Foreword.

• Author: Pole, Nicholas
• Position: Editorial

Just 10 years ago the Social Policy Agency of the Department of Social Welfare published the first issue of the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand. Later, with remarkably little change of actual staff, the Journal came out under the banner of the Ministry of Social Policy's Knowledge Management Group. I am pleased to announce that the Social Policy Journal is now produced by the newly launched Centre for Social Research and Evaluation of the Ministry of Social Development (with no change of staff whatsoever). Throughout this decade, and despite changes in sponsorship, the Journal has continued to provide a forum for debate on important topics across the spectrum of social policy.

Two topics regularly explored in the Journal in the past are poverty measurement and the analysis of the Benefit Dynamics Database, and these are developed further in Issue Nineteen. Bryan Perry argues that we need to go beyond relying on income measures alone if we wish to understand how it is that there are New Zealanders living with inadequate resources. Garry Barrett, Frances Krsinich and Moira Wilson focus on the youngest members of society, using benefit data to understand why some children are more likely than others to stay longer on welfare payments.

"Achieving Effective Outcomes in Youth Justice" is a large-scale, longitudinal evaluation conducted by the Crime and Justice Research Centre. Gabrielle Maxwell, Jeremy Robertson and Venezia Kingi discuss the extent to which the key goals underpinning the youth justice legislation--to keep young people out of court, out of institutions, and inside their communities wherever possible--are met by the youth justice system. Evaluation is also the theme of Paul Duignanls paper, albeit more broadly considered, arguing for an enhanced capacity with greater sophistication, including the employment of appropriate models for Maori programmes. Martin Tolich addresses weaknesses in current paradigms for research that includes Maori participants, arguing that they "paralyse" Pakeha researchers.

A review of the literature on child...