Empowering whanau best for our children

As spring comes upon us, we start to shake off the winter chills and look towards the blossoming of flowers and the welcoming of new joys. I can think of no better time to talk about our children, our bright little babies and our hope for the future.

Children are the light among our families, full of joy and promise. Our duty as parents, grandparents and caregivers is to ensure they are safe and have the absolute best start in life.

There is no one solution to improving the lives of our kids, but I do believe the biggest and most influential factor on their lives is their interactions in the home, with their parents and with their families.

In my view, if we want to provide the best start for our tamariki/mokopuna we need to focus our social and health policy on strengthening our families. Our education policy needs to be geared towards including whanau in learning activities with their tamariki, and indeed it should work towards establishing closer links between parents and schools.

In order to transform the lives of our children we must break down the old boundaries between social, health, housing, economic and educational policy. Whanau Ora is a great start, but until we have all government agencies working together constructively in a way that empowers, strengthens and supports whanau, I think any solution that may be touted will simply be a band-aid on what is a deeper issue in our society.

Labour's education policy, announced this week, would provide some relief for our most vulnerable whanau - and, of course, providing food in low-decile schools is always a popular short-term solution, however to be frank I truly believe resources must be channelled into our homes and into our families.

We must always remember that what the State gives, the State can take away. History has shown us time and time again that this happens often. If we are serious about building resilient kids and resilient whanau, we need to build the skills up in our homes. Let's make our whanau resilient and provide them with the resources and the skills to provide for our kids.

A great example of how we can do this in an education context is through the "Reading Together" programme, which has been rolled out to all decile 1 and 2 schools. It is a literacy programme that focuses on improving the reading skills of children by providing training to the whole whanau. You not only support the learning of the child while at school, you are instilling the skills to support the learning of the child in the home, with the parents. That is empowering to our parents, and will have enduring benefits for our tamariki right into the future.

While politicians are quick to espouse that Government should "feed the kids", I do just want to acknowledge that there are many other generous sponsors who contribute so much to the wellbeing of our children. The Kickstart Breakfast programme is one such scheme, which serves us more than 40,000 Weetbix breakfasts in over 537 schools each week. Fonterra and Sanitarium only provide the product. The school provides everything else - place to have the kai, to store the kai, utensils and plates, and of course the people to dish it up. The community partnership aspect of the programme is important because it's basically about all of us stepping up to meet our responsibilities.

Our kids need sustainable solutions, and I have said, and will keep saying, that empowering and resourcing our whanau is the best way to build resilient children of tomorrow. There is no one answer, and we must move our whanau forward on a range of fronts. My hope is that those politicians across the political spectrum will wake up to this and develop sustainable policy into the future for our tamariki.