 
### The Family Budgeters

Dave Mullan

ISBN 978-1-877357-23-7

ColCom Press

28/101 Red Beach Road,

Hibiscus Coast, Aotearoa-New Zealand 0932

colcom.press@clear.net.nz

http://www.colcompress.com

http://dave-mullan.blogspot.co.nz

Copyright 2015 Dave Mullan

Smashwords Edition

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# Appreciation

My thanks are due to Raewyn Fox, and the NZ Federation of Family Budgeting Services—Te Roopu Penapena Putea Whanau o Aotearoa

Raewyn and her staff have provided full access to their official archive, including the notable thesis of Yvonne Burns for Master of Arts in Social Work.

While they have provided invaluable support and advice, the Federation has had no editorial input and all errors of fact or omission are mine alone.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Kaikohe Partnership

3. The Accidental Social Workers

4. Some "Indie" Services

5. Social Agencies in Budgeting

6. The "Centralised" Services

7. Federation

8. Government Support

9. Home Budgeting Advisory Committee—1978

10. A "Steam Budgeter" Reflects

11. Reminiscences

Timeline

References

About the Author

28/101 Red Beach Rd, Hibiscus Coast 0932

Chief Executive Officer

NZ Federation of Family Budgeting Services

Wellington

Attn: Raewyn Fox

Re: Item borrowed from your archive

Dear Ms Fox

I am sorry that I have not yet returned the document that was loaned to me by your office some time ago.

I acknowledge that the covering letter said that I had to return it by 8th June 2009. This was perfectly clearly spelled out and there can be no disagreement as to the facts of the situation. I did not return it by the due date.

However, due to indifferent health I was not able to read the document in the two weeks permitted. On the day I was due to return it my quarterly PSA check showed a marked and unexpected increase. Shortly afterwards I had to go onto an additional medication for my prostate cancer. By the time my system had adjusted to this a year or two had passed. Or perhaps more.

In my defence, I have to say that the document was filed carefully away and clearly labelled to be sent to you in the event of my demise. That it has not come to you long before this may be a matter for your regret, but not at all of mine.

Then we moved and I forgot all about it. So, as an act of repentance, and in the absence of anyone who has survived longer than myself and might have done a better job, I now submit a rough account of the origins of family budgeting services in this country. I fear it may be an unsubtle mixture of demonstrable facts and a liberal garnish of my own personal reflections.

But I trust it will be some compensation for the absence of Yvonne Burns' excellent thesis from your archives for the last few years.

Penitentially yours

Dave Mullan, October 2015
Foreword

The Family Budgeters records the early development of budget advising in New Zealand. The movement is unique in that it developed through almost entirely voluntary effort, which is an amazing tribute to the commitment and enthusiasm of those volunteers.

The voluntary nature of this development stands our system apart from many others around the world and gives it a uniquely New Zealand "do it yourself" flavour.

The delivery of budgeting advice through the New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services today still utilises a 56% volunteer workforce although increasing amounts of the work is being done by paid advisers.

The nature of the work has not changed considerably since those early days, however the creditors are more numerous and the dollar value of debts greater. The developmental work recorded in this book gave solid grounding and systems that remain valid and valuable for advisers and clients today.

On behalf of the organisation in 2015, I would like to thank and pay tribute to all the pioneering work captured in this book and the people who laid a solid groundwork for us.

I give special thanks to Dave Mullan who was one of those pioneers and has maintained a keen interest to research and record our history in this valuable book.

Raewyn Fox

Chief Executive Officer,

New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services

Author's Foreword

In A Small Qango, an account of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee, I observed that another book was needed to tell the story of New Zealand's voluntary household budgeting services. A Small Qango was written out of the heat of an intensive ten years' personal experience and five large binders including every known document. The other book would require a much different set of resources and knowledge.

I have waited for a more competent, knowledgeable and formal historian to write that other story. The NZ Federation of Family Budgeting Services has long recognised the need to have some kind of record of the years up to its formal establishment as an independent organisation. The office has made a couple of attempts to assemble material, both historical and anecdotal. I was drawn into some discussion about a writing task twenty years ago and was given a complete copy of the sparse collection of documents held in Wellington.

There was hope for some funding for a comprehensive research programme but money for such a project could not become a priority. Nor was there even any prospect of financing a publication of any kind.

A few years later, several of us from the early years shared personal reflections and anecdotes. Some of these were published in the Federation's newsletter and added to the archive. But the passage of time, health problems of my own and deaths of so many of the original volunteers have, until recently, defeated efforts to put together a coherent account.

In early 2015 I found myself with some discretionary time and energy. Developing a little experience with digital publication encouraged me to make another start. But this effort will be a poor substitute for the account that might have been put together by others who have now left us.

My involvement with family budgeting was intense but for only a couple of decades. After 1982 my time was limited to serving on the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee and had to cease altogether in 1988. I had only a few years in face-to-face budgeting—though, like others, I have some stories to tell. My main contributions were the introduction of the concept to Dunedin and subsequently many other centres in the South Island. I was the second national president of the federation but my election may have had less to do with my family budgeting expertise than my position on the government's Home Budgeting Advisory Committee. I served for the full ten years of that committee's life and was the only non-departmental chair when the "qango hunters" closed it down in 1988. So I played a role in the critical few years of establishing the credibility of the federation in the eyes of government and the resultant flow of funding from the public purse to the family budgeting movement.

Like most others who were directly involved in the work I had heard of Gray and Vuglar. But I knew little of the details of their amazing work in Kaitaia. It has been a huge revelation to examine Yvonne Burns' record of painstaking research and in-depth interviews with people from more than half a century ago. Without her thoroughly researched thesis for Master of Arts at Victoria University in 1980 our picture of the short sharp growth of those brief early days would have been sparse indeed. It has been very satisfying to track her down in Australia and to have her permission to draw heavily on her work and the valuable archive documents that are appended to it.

With all my limitations, it has been a privilege to be able to pull together some of the threads of the story of the movement. I offer the result as a tribute to men and women who were caught up in a dream about a unique and dramatic community service and would stop at nothing to bring it about.

To the memory of the "steam budgeters", their helpers and supporters and their long-suffering families, this modest publication is gratefully dedicated.

**Dave Mullan** — October, 2015

President NZFFBS 1979-1983

Member HBAC 1978-1988

# 1

Introduction

The origins of organised family budgeting have been very obscure to most people in recent decades. Informal budgeting services have been operating from at least the time of the great depression of the 1930s. Churches and social service groups of all kinds assisted people with day to day needs, mostly by way of gifts of food and household necessities. But family budgeting, as an organised exercise of helping people to manage their money and, especially, paying off debt, did not really exist before World War II. The post-depression years were a time when finding food and shelter was the central issue and hire purchase was virtually unknown.

Conception

The period after the war was the time in which family budgeting along the lines of today's vast operations was conceived. The inimitable "Buck" Pound, although he had worked in the bank before being called up for war service, said that he had to seek help from a neighbour to manage his finances in civvy street. He was advised to use the "little tins" system. Being a banker, he began to explore other ways of budgeting and accounting for spending in categories.

Another pioneer budgeter of that era was a builder and was engaged to erect some of the "half-houses" that were provided on a few dozen acres of land for demobbed veterans. He found that some of the people he helped to settle on the land also needed help to budget to repay their commitment.

After the lean years when families lived from payday to payday the postwar decades were a time of a naive kind of prosperity. This was built largely on tariff protection of industries and expensive goods, subsidies to keep prices of essential commodities like bread and milk down to affordable levels, and relatively good overseas income based largely on primary products from the rural sector. In this relatively comfortable period, when families could aspire to more than the basic necessities, the principle of hire purchase was becoming established. The writer remembers that, apart from the mortgage for a modest first home in 1936, his father claimed to have only ever bought one item on hire purchase—it was a washing machine. However, he may have overlooked their ex-fleet Model C car which was probably paid off by deductions from his salary at Ford Motor Coy. Here, and at many factories and businesses, overtime was readily available for those who wished to save for their extras or reduce a long-term debt.

In the mid 1950s many families were living in excellent rental houses provided by the State. Entire suburbs of families of the same age and situation would later provide a source of tension but, for the moment, it seemed that anything was possible. In later years the government enabled many to achieve ownership of the homes they rented through loans offered by the State Advances Corporation at generous rates.

Money Management Skills

Most people who had grown up in depression homes understood the value of a shilling. Their simple respect for what money could do was a satisfactory substitute for what we might today call budgeting skills. With this attitude to money in the decade or two after the war, many families could do pretty much what they wanted. If nothing else, their aspirations were relatively narrow. They did not generally plan for overseas trips, extended holidays or five star cruises.

The general expectation was that nobody should be without food or shelter. The welfare state would take care of those who couldn't take care of themselves. But there were plenty of families still having difficulty making the money go round. The mere provision of money itself was not then, and probably would not ever be, the whole solution for people who simply could not prepare a budget and manage it.

Dick Kouwenhoven, in surveying this period, suggested that there was growing need for assistance with actual budgeting the family income.

Local retailers, churches, Maori committees, banks, service clubs and well-meaning individuals offered personal budgeting assistance in response to local needs... Much of that work did go unheralded to ensure the confidentiality that promoted the trust of those in need.

What got most people through this period of relatively steady work and income, of good State assistance of many kinds, was not so much the extra money in the hand but the inbred memory of the value of that money. It was never called family budgeting during the depression. But respect for money to do what was necessary, as distinct from what was desirable, was still strong.

Growing Family Debt

By the end of the 1950s, that respect was diminishing and many people were able to live reasonably comfortably without having to wrestle with their financial priorities. Mortgages became relatively normal features of life for many families in both urban and rural regions. The new marketing strategy of Hire Purchase was bringing all kinds of consumer goods within reach of families.

