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Speaker 1: You might remember, the government created a Social Investment Fund

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Speaker 1: started with one hundred and ninety million. Fifty of that's

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Speaker 1: about to be handed out. We've got seven programs covering

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Speaker 1: kids from newborns to adulthood are covered in this. Nicola

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Speaker 1: Willis as the Minister for Social Investment and is with us.

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Speaker 1: Good morning, Good morning mate. The demand vsupply curve, you've

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Speaker 1: got a lot more demand than you have supply.

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Speaker 2: That's right. But we've also got a government, over successive

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Speaker 2: governments that spends billions of dollars trying to intervene to

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Speaker 2: stop people having bad lives. Hasn't been very successful at

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Speaker 2: it in many cases, hasn't used data, en us, hasn't

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Speaker 2: contracted well. We're taking a completely new approach, using data,

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Speaker 2: measuring outcomes, holding organizations accountable for their results, and if

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Speaker 2: we prove that it works, then we scale it up.

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Speaker 1: How confident are you sitting here this morning that it

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Speaker 1: will work materially.

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Speaker 2: Well with each of these groups. The first thing we've

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Speaker 2: done is say who are you going to target? That's

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Speaker 2: not always the case in government contracts, and we've narrowed

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Speaker 2: it down to three groups who we know intervening really

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Speaker 2: really makes a difference. For that's kids whose parents have

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Speaker 2: already or have recently been in jail, kids whose parents

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Speaker 2: have been in the orring and tamariki system, and kids

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Speaker 2: have been stood down or suspended from school before they're thirteen.

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Speaker 2: We know that those kids, if you inter ben early,

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Speaker 2: you can make a big difference. The second thing we've

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Speaker 2: done is we're working with organizations who are prepared to

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Speaker 2: be measured on the outcomes that they get for every

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Speaker 2: person that they're engaging, and we're using a comparison data set,

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Speaker 2: so they're prepared to be compared with, well, what happens

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Speaker 2: to kids who aren't working with your organization, And we're

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Speaker 2: going to work with those organizations to monitor it. So

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Speaker 2: I'm confident we will have much better information about what

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Speaker 2: we're actually getting for our money with each of these programs. Now,

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Speaker 2: there is a risk, Mike, that one of them doesn't

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Speaker 2: actually deliver what they thought they would or said they would.

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Speaker 2: The good thing here is the data will tell us that,

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Speaker 2: and we'll say, Okay, well that's that contract. We won't

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Speaker 2: be renewing that in future.

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Speaker 1: Will we should? I be, because in reading about it yesterday,

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Speaker 1: I'm metting up the number of kids one twenty two

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Speaker 1: hundred and two hundred and four to fifteen one hundred

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Speaker 1: and I know this is just early days, but it's

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Speaker 1: eleven hundred Dish kids in this country. How many kids

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Speaker 1: are there in this country that need interference from the

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Speaker 1: state to sort their lives out because they've been born

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Speaker 1: into dire circumstances.

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Speaker 2: Well, I would say that that number would be in

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Speaker 2: the thousands. What I'd say is that there are also

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Speaker 2: interventions on a small scale that can be effective early.

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Speaker 2: So let's think about this. If you put thirty five

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars into a child early, you sort them out,

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Speaker 2: you're going to save yourself, not only the hundreds of

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Speaker 2: thousands you could spend on boot camps and prison sentences.

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Speaker 2: You're going to save the impact to society that occurs

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Speaker 2: when they victimize other kids. But actually, these are children

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Speaker 2: who are perfectly capable of being contributing citizens, of having

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Speaker 2: good jobs, of paying tax, of contributing to their family

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Speaker 2: life and their community life. So I think free child

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Speaker 2: who we turn around effectively with an intervention that works

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Speaker 2: as a child worth working for.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff, Go well. Nicholas Willison for more from the

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Speaker 1: Mic Asking Breakfast listen live to News Talks at B

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