Ministry of Youth Development (Ministry of Social Development)
The Ministry of Youth Development provides programmes and services relating to young people, including newcomers to New Zealand.
Ministry of Youth Development PDF
Child, Youth and Family (Ministry of Social Development)
The goal of Child, Youth and Family is to keep children and young people free from abuse, free from neglect, and free from offending. They work with and fund a wide range of community-based social services, with a focus on children, young people and families in need of support. Child, Youth and Family has legal powers to protect and help children who are being abused or neglected, and/or who have problem behaviour.
Child Youth and Family PDF
The New Zealand Police
The New Zealand Police are working proactively with ethnic communities to increase their confidence and trust in police and to help reduce their fear of becoming a target of crime.
Some examples of police programmes are:
- providing safety information on their website in 12 different languages – Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Somali, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese
- building working relationships with ethnic communities, and
- providing ethnic training to police recruits, including hate crime training.
The New Zealand Police offer clients access to Language Line, the telephone interpreting service. To speak to Police in one of the 39 languages currently offered, phone your local Police Station. State your language and ‘Language Line’ for an interpreter in your language to be connected.
NZ Police PDF
The Families Commission
The Families Commission is a Crown entity set up to advocate for better policies, services and support for all New Zealand families and whānau. The Commission is governed by a Board of Commissioners.
The Commission's objective is to ensure families and whānau have the capacity to care for and nurture their members. They also want to make sure families are supported by communities, government and society. The Commission takes a uniquely family perspective in all their work and the aim is to increasingly become the centre of knowledge about families. Being neither a funder nor a provider, they speak with an independent voice.
Over the next three years, the Commission's priorities include parenting education and support, family violence prevention, family relationship counselling and education, work and family life balance, and knowledge building and sharing. A detailed work programme has been developed which outlines what the Commission will be doing to make improvements in these areas.
The Families Commission has also set up an online panel called The Couch to hear the views of people in the community on family issues. You’re invited to join up now and take part in their regular polls and questionnaires. There is no cost involved.
Families Commission PDF