Theo Loof, who managed a debt collecting business in Auckland, may have been the author of an interesting paper that turned up unattributed, in the federation's archives. It observed:

...the consumer market reacted favourably to these new purchase schemes as many goods, saved up for previously, became instantly attainable through a simple system of "buying now and paying later"... Failures were inevitable... many people were making their first acquaintance with debt collectors and Court bailiffs or they lost goods and equity through repossession.

Thus, for a small proportion of the population, life was becoming difficult. Some of the major church social service organisations developed systems to assist families with managing their money. Mostly, this was done by holding a proportion of the pay packet and allocating that around the creditors and using it to meet regular commitments. Other bodies had schemes to assist their own members and sometimes the general public. But there was no recognised procedure for handling the growing amount of family debt. There were many victims of their own ignorance, cupidity or just carelessness.

Maori

The Department of Maori Affairs was conscious of a vast discrepancy between many rural Maori and people living in the cities. In seeking to advance the cause of Maori, a major report under the name of the Secretary of Maori Affairs, JK Hunn, would be a profound influence. In what we would see today as a somewhat patronising style, it advocated a policy of integrating Maori people into the rest of New Zealand society. Maori were to be encouraged to aspire to pakeha standards of education and family life. To bring this about, many rural Maori would be helped to move into urban areas and establish family homes alongside other New Zealanders.

A minor expression of this principle provided the catalyst for what must be recognised as the first beginning of organised family budgeting in this country. The year was 1960. The place was Kaikohe.

# 2

The Kaikohe Partnership

The names of Dr Manahi Nitana Paewai and Gray Vuglar were well known in family budgeting circles in the early days of the movement. Budgeting groups that sprang up in many parts of the country in the early 1960s knew that their inspiration and their systems derived from these two men.

What was not so well known is that they were resident together in Kaikohe for less than two years. Yvonne Burns has put some flesh on the bones that most of the early budgeters knew. Her Master of Arts thesis involved her in extensive research with these two pioneers. She spoke with both of them at length and recorded their story in detail. Most of what follows is liberally drawn from her work.

# Dr M N Paewai

After qualifying as a doctor, Paewai settled in the north. At that time Maori general practitioners were comparatively rare and he made a deliberate choice to move to Northland. Significantly, he was not from local Aupouri or Ngapuhi descent. He said he simply chose Kaikohe because of the large Maori population. If initially regarded by some Maori as a "paha with pakeha ideas" (his own words) by 1959 he was highly regarded and well known by most of the community. He had a much higher commitment to preventive medicine than most of his peers. He was also convinced that Maori "whatever the social or individual explanations give, spent money unwisely". His Mormon background and commitment to the principle of the tithe no doubt accentuated his sense of money management.

In Kaikohe he learned that many of his Maori patients had deposited money with the Department of Maori Affairs which was to build homes for them. This was a part of the Hunn plan for relocating Maori into ordinary homes in town. But, in Kaikohe's case, nothing much was happening. Paewai arranged for withdrawal of the funds and helped people to take advantage of the new opportunity to get into their own homes by their own efforts rather than using the Department. From 1958, the law allowed families with children to capitalise their (quite generous) family benefits and take up housing mortgages with the State Advances Corporation. He personally settled some 24 families in their own homes using these initiatives rather than the Maori Affairs system.

In the context of setting up these mortgages, he was drawn into detailed budgeting of family income among people who had less experience and ability than most. But his interest in family budgeting did not stop at these practical steps. Yvonne Burns says—

With anyone in a public position who might be able to take his ideas further, Paewai would spend long hours discussing the merits of budgeting... His involvement on a number of committees reflected the effort he gave to other areas he saw as important.

Yvonne Burns, records that on one famous occasion, the doctor prevented a train from unloading at Kaikohe and had it routed back to Whangarei. His grounds were that the intending buyers could not afford the hire purchase commitments on the consignment of furniture that was aboard it.

As he settled into the community, Paewai earned the respect of the pakeha community but also enjoyed mana among most Maori. Having identified the budgeting issue he made personal efforts to improve the lives of those his housing scheme served. For some thirteen years he tried, without much success, to spread concepts of careful money management.

However, by his own admission, the voluntary budgeting system that was destined to spread throughout most of the North Island within a year or two would never have got off the ground without another significant person.

# Gray Vuglar

In April 1959 Gray Vuglar arrived in Kaikohe on transfer from the Social Security Department in Paeroa, his home town. He would be a Kaikohe resident for only two years. For all that time he would be an active and hard-working member of the community. He would later observe that everyone in any community had "a responsibility to make a positive contribution towards its social and cultural progress." His contribution was as an organiser and administrator. It was prodigious.

As District Agent of Social Security and public service administrator of benefits and pensions, he was responsible for handing out the funds on which so many local people depended. He became aware that money mismanagement was a very serious problem for many people. His department handed out the funds but it did not have a mandate to offer personal guidance as to how those funds were used. Vuglar put his own time into helping some of the department's clients. In spite of having a young family himself, he worked long hours outside office time visiting and counselling clients whose difficulties had come to his notice in the course of his day work. He was frequently called out in the middle of the night. His wife told Yvonne Burns that sometimes he slept at home in his lunch hour because of the heavy demands on his free time. The family had to go to a secret destination for the occasional quiet Sunday afternoon.

