Learning about language

Describing the problem.

A few years ago, the standard way to describe this complex issue among pākehā (and still the standard way for some today) was ‘child poverty’. It’s the framing we constantly encountered in our early research, and many think that by focusing on children, it will bypass the tendency by many to blame parents for living in hardship. However:

• Children don’t live in isolation, and many people with a more holistic viewpoint (including many Māori and Pacific people) are uncomfortable about children not being seen as part of their whānau. Poor children live in poor households.
• Many people who live with low incomes dislike being described as ‘poor’. The word has so many other connotations – of failure, laziness etc: the very beliefs that distract from the systemic contributors to inequity. ‘Poor’ can also imply ‘unhappy’, and this is not the case for many low-income families and communities either.  It can be perceived to discount the many positive attributes and qualities within families and whānau.

Our whole approach to framing this issue has benefited enormously from the guidance of our friends at The Workshop – who, along with many others, strongly recommend starting with a positive vision.

In any case, as Alex says in her reflection, we want something more than just a society free from poverty: a place where all our children, young people and mokopuna flourish.

Describing the solutions. 

In our 2017 Call for Ideas we were looking for systems-focused solutions, to ‘tackle the root causes’.  Yet a large majority of ideas submitted were for new or existing services, which while valuable, could in most cases only hope to reach a small number of whānau.  This may have been in part because few organisations were geared up to tackle systemic issues; but our ways of describing what we were looking for were also pretty naïve.

‘Systems change’ as an approach is far from new; but the surge of interest in the approach that was just starting overseas at about that time was influential. It’s also a pretty vague term that can take on many shades of meaning.

Again, the Workshop – this time along with Tokona Te Raki and The Southern Initiative – have been very helpful.  They have produced a guide called Mapping the Landscape: How to Talk About Systems Change in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

So what have we learned?

• We need to talk about ‘both sides of the coin’ – both the vision we and so many others seek, and also the evidence of the problem – but not in a way that may be perceived as diminishing the mana of others.
• We’ve been reminded that language is another form of power.  We need to be alert to the nuances that are packed into words, and how they are heard by others.
• We fully believe in the need to address systemic barriers to wellbeing and prosperity.  But like so many approaches that are at some time in fashion among academics and changemakers, “systems change” has developed its own vocabulary and aura that can exclude people, including the very people changemakers want to empower – who they often say have the solutions already!   Let’s learn from every source, and make learning available to all.  As someone said, how would you explain this stuff to your family?

Article by Iain Hines, PMP Director until 2022