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Placing Children on the Political Agenda: New Zealand’s Agenda for Children

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The Politics of Childhood

Abstract

There’s a common saying in New Zealand: ‘This is a great place to bring up your kids’. But what do children think about this? Is it a great place for children? Children throughout New Zealand were asked these questions as part of the development of New Zealand’s Agenda for Children (hereafter, the Agenda) (MSD, 2002a). Published in June 2002 by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), the Agenda is an overarching government strategy to improve outcomes for children in New Zealand. It consists of a vision: that ‘New Zealand is a great place for children: we look after one another’, a set of guiding principles to inform all government policy and service developments relating to children, a new ‘whole child’ approach to developing policies and services for children, and seven key action areas for further policy work.

Maree Brown and Jaleh McCormack both worked on the development and implementation of the Agenda for Children. By way of disclaimer the views in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the New Zealand Government nor the Ministry of Social Development.

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Authors
  1. Maree Brown
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  2. Jaleh McCormack
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Bradford, UK

    Jim Goddard  & Adrian James  & 

  2. Dept. of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences, University of Hull, UK

    Sally McNamee

  3. Dept. of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, UK

    Allison James

Copyright information

© 2005 Palgrave Macmillan

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Cite this chapter

Brown, M., McCormack, J. (2005). Placing Children on the Political Agenda: New Zealand’s Agenda for Children. In: Goddard, J., McNamee, S., James, A., James, A. (eds) The Politics of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523197_11

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