Gray's obituary drew attention to the wide interests of this remarkable man. Among his other lifetime achievements, Vuglar bred race horses with his late uncle Jack Burgess, played rugby, boxed, and was a successful competitive runner in his youth. He was a Justice of the Peace, volunteered for Meals on Wheels in Paeroa, sat on the Thames Valley Children's Board, and was a member of the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society.

Mutual Interest

Yvonne Burns considered that a shared interest in sport initially drew these two men together. But they may well have become acquainted through their common aims of establishing household budgets for new home owners. Paewai's passion about managing money and Vuglar's personal experience in re-organising the pieces of failing households no doubt occupied much of their discussion.

In mid-1960 they took a practical step forward together. At that time Vuglar had picked up some information about a fairly systematic budgeting programme offered by Birthright NZ for some of their clients. He became aware of a couple whose marriage was about to fall apart. The explosive separation was largely triggered by money problems and Vuglar talked to Paewai about the crisis. They took matters into their own hands and jointly contracted to give the couple ongoing financial management if they would stay together. The two of them met regularly with the couple and helped them through their crisis.

The family responded very positively and it was only a matter of weeks before they were enthusing about the positive effects the budgeting sessions were having on their family. Naturally others asked if they could have the same opportunity. But the demands thus placed on two busy innovators were very formidable. Almost immediately they realised that a team of volunteers, like themselves, could make a big contribution to the community.

In October 1960 a public meeting of thirty or forty people met to consider what they planned to call a Citizens Advice Council. Vuglar outlined a method that would be recognised by almost any budget advisor in the next three decades:

*—The family would have a joint bank account

*—All income including the family benefit would go into this account

*—All bills would be paid weekly—even to portions of power bills and rates

*—Volunteer "sponsors" would retain the cheque book

*—Both husband and wife would sign each cheque

A second public meeting a month later formally established what would soon become known around the country as "the Kaikohe Scheme". A committee of nine would supervise the work. As Coordinator, Vuglar would conduct the initial interview, draw up the budget and match the client family with two suitable "sponsors". Weekly visits were the norm, regardless of the pay period of the family. Vuglar obviously gave the details of the whole process considerable attention. Indeed, observes Yvonne Bush, the value of his work was seen clearly in the confusion and drop in enthusiasm recognised by Paewai when Vuglar left the district after only a year or so.

A brief but comprehensive constitution formally set in place the Council of the Citizens Advice and Guidance Society of Kaikohe. All nine members of the Council were expected to be active advisers called Liaison Officers. Thirty-two more volunteers were recruited within three months.

Vuglar usually conducted the initial interviews with all potential clients, supervising the drawing up of each budget. He also introduced the two sponsors who would continue with the weekly meetings with each family and gave general supervision to their work. His contribution was enormous. When he was withdrawn as Kaikohe's District Agent of Social Security barely a year later, to go to Whangarei (as "Social Worker"), we are told there were seventy cases, four of which were already managing on their own.

At the same time, as a result of vigorous deputation work by the Kaikohe pair and JA Gale—who is briefly identified as a teacher by Yvonne Bush but otherwise largely unknown—ten centres around the Far North had commenced family budgeting operations. From further afield there had been enquiries from Otorohanga, Gisborne, Waverley, Tauranga, Whangarei, Whanganui, Tokoroa, Ohakune and Putaruru. By the end of that year, several of these centres, as well as the smaller communities around Northland, already had established household budgeting services.

But what might have remained a local movement in just a few centres would almost immediately receive a huge boost. Formal involvement by the Government would be triggered by a timely letter from Dr Paewai to the Acting Secretary of Maori Affairs.

# The Government

Just before Paewai and Vuglar began setting Kaikohe and the northern regions alight with their novel programme there occurred one of those coincidences which from time to time either move society forward dramatically or subtly steer it off into a siding. Although the writer did not realise the implications in his two decades' of association with the movement, this event was to have profound and far-reaching implications for household budgeting, for Maori, and for the country as a whole.

The event was the involvement of JK Hunn as interim head of the Department of Maori Affairs. As deputy Public Service Commissioner he had been commissioned to produce the report that bore his name. It seems that he dropped into the Maori Affairs role in the absence of a permanent head for that department. His report bears some of the hallmarks of the age of paternalism of a country which was becoming ripe for the Maori protest that was beginning to blossom at this time. In later years, many aspects of this policy would be severely criticised. But it was a genuine attempt to try to redress the obvious inequities of the day.

The 1960 Hunn Report on the Department of Maori Affairs identified three types of Māori:

*—some who were completely detribalised, with very little or no Māoritanga

*—a majority who were generally at home in either Māori or non-Māori society

*—a minority who were "complacently living a backward life in primitive conditions".

