She responds that they do not have any gaps in their appointments and I will have to take my chances.  I ask for a cup of water (there are no water stands available or cups for MSD clients) and begrudgingly the staff member brings me a plastic cup of water from their staff room while I ring the MSD 0800 number to make a complaint.

So I spend my time waiting in the Cambridge office on the phone making a verbal complaint to the call centre, who assures me that they will send me a written outcome of my complaint and informs me that I would not be able to get a new appointment in the Cambridge office until Monday 6 March!  

After that I spend my time on Twitter bitching about how broken the system at MSD is.

Eventually I am approached by the deputy manager of the Cambridge and Te Awamutu MSD offices.  She takes me down to a desk at the back of the office and apologises for the stuff up by the call centre.  She talks through my situation with me and I explained for the third time I have changed my job in February, that I was a short term project for them, that it was a matter of weeks before relief teaching really kicked in and my ten hour a week job would pay me.  

She makes adjustments to my Job Seekers Benefit for the week to accommodate the fact that I am yet to be paid by my new job (due to technical difficulties).  We then discuss the accounts I have in arrears and the ones I would like help with to pay, acknowledging that any help I receive for these would need to be repaid.  

As much as she would have liked to help, the way MSD is set up now would much rather see an individual drown in debt and never get out of the poverty cycle.  Rather than get a hand up to ensure that I continued to have a good credit rating and didn’t garner further debt, MSD refuses to help.

I left MSD that afternoon feeling rather despondent and weighed down with sadness at how our social welfare system condemns people to a cycle of poverty and benefit dependency.  It is a full time job dealing with their systems, and if I listen to the 0800 number tell me while I am on hold one more time that I can do stuff online I will scream!!!  If a real staff member can not help me, how the bloody hell is a website going to ensure I get my entitlements and understand the situation and how it should be sorted out - and I am an educated person!!

But what left me most astonished was to find out that MSD has a sinking lid on staff - when a staff member leaves, they are not replaced,  Consequently, they are understaffed.  Some not very bright management person further up the food chain in the Ministry of Social Development thinks that the internet and the kiosks at MSD offices are the answer to everything.  I’m under the impression from another person I know that the kiosks in Te Awamutu usually are crashed and that no staff member at the Te Awamutu office actually knows how the kiosks even work!

So let’s recap where I am at the 21st of February 2017:

• In November in my initial application I supplied my current residential/mailing address.
• I had received no written documentation by mail from MSD at any point since 29th of November and it is now nearly the end of February.
• I was not given the correct information about when to ring MSD to provide my hours of work during the first week of my temporary casual position when there were stat days changing the normal pattern of how it is done.
• I am now in arrears with MSD and my benefit is accordingly reduced by $10 per week to recoup the arrears.
• There was barely a week in January I received the $212 I was supposed to get if I had of just sat on my arse receiving a benefit instead of working as casual position.
• I couldn’t make an appointment on the 7th of February as the MSD booking system had ‘fallen over’.
• I’ve had to explain three times in February that I started a new job in February.
• I’ve turned up to an appointment to find I’ve been booked into an office I’ve never attended and was not verbally told or received a letter as to what office my appointment was for.
• I am left to wallow in debt.

But wait, there is more.

Finally on 1 March, my ten hour a week job is able to pay me what I am owed, out of cycle, as I am facing financial hardship.  During this week I received enough bookings for relief teaching in March to meet my minimum financial needs.  So on Friday 3 March I ring up and ask for my Job Seekers Benefit to be finished.

Oh.  My.  God!  It is almost as hard to get off the bloody benefit as it is to get on the damn thing!

Once again I have to explain that in addition to the relieving (which I will get almost $200 in the hand a day after tax, student loan, NZEI fees, KiwiSaver and Teacher Retirement Scheme are taken out) that I also have the ten hour a week job before the call centre guy believes that I will be financially ok!  This is so ironic after MSD systems tell me they can not help me out of the arrears with my phone (essential for schools to be able to contact me on and for me to contact them) and storage fees!  He had been wanting me to supply pay slips and the blood of a virgin to get out of being on a benefit.  I just wanted the benefit to stop before they piled on more arrears (which were totalling about $400 at that stage).

So after I get an almost agreement to end my benefit, I ask about the complaint I made about the call centre getting my appointment wrong.  He assured me a letter had been sent out.  I said I hadn’t received it.  In fact, I said to him, I have received absolutely NO written correspondence form MSD since my initial contact in November, and I thought that was most unusual since they would not email me.

So this is when the next clanger happened.

He read out the address they were sending my mail to.

It was an address I have NOT lived at since May 2013, almost four years ago.  

What really annoys me is that I know who lives there now and I certainly do not want that old sticky beak getting my personal mail from MSD!

This was about when I got pretty shitty again.  This is when I explained that I had written the correct current residential/mailing address on the forms in November.  This is when I asked to make yet another complaint about the conduct and the systems of MSD and how this had been inconveniencing me.

Later that day I received an apologetic call from the deputy manager of the Cambridge and Te Awamutu MSD offices.  She sincerely apologised for the mistake with not updating my address in November, and ensured that my benefit would be paid one last time the following Thursday.

So let’s recap again on the calamity that is the system at MSD:

• In November in my initial application I supplied my current residential/mailing address.
• I had received no written documentation by mail from MSD at any point since 29th of November and it is now March.
• I was not given the correct information about when to ring MSD to provide my hours of work during the first week of my temporary casual position when there were stat days changing the normal pattern of how it is done.
• I am now in arrears with MSD and my benefit is accordingly reduced by $10 per week to recoup the arrears.
• There was barely a week in January I received the $212 I was supposed to get if I had of just sat on my arse receiving a benefit instead of working as casual position.
• I couldn’t make an appointment on the 7th of February as the MSD booking system had ‘fallen over’.
• I’ve had to explain three times in February that I started a new job in February.
• I’ve turned up to an appointment to find I’ve been booked into an office I’ve never attended and was not verbally told or received a letter as to what office my appointment was for.
• I am left to wallow in debt.
• I have received no written response to the complaint regarding my appointment being made at the wrong office.
• I practically have to fight to end my benefit.
• I discover that all the mail I should have received since November from MSD has gone to an address I haven’t lived at since May 2013 because my address details were not inputted correctly, if at all, in November when I applied for the Job Seekers Benefit.

