FOREWORD.

• Author: Rowe, Elizabeth

This 14th issue of the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand deals with a broad range of important social policy topics. It includes work on tracking the impact of employment policy changes on Domestic Purposes Beneficiaries, a number of different perspectives on cannabis policy, issues relating to youth at risk, and the importance of sound monitoring measures to support social policy development.

The recent social welfare reforms are the starting point for two papers that explore their impact on domestic purposes beneficiaries and state housing tenants. Moira Wilson first presented an analysis of benefit dynamics data in Issue Thirteen of the Social Policy Journal. In the present volume she uses benefit dynamics data to track the movement of cohorts of DPB recipients on and off full and partial benefit. Wilson investigates the extent to which these shifts in benefit status can be linked to changes in benefit provisions that were made in response to the recommendations of the Employment Task Force to help beneficiaries into full-time and part-time paid employment. Charles Waldegrave, Catherine Love and Shane Stuart present the findings of a study of urban Maori, which combines survey and focus group data on housing issues. Their research design was specifically aimed at addressing methodological and ethical issues relating to the recruitment and empowerment of participants, and the training and roles of researchers, where participants identify as Maori.

David Tipene-Leach, Sally Able, Riripeti Haretuku and Carole Everard analyse the success of the Maori SIDS Prevention Programme, set against a background of the recent major restructuring of the health system. The authors relate this success to the fact that the programme was developed and run by Maori for the Maori community, and committed to working within a Maori world view, yet flexible enough to work with mainstream services and even extend services to non-Maori when appropriate.

Three papers explore cannabis policy with very different approaches. Michael Webb analyses and assesses Dutch cannabis policy, providing a first-hand account of the "hash coffee house" phenomenon and the system of practice in which it operates. Adrian Field and Sally Casswell weigh up a broad range of cannabis policy options, looking at the way they are...