The report argued for planned migration to the cities and assistance with training, employment and accommodation. The intention of this deliberate government initiative was to hasten Maori urbanisation and achieve that rather Pakeha solution, "integration". There were other reforms. But there was little regard for Maori culture. The massive urban migration that followed would not, of itself, do much to either enhance Maori mana or benefit urban communities. And when it was presented in draft it was put on the back burner by outgoing Maori Affairs Minister Walter Nash. An election was looming and he did not want the distraction of what was obviously going to be a fairly controversial proposal.

But for our story there is a fascinating by-product. Hunn and his team resurrected their report in early 1961 to present to their newly elected Minister, JR Hanan. As they reflected on the issues involved in the plans to "urbanise" Maori, the new household budgeting adventure at Kaikohe came to their attention. The enterprising Paewai had written an "open letter" to the Department of Maori Affairs. It was only two months after the Kaikohe society was put in place but he was not slow to lose an opportunity:

I understand from an article in our local paper that you intend making a visit to the North next February.... We would like to have the opportunity of telling you of case histories and of some of the results that we have obtained. I think that our practical experiences in these matters would be of interest to you... I would like to have your opinion as to the further possibilities in giving benefit to our people through such an organisation as this.

Acting Secretary JK Hunn's visit took place in the second week of February 1961. It was now not quite four months since the Kaikohe society had been constituted. He was very impressed and described the scheme as a—

—novel and constructive idea, serving a very necessary and useful purpose, assisting the Maori people to get on their feet in these modern times... There is a lot of talk about racial equality and cooperation but here is something practical.

A substantial report in The Northern News provided a most comprehensive account of the visit. This report was conflated with a major press release from the Minister of Maori Affairs, JR Hanan. No doubt glad to have the publicity as a new Minister, he was headlined "New Hope Born" and "Maori Affairs Department Adopts Kaikohe Scheme". He described a new citizens' advice and guidance scheme which was being adopted as Maori policy to foster leadership and down-to-earth welfare work among Maori. The government was giving a new look to the Maori Affairs Department and a new deal to Maori people.

Much of this official statement drew on the Hunn review of Maori Affairs policies that had been back-burnered by the previous government. With the change of government the new minister was keen to promote the review, especially since the key writer was now acting as permanent head of Maori Affairs. Hanan no doubt recognised that the spectacular success of the Kaikohe Society could be a significant promotional tool in the new journey for Maori Affairs. In the manner of most newly elected Ministers he assured the country that good things were ahead. There would be timely, regulated assistance to voluntary budgeting organisations.

As a tribute to its founders, Hanan said, the government would promote (the scheme) in other centres under the name of the Kaikohe Scheme. His clearly stated view was that family budgeting was a matter for the people, rather than the government. But the government should service the scheme with organisational and professional welfare workers' assistance.

The newspaper article continued with the Minister's summary of the scheme. This was almost a word for work reiteration of the five points introduced in Kaikohe as mentioned above.

Quite soon afterwards, a one-page internal memorandum in Maori Affairs spelled out the exact support that should be offered when communities wished to form new budgeting groups. The list was comprehensive and there was no doubt that some resources would be available for volunteers. There would even be some direct but modest financial support:

*—Information leaflets for promotion

*—Pamphlets for potential clients

*—Printing of all necessary forms

*—Liaison with other State and community agencies

*—Sponsoring acceptance by leaders and Maori communities

*—Departmental representation on local management committees

*—Financial grants up to £20 or £40 per year

*—Facilities for exchange of information

E R Newman

This comprehensive response was almost certainly engineered by ER Newman, whose "special duties" as Ministerial Officer for Maori Affairs included household budgeting. He was obviously caught up in the enthusiasm of his departmental Secretary and Minister for household budgeting. Yvonne Bush says—

His brief was "to study the need for the service in various centres and to assist the volunteer group(s) operating in it already. Newman has been described as a "real enthusiast" for the new movement. He travelled considerably, assiduously followed up any requests for assistance and information and even started a newsletter for circulation amongst groups.

Yvonne suggests that the principal reason that the movement in other areas was consolidated was through what one authority in Maori Affairs described as "Newman's regime".

With this vigorous hand at the helm, the Department produced another more substantial "explanatory leaflet" setting out aspects of the department's policy concerning the movement. In this is made the extraordinary statement that "at the time of writing, the service is in operation or projected in over fifty places". This, we need to remind ourselves, was no more than a year after the Kaikohe Scheme was launched in that town. Newman's own writing reports ten services that he was personally involved in by the end of 1961. In a 1963 newsletter he speaks of 52 services operating and possibly establishment of 23 more in the near future and a further eight being looked into. These are astonishing figures, given the very modest mailing lists that were being assembled only ten years later.

It is clear that within the first year many new services commenced. More than one of them later claimed to be the "first service to be established outside of Kaikohe". Undoubtedly, any such claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Under the sponsorship of Maori Affairs the movement was an avalanche that swept around large parts of the country within months.

