Latest news with #Coster
1News
18-05-2025
- Business
- 1News
Profit not a motive behind social investment approach
The head of the Government's Social Investment Agency says he can't rule out commissioning for-profit social service providers in future, but that it isn't the focus. Andrew Coster, the former police commissioner turned Social Investment Agency (SIA) chief executive, spoke to Q+A shortly after the Government announced an additional $279 million over the next four years for its social investment strategy. The package, with more details expected in this week's Budget, included $190 million for a fund that will invest in at least 20 social service initiatives over the next year. It's anticipated the SIA would oversee the fund's establishment and use until mid-2026, with ministerial guidance about general priorities but not specific funding decisions. In future, the Government envisioned the fund's commissioning function would move into communities. A Cabinet paper released this month also proposed the fund could eventually "attract investment from private and philanthropic organisations". Coster said the changes around social investment the Government wanted to introduce was significant for agencies used to working within their own departments. "The reason why we are launching into something fairly disruptive and, frankly, reasonably risky in terms of being able to pull it off is because we need to embed it and prove it." When asked if the fund could commission for-profit social service providers, Coster said: "I won't say we're not, but this model is not focused on that." "Whereas in [the] health [sector] you have a lot of for profit service provision, in social services more broadly you see a lot of NGOs." The plan is the centrepiece of a four-year, $275m plan the Finance Minister says is meant to fix how social services are delivered. (Source: 1News) An earlier iteration of the social investment model under the previous National government included some use of social investment bonds. It's proposed the bonds could see a private funder or investor give up-front funding to an intermediary, which would then use the money to contract social service providers to achieve certain outcomes. Investors would then receive a return if those outcomes are reached. Coster said the rate of success with a previous iteration of social investment bonds was mixed. "They're quite a complex instrument with a lot of reporting involved," he said. "There's a reasonable debate to have about the idea of private equity profiting from a social good, so it's not where we've started. "There is so much opportunity within government funding already being allocated out there to organisations that we want to get our own house in order." National proposed using social impact bonds for social housing in the last election. Coster said the keys to the social investment approach were the use of data to measure whether a contracted provider of social services was actually making a difference. "So much of government activity at the moment is tracked through outputs. By that, we mean the activities, the things that are happening every day. The widgets, if you like." For example, a provider may be contracted to deliver a certain number of counselling sessions instead of delivering the outcome of improved mental health. The social investment model would flip this around by measuring a social programme's effectiveness through tools like Stats NZ's integrated data infrastructure (IDI). The IDI is a large, anonymised data base of Kiwis' information sourced from Government agencies, surveys, and NGOs. Coster said this data could then underpin funding decisions because the IDI could be used to find "comparable cohorts within the population". The SIA would then see if, after their use of certain social service providers, there was a difference in measures like school attendance or the number of interactions with police. The idea would then be to continue funding programmes that were demonstrably successful, he said. "The purpose of social investment is to get the best value in the broadest sense, which means the best outcomes for people, the best outcomes for the community, and the best use of funding in order to achieve that." When asked if the approach encouraged the state to value a life only in economic terms, Coster said there was "no misalignment between the desire to get good value for taxpayer money and the delivering of positive impacts for people in their lives". "In fact, it's incumbent on us to get good value because that demonstrates and delivers best outcomes." Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
The Spinoff
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Spinoff
Government unveils $190m social investment fund with focus on early intervention
Nicola Willis is betting on a 'top of the cliff' model of social services, backed by data and led by former a former police commissioner, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. Social investment funding prioritises early support Finance minister Nicola Willis has announced a $190 million social investment fund to support 'services that deliver measurable improvements in the lives of those who need our help, guided by data and evidence'. The fund is part of a wider $275 million allocation to the newly empowered Social Investment Agency, and was unveiled in a pre-budget speech yesterday, The Post's Luke Malpass reports (paywalled). Three projects will receive initial funding: an Autism New Zealand programme providing early support to 50 families; an expansion of Emerge Aotearoa's work with at-risk youth; and He Piringa Whare, a data-informed programme to support at-risk Māori. Additional investments will focus on parenting in the early years and preventing children from entering state care, part of the Crown's response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care. A renamed agency with renewed purpose The announcement builds on changes made last year, when the Social Wellbeing Agency was rebranded as the Social Investment Agency and repositioned as a central government agency with system-wide oversight, explains RNZ's Russell Palmer in his comprehensive explainer on the past and present of social investment in NZ. Early moves such as reprioritising Oranga Tamariki contracts and overhauling Whānau Ora commissioning have caused some friction – not least with John Tamihere, who has taken the government to court over his agency's lost contracts. From policing to public services The agency's CEO is Andrew Coster, whose time as police commissioner was marked by both controversy and reform. Criticised early on by National and Act for being 'soft on crime', he was labelled 'cuddles Coster' by his critics, while former National leader Simon Bridges accused him of being a 'wokester'. The government has since largely changed its tune, with the PM saying Coster had 'delivered bigtime', reports Palmer. Now, Coster is excited to work at the 'top of the cliff', he tells Newsroom's Laura Walters, and to change a system that is hampered by fragmented funding and an excessive focus on compliance. He believes 'the culture of adding on services, rather than assessing the effectiveness of current services, has led to more money being spent but not always better outcomes being achieved', Walters writes. Says Coster: 'We want to know whether [a service] made a difference, not just that it was delivered.' A policy redux Social investment has long been associated with former prime minister Bill English, who promoted the idea of using data to intervene early and reduce the long-term fiscal burden of entrenched disadvantage. His approach was data-driven to the extreme, writes Eileen Joy in the Conversation, including commissioning an actuary firm to calculate the lifetime welfare cost to the state of people on benefits and which type of beneficiary 'is going to cost us the most money'. While English's model was praised for its logic, it gave no consideration 'to structural factors such as colonisation and poverty', writes Joy, and ultimately delivered few tangible results before being sidelined by the Labour government in 2017. Willis, once a staffer for English, has picked up the baton with a broader framing – emphasising both social and financial returns and apparently seeking to avoid English's ideological rigidity. Joy says she remains sceptical. 'Given the government's drive to remove any special policy considerations based on … the Treaty of Waitangi, the risk remains that some Māori will again come to be viewed as a 'cost' to the state.'