But wait, there is more.

I get a letter from MSD informing me formally of the arrears I owe and asking me to contact them.  It does generously allow me to use my Community Services card until it expires.

What Community Services Card?

They sent me one in December and a new one in February - to the address I have not lived at in nearly four years.

So I ring up asking for a new card.  They can’t send me one because I am no longer on a benefit.  So instead they send me forms to make an application for a new one.

Can I make another complaint?

So let’s just recap again the systematic disaster that MSD is:

• In November in my initial application I supplied my current residential/mailing address.
• I had received no written documentation by mail from MSD at any point since 29th of November until the end of the second week of March.
• I was not given the correct information about when to ring MSD to provide my hours of work during the first week of my temporary casual position when there were stat days changing the normal pattern of how it is done.
• I am now in arrears with MSD and my benefit is accordingly reduced by $10 per week to recoup the arrears.
• There was barely a week in January I received the $212 I was supposed to get if I had of just sat on my arse receiving a benefit instead of working as casual position.
• I couldn’t make an appointment on the 7th of February as the MSD booking system had ‘fallen over’.
• I’ve had to explain three times in February that I started a new job in February.
• I’ve turned up to an appointment to find I’ve been booked into an office I’ve never attended and was not verbally told or received a letter as to what office my appointment was for.
• I am left to wallow in debt.
• I have received no written response to the complaint regarding my appointment being made at the wrong office.
• I practically have to fight to end my benefit.
• I discover that all the mail I should have received since November from MSD has gone to an address I haven’t lived at since May 2013 because my address details were not inputted correctly, if at all, in November when I applied for the Job Seekers Benefit.
• My Community Services card is sent to the wrong address twice and they will not supply me with a replacement despite it being their mistake that I did not receive it.

So what do I think needs to change to ensure that the staff of MSD, who are empathetic and try hard to help but are hampered by a broken system, can actually help beneficiaries break the cycle of poverty and benefit dependency?

• Actually have enough staff to do the job - even a simple job like inputting an address.  
• Cut down the waiting time for an appointment.  No one should have to wait two weeks for an appointment when they are on the bones of their arse.  No one should have to wait more than 24 hours in a working week to be seen.
• Have a computer system that makes sense that anyone can use.
• Clearly display entitlements so that people know what they are entitled to and how to access them.
• If MSD gives the wrong advice that means the client ends up owing arrears, don’t ping the client for the wrong advice - especially when it comes to statutory holidays.
• Up the $80 cap for income outside of the benefit to recognise the fact that the minimum wage has increased and so has inflation.  The $80 cap should not include pinging you for Student Loan repayments or KiwiSaver either.
• When a person is a short term project with good earning potential, help them out to keep their credit rating so they stay afloat.  There are ways and means to ensure it does get paid back.
• Stop insisting on people begging their family for financial assistance.  The whole point of a social welfare system is for the social welfare system to support an independent adult - not to make them dependent on extended family members who are trying to hold their own financial commitments together.

While I was not treated as harshly as I was in 2010 when last needed the Unemployment Benefit to pretend I was surviving, it was still a very stressful experience.  Last time the people were incredibly harsh, but that just may be the Thames office experience.  This time I found the staff to be empathic and understanding - but they were hamstrung by a system that is unresponsive and broken.

Once again I am left feeling that our social welfare system is condemning so many to a life of poverty and dependency.  I heard former Prime Minister John Key say in one of his final interviews as and MP this week that he believes that people don’t want to be dependent on the state and do not want the state interfering in their lives.  I think John Key fails to remember what the state did for him during his childhood and that the original purpose of the welfare system was to ensure that everyone could participate as a full citizen in society.  

In 1972, the Royal Commission on Social Security had reinforced the role of welfare as “to ensure, within limitations which may be imposed by physical or other disabilities, that everyone is able to enjoy a standard of living much like that of the rest of the community, and thus is able to feel a sense of participation in and belonging to the community” (Kelsey, 1995, p.271).  Since the National government decimated this social contract in 1991, poverty and dependency on social welfare has been exacerbated and nothing the current National government under John Key or Bill English has improved outcomes for these people.

As an educated person, who has the power to earn five times plus more than the benefit pays a week (if school is in), the benefit is not the place I want to be.  But this experience made it clear how some people are trapped into the cycle because they are penalised so harshly for trying to earn extra cash during the peak summer period or a crop harvesting time to try and get ahead and get out of the benefit cycle.  Employers are also disadvantaged by the system as some people will limit what they will work so as not to be in danger of losing their benefit.  And that is why I think that the $80 cap on earning extra needs to be increased.


So to end this open letter to you Mrs Tolley, I'd like to tell you that the Ministry of Social Development fails the standard (and you know all about standards and failing to meet those when you were the Minister of Education); the systems at the Ministry of Social Development are broken and fail to help people break the poverty and dependency cycle; and I think it is time we did something to #ChangeTheGovt to fix the Ministry of Social Development.


But what are you going to do to fix it Mrs Tolley?


And I mean fix it, not f**k it up any more than the system already is.


Bibliography:
Kelsey, J. (1995). The New Zealand experiment: A world model for structural adjustment? (1997 ed.). Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland University Press.