The Maori Affairs paper goes on to spell out the system or method of operation, ways of establishing group and the role of government departments. And it offers resources for further information.

Official Support

A liaison officer was to be designated in every Maori Affairs district office. Printed materials were to be made available and promotional material displayed. Maori Affairs officers could be appointed to budgeting management committees and community contacts would be shared. And there would also be modest cash grants f

or out of pocket expenses up to $20 in any one year. Or perhaps, it was suggested, up to $50 for a really big service. A later schedule of grants actually paid out shows that there was no noticeable drain on the public purse throughout Maori Affairs' involvement. But the official line was to support the work as far as reasonably possible.

All this must have sounded impressive at the time. It was certainly a new initiative for any government, but, beyond the efforts of the indomitable Newman, it was not actually a massive public commitment. The movement was established as a citizen-based volunteer programme and that's how it would continue. The extensive involvement of two or three departmental officers as primary contact points and administrators of extensive teams of volunteer budgeters in Hamilton and Bay of Plenty was not yet in place.

For Maori?

What is apparent in the documents of the time is that the Minister was promoting a scheme primarily for Maori. On the other hand, Acting Secretary Hunn, although he had been the vital steering force in overseeing the report that shaped up new policies for Maori Affairs, saw the household budgeting movement as having considerable relevance for all citizens. He had a wider view that would find expression a decade or two down the track.

It could be said that in later years Maori had cause to be less than satisfied with the Hunn report and its objectives of "integrating" Maori in a manner that sounds more like "assimilation". But household budgeting owes much of its success to the fact that in the name of a government department Hunn standardised basic budgeting principles and widely disseminated them through Maori Affairs. And with Newman's commitment of time and passion, he did it within months of the introduction of "The Kaikohe Scheme". This overt action by one government body was the thin end of a wedge that a quarter of a century later would nudge open the door to a substantial level of public funding for family budgeting from another yet-to-be-created department.

Department of Social Security

From that very first involvement in early 1961, Maori Affairs was not the only government department to involve itself in the family budgeting enterprise. Gray Vuglar, as District Agent of Social Security in Kaikohe was inevitably caught up through his formal work with families receiving benefits and housing assistance through his department. But his personal commitment went far beyond the mere job description of his office. This passion was the primary catalyst which generated the conversations with Paewai and quickly triggered the Kaikohe service.

Kaikohe people may have lamented the fact that Vuglar held office in that town for only a couple of years. But it appears that his move to Whangarei was a strategic one. Yvonne Burns suggests—

—the Department made the decision to transfer Vuglar to Whangarei as a Welfare Office so that he could have the opportunity to promote the scheme elsewhere.

In respect of this strategic but no doubt rather precipitate move in mid-1963, the Acting Secretary for Maori Affairs in Head Office wrote to Vuglar. Perhaps he was a little piqued that his brother minister in Social Security had initiated the move. Certainly this personal letter is as surprising in the information about the spread of the movement as it is touching in its sensitivity—

It should give you some satisfaction to know that the service is now believed to be operating in one form or another in 46 places and that another 34 places are under attention... there has been a major break-through into the Auckland and Wellington metropolitan districts.... So the valuable social service which you help to launch in a small way at Kaikohe has spread widely...

Knowing, as we do, of Vuglar's huge commitment of time and passion to the work, JK Hunn continued—

The time spent in your family circle must have been pretty heavily encroached upon by your work for the Service and I would like to include Mrs Vuglar and your children in my cordial good wishes for success and happiness in your new work and environment.

For a short period in the 1960s there was some confusion between Maori Affairs and Social Security as to which Government department would have the mandate for household budgeting. Given Hunn's vision of a service that would be of benefit for the whole community rather than just Maoridom the budgeting enterprise could well have moved over to Social Security. But budgeting welfare work was well entrenched within Maori Affairs by 1964 when Newman was about to retire and the interests of Social Security would not be raised again until its merger into the new Department of Social Welfare in the early 1970s.

Child Welfare Division

There was no official involvement of the Child Welfare Division of the Education Department in these early days. It would not have been considered professional or appropriate for qualified social work staff to engage in such direct financial affairs of their clients. Even the Social Security Department heads cautioned against involvement of their own casework staff in clients' personal financial affairs. They did, however, accept that administrative staff—as distinct from welfare officers—might become involved through the voluntary budgeting organisations that were beginning to appear in various parts of the country in the 1960s. Throughout government departments as well as private businesses there were many volunteers coming forward to serve in the growing movement.

Conclusion

What Yvonne Bush describes as the "second phase of household budgeting" was to last for nearly a decade and a half. Volunteer groups in some other relatively minor centres, such as the Manawatu, would also receive support from Maori Affairs. In two major centres the department would even provide full-time officers to administer household budgeting organisations involving large numbers of regional volunteers. Most local services were informally organised with a shared vision but many different ways of applying that vision in their local communities. Maori Affairs was able to give some assistance in some cases. But most groups were flying by instinct and vast amounts of goodwill and personal initiative. The various government departments that might have had an interest in family welfare generally had nothing much to contribute.

