National’s new unemployment policy is too simplistic an
approach to work on such a complex and complicated issue,
says the NZ Association of Counsellors (NZAC).
Newly
elected president Sarah Maindonald says a simple carrot and
stick approach as National is proposing won’t
work.
She says long-term unemployment of the type
National is trying to address is often rooted in deep-seated
issues that arise much earlier in a person’s
life.
Ms Maindonald says 21 per cent of young people
identified in the University of Auckland’s regular Youth
Health Survey suffer significant psychological
distress.
“Those young people are struggling with
homelessness, mental health and addiction challenges, and
they need robust physical and mental health and wellbeing
interventions,” Ms Maindonald says.
She says a more
valuable, but longer-term policy, would be to put in place
better preventative supports targeting the teenage
years.
The Ministry of Education commissioned research
in 2020 to gauge the effectiveness of school counselling in
this space.
The research confirmed counselling is an
effective intervention for young people who are struggling
with mental wellbeing issues that might impact their ability
later to gain productive and ongoing work.
“But
there’s been very little tagged funding invested in this
area to increase counselling staffing in schools,” she
said.
“In some cases you’ve got bigger schools
with one counsellor servicing over 1,000 students and
that’s just untenable.
“At the same time, the
issues that some of these young people are presenting with
are getting increasingly complex and severe, and they can
have life-long impacts unless they are addressed at an early
age.
“Our young people these days are often
struggling with ongoing family violence, family separation,
grief and loss issues, bullying, drug and alcohol issues
and, of course, the mental health issues and anxiety
generated by Covid.
“We shouldn’t try and downplay
the impacts on these young people and we can’t afford to
write them off.
“So, yes, we do need sensible policies
to address unemployment issues – that’s the ambulance at
the bottom of the cliff.
“But let’s also have
policies in place that provide a fence at the top of that
cliff, and investing properly in youth mental health would
be a great
start.”
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