The number of sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit dropped by 5000 last year - a drop Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is attributing partly to her new policy requiring sole parents to get jobs when their youngest child turns five.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has been accused of being flippant about child poverty by saying measuring poverty was difficult because children moved in and out of poverty on a daily or weekly basis.
Government support parties have railed against a move to give courts the power to stop child abusers and killers from procreating or being placed in charge of children.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says questions should be asked about older men "preying'' on young women, rather than about the promiscuity of women.
Unemployed graduates will get less help from Work and Income, and sole parents and sick people will get more, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says.
Unemployed graduates will get less help from Work and Income, and sole parents and sick people will get more, says Social Development Minister Paula Bennett.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett angrily dismissed suggestions she or Prime Minister John Key could have acted to halt horrific child abuse suffered by a 9-year-old Auckland girl whose mother was jailed yesterday.
Paula Bennett is on the verge of losing her Waitakere electorate seat.
National and Labour have agreed on one thing: work is the answer to getting people off benefits.
Labour says Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has been caught in "a bare-faced lie'' after denying she had cut funding for a 21-year study into Auckland children's development which was commissioned just three years ago by her department.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett hopes to be back at work this week after recovering from respiratory problems that put her in hospital over the weekend.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett hopes to be discharged from hospital today after being admitted with bronchitis and pneumonia.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says comments she made that special beneficiary payment cards were "highly intrusive" were in response to a different proposal to one being adopted by her party.
The possibility of benefit fraud is being investigated following a report that shows some households appear to be receiving more than $100,000 a year in welfare payments.
There will be $55.2 million over four years in the upcoming budget to get young people into jobs, Prime Minister John Key announced today at Trentham military training camp in Wellington.
Early intervention programme Family Start has "drifted" and will be required to measure outcomes and focus more on preventing abuse and targeting families in the most need, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says.
The number of beneficiaries decreased by nearly 10,000 during February, but the Government says the impact from the Christchurch earthquake is yet to hit.
Eight recovery assistance centres will open, six of them tomorrow, in areas hardest hit by the Christchurch earthquake, Social Development Minster Paula Bennett says.
There it sits, a very large and seemingly very juicy statistic buried in the back pages of this week's discussion paper on welfare reform; a figure which screams for attention as indisputable evidence that the present benefit system must get the chop or, at a minimum, serious restructuring.
Paula Bennett travelled to Balclutha yesterday to meet youth workers and talk about Clutha's approach to youth development.