However, in the late 1960s, the earth would move. The Social Security Department and the Child Welfare Division would be completely re-structured and a new Department of Social Welfare would be created in 1971. All three government agencies who had any links to household budgeting would find themselves having to make major adjustments. The two or three Maori Affairs staff directly employed in household budgeting would eventually be transferred across to the new department.

This major effort to coordinate social services did not provide much benefit for the burgeoning family budgeting movement. The new department acknowledged some responsibility for family budgeting and accepted the transfers from Maori Affairs in Hamilton and Rotorua. But, until a clear policy was developed, it would not extend the work. The commitment of Maori Affairs—even to a modest $20 a service!—was no longer present. For some years, budgeting services throughout the country would now lack even the basic moral and financial support that had been present under Maori Affairs.

At the very time the new department was receiving its mandate for coordinated welfare services the family budgeting movement was beginning to cover much larger areas of the country. In the early 1970s it is highly likely that there were at least fifty active budgeting services. But the only sign of significant government assistance was the anomalous position of two or three individuals who came across from Maori Affairs to the new Department of Social Welfare.

# 3

The Accidental Social Workers

In the last half of the decade of the 1960s social services were provided by what Dick Kouwenhoven called a—

—confusing array of welfare agencies (that) had grown haphazardly into a fragmented and often uncoordinated tangle (that) gave rise to proposals for ... re-organisation and rationalisation.

The outcome of a major review was the 1971 Department of Social Welfare Act which consolidated eight acts of Parliament into one. In practical terms, this brought together the social work elements of the formerly disparate departments of Social Security, Child Welfare and Maori Affairs. This led to the establishment of a new department a year or so later. The new Department of Social Welfare was to advise Government on policy, provide training in social work, undertake research and promote cooperation and coordination. It was a bold attempt to bring all social welfare concerns into one organisation.

And into this new department, after a few months, came the anomalous appointments of Maori Affairs household budgeting officers in Hamilton and Rotorua. How did they originate in a department which had shown support in principle but did not want to make a financial investment in the very movement it was mandated to foster?

Maori Affairs Staff

For all its enthusiastic support of family budgeting, the Department of Maori Affairs was never keen to put salary behind its commitment. In 1961 Secretary Hunn and ER Newman did an outstanding job of setting out the principles of the Kaikohe Scheme. There were at least two comprehensive memoranda sent to Maori welfare workers in all offices. The support of the department was to be solid and vigorous within the guidelines laid down. As emphasised earlier, there were cautions about involving the department in financial outlay. There is certainly no hint of the investment of departmental salary that was to come in two or three centres within three or four years.

After the retirement of Newman in 1964, some momentum seems to have been lost. A year later, a policy of three district full-time "Home Counsellors" was implemented. In the absence of one strong appointment in Head Office, this policy sought to provide some degree of supervision or coordination for the volunteer services. This was no doubt prompted by the pressing need for budgeting help among the rapidly increasing number of urban Maori in the Northland and Waikato regions. Maori Affairs had a mandate for household budgeting, and if it could not be done strictly within the "support only" guidelines originally laid down by the then Secretary, it must still be done.

Having resisted Kaikohe's request for a departmental administrator within Maori Affairs, that department now created three such appointments. They were specifically identified as "special cases". Yvonne Burns would later speculate that if Kaikohe had made a case for special consideration instead of proposing administrators in every office they might have achieved their intentions. Certainly, it was "special circumstances" that let the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee to approve provided funding for both Christchurch and Auckland nearly two decades later.

In 1965, Maori Affairs internalised the coordination function of the Kaikohe Scheme became firmly internalised in each district office. They were to accept budgeting concerns as part of their wider welfare role among Maori. And in Hamilton and Rotorua—the "special cases"—and possibly another centre, the budgeting responsibility was to be full-time, not just an adjunct to another role. These positions would become the focus of pressure for Government assistance to volunteer groups from the early 1970s. We now need to consider them in more detail.

# Hamilton

Yvonne Burns makes it clear that, for all its passion to support a program that was inevitably offered in support of the new Government's policy for Maori people, the Maori Affairs Department had been clearly unwilling to make a commitment to salaried officers. As early as 1961, Kaikohe's proposal for paid appointments for household budgeting within Social Security or Maori Affairs was firmly turned down. Salaried officers were against Government policy.

Various good reasons could be adduced to justify this. It was argued, for instance, that the State had no business getting involved in the private affairs of its citizens. It seemed particularly unacceptable that a State employee might put pressure on a family to adopt a particular budgeting perspective, even for their own good (it was presumably acceptable for a public volunteer to act in such a way!). One departmental bean-counter worked out that if an appointment was granted in Kaikohe there would be ten other districts with similar requests. The resultant cost to the country, it was reported, would be in excess of £20,000.

