A hole in the benefit system that doesn’t give separated parents who share custody of their child equal rights to welfare support needs to change now, say parents
Erin-Kate Nott and James Brown amicably split three years ago and have for all those years shared 50/50 custody over their five-year-old son Dallas.
“James and I have an agreement on a weekly basis with Dallas where he is at each of our homes for seven nights each fortnight,” Nott said.
Everything had been smooth so far. For the past three years, Nott was registered as her son’s primary caregiver and was eligible for the sole parent benefit, as well as accommodation supplement and temporary additional costs. However, as she works part-time in a council job she didn't need to claim the sole parent benefit.
But the couple recently became aware of Work and Income's "outdated" system for calculating parental support when Brown, who is in between jobs, lost his rental accommodation and discovered he was not eligible for the sole parent benefit because he was not registered as Dallas' primary caregiver.
In addition to this, because Nott was considered a sole parent, welfare support Brown was entitled to, such as emergency accommodation support, was calculated as though he were a single man, without a child.
Nott said the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) was effectively pushing child care responsibilities onto one parent.
Brown has been unemployed since last year after leaving a highly specialised job as an insurance loss adjuster to study at Canterbury University. But Covid forced him to change his plans and look for a job to care for Dallas.
“I’ve applied for upwards of 1000 jobs. I did a spreadsheet of how many jobs I’d applied for. But most of the work I’ve come across I’ve been well overqualified and have been turned down,” Brown said.
While unemployed, Brown’s landlord decided to sell the house, giving him an extension until the end of September because of lockdown to find a new place.
“There’s easily a watch list of 80 people for any available house. It’s a tough market. And as soon as the lockdown happened, I couldn’t visit anything,” he said.
Losing his rental while looking for a job led him to Work and Income to seek an emergency accommodation supplement.
However, because Nott was listed as Dallas’ primary caregiver, Brown wasn’t eligible to use the sole parent benefit to find a place for him and his son to live in.
Nott said transferring primary caregiver status to Brown would only mean she would be recognised as a single female with no child and therefore any supplementary assistance would be significantly lower, with even rent becoming unaffordable.
"I would love to see how they calculate how much a sole parent gets versus a single person. I've asked for this multiple times, but they say they can't tell me because it depends on other variables," Nott said.
“I have the strength and energy to see this through. There are many others who are affected by this that may not have that strength.” – Erin-Kate Nott
She said they were lucky because they got along, but their experience with MSD brought to light the dark side of the welfare system and how it was leaving people worse off.
The system - built to support children - was operating to the detriment of their wellbeing.
“Dallas’ wellbeing should be at the centre of this. And he’s been very anxious lately,” Nott said.
How the system works
In the benefit system, the two common care situations for separated parents are split care and shared care.
Split care is when parents with two or more children are living apart and each parent has full-time care of at least one of their children. Shared care is when the parents of a dependent child live apart and both receive benefits, and each parent has the primary responsibility for the care of the child(ren) for at least 40 percent of the time.
The current legislation means that a child could only be included once in the benefit system.
Therefore, both parents are unable to claim for the same child because the benefit and supplementary assistance associated with that child would then be paid twice.
However, this particular piece of legislation was under review because it was written over a decade ago and did not take into account the nature of modern families.
Without a request under the Official Information Act, MSD would not provide figures on how many parents in shared childcare arrangements in New Zealand could benefit from this legislation.
What the minister in charge has to say
MSD has been looking at addressing this flaw in the welfare system overhaul announced in 2019 as it was highlighted in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s (WEAG) 2018 report.
Minister of MSD Carmel Sepuloni said there had been “good progress” on the WEAG’s short-term recommendations, namely increasing the rate of the main benefit by up to $55 a week.
“Work is now progressing on our medium- and long-term work plan. We signalled in our 2019 Cabinet paper that looking into this particular policy is in our medium-term work programme,” Sepuloni said.
“I’m due to receive advice on recognising split care and shared care arrangements in the welfare system to ensure more equitable access to the support and income needed to raise a child in the coming months.”
Brown said although he was soon likely to find another job and somewhere to live as lockdown restrictions eased, the flaw he had discovered in MSD’s system wasn't something he could let go of easily.
“I know I’m a single white male. I’m privileged, I’ll be fine. But now that we know what’s wrong with this system, and the way they speak to you is so dehumanising, we want to change the system.”
Nott has started an online petition and been emailing ministers and local MPs to address the issue.
“I have the strength and energy to see this through. There are many others who are affected by this that may not have that strength.”