But three appointments were made. Keith Wills was an employee of the Ministry of Works and became involved in a local volunteer budgeting group. Yvonne Bush states that he approached the Department of Maori Affairs and consequently was appointed to their staff in 1965. About this time Ron Rossiter seems to have been appointed to a similar position in Rotorua. Another person by the name of Reeves is also briefly listed as a household budgeting officer in Maori Affairs but we do not know where. It is possible his was a Head Office role, replacing the retired EF Newman. But it could also have been in Whangarei, replacing Vuglar's earlier role there in Social Security Department.

The Hamilton Operation

The only clear picture that we have of this stage of the Hamilton service is that by the time the new Department of Social Welfare was up and running in 1972, Keith—or at least the position he later occupied—had been transferred across from Maori Affairs. It is likely that, despite its broad mandate for social work of all kinds, DSW was not necessarily delighted to have the household budgeting section on its establishment. Certainly, in spite of urgent requests, the Department took no initiatives to emulate this model anywhere else. Such direct involvement in family affairs was not how the new structure was conceived.

Keith Wills did not have such hesitations and his office got smartly onto developing the role he had been carrying out in Maori Affairs for some years. In the archive is a document of Hints for Advisers published from the Hamilton office. It bears the characteristic signs of the Gestetner duplicator often used by Keith and his salaried assistant. This comprehensive circular included some rules for the benefit of volunteer advisers. It is clear that volunteers were a large component of the organisation and had to have some principles to guide them. But it is also stated that the budget is set on behalf of the committee by the Executive Officer. Only minor fine tuning was permitted. Volunteers were also required to attend quarterly meetings for personal training. They were taught, for instance, to explore any possibility of tax rebates that could be back-dated. All enquiries concerning their cases were to be channeled through the Executive Officer. A form of Agreement was provided.

Probably because of extensive use of volunteers, especially for the out of town clients, Keith Wills and his assistant Shirley were at one stage handling over 800 clients. They built up a network of volunteer advisers throughout the district. In most towns of the Waikato, household budgeting was available, though the clients seem to have had to make the original approach and do the initial budgeting at Keith's office in Hamilton. One wonders if Hamilton-based clients went to the city office for week by week budgeting, or just for their initial enquiry. And if the latter, did the office do the initial stages of setting up the budget and negotiating with the creditors or was that work passed out to qualified advisers?

The structure was therefore highly centralised around the salaried officers. They were in the office—it is probable that they did most of the work there and assistant advisers were recruited to carry out routine supervision, especially of out of town clients. Regardless of exactly how it functioned, the Hamilton office was a remarkable operation of great effectiveness. An eight page booklet dealt thoughtfully with determining priorities in the family budget and some bare bones about how to manage it. A more neatly printed little form for recording progressive payments to creditors has also survived. For his services to family budgeting in the community over a long period, director Keith Wills was appropriately honoured by the state.

A Model

The very success of this investment in salary and administration led the Hamilton team to the conviction that there was no other way of providing a budgeting service. Their view that they could not function without the full-time coordinator within DSW was gladly accepted by most organisations from larger towns and centres. When the country's smaller voluntary services began talking to each other in 1973 and 1974, Waikato DSW office was held up as a model for all.

Not surprisingly, this view was formally upheld by a 1982 research report Assessment of the Work of the Household Budget Advisory Service in the Waikato Region. It is not clear who commissioned this major review by Messrs DJ Eichler and PA Lane, whose qualifications for the task are not mentioned. But their report not only supports further public assistance of this kind but it specifically rules out any financial support from the business sector because the service might become perceived as a debt-collecting agency. It is tempting to guess that the Waikato service may have commissioned this report themselves to strengthen their own case for existence when the growing Federation in 1982 was not especially inclined to follow it.

To some extent this "one-model" attitude may have encouraged some of the government's protracted resistance to applying any funds towards family budgeting during the early 1970s. It was an expensive option. Services calling for assistance might have been more successful if they had been less clearly focussed on a model that was costly and really an accident of history. Some centres were coping with quite large client numbers at much less public expense. Ultimately, however, their cause was largely lost. In 1982, with Auckland about to gain a Budgeting Worker in DSW, the Hamilton strategy was beginning to look more politically acceptable.

# Rotorua

Ron Rossiter may have unwittingly provided something of a compromise. His work seems to have been coordinating a similar—but maybe more modest—empire from a somewhat similar departmental base in Maori Affairs. Yvonne Bush states he was appointed in 1965 as one of Maori Affairs' "special cases" to do budgeting work.

Like Keith Wills, Ron may also have spread the service fairly liberally over his district, using volunteers in the outlying towns. Tony Finnigan, in his address for a Manawatu celebration recently, wrote that there was a "full-time officer in Tauranga". However, no record has been found of such an appointment. There were certainly three such officers for a time, but the third, Reeves, is most likely to have been based in Whangarei. Ron Rossiter would probably have had oversight of Tauranga and other centres in Bay of Plenty.

Even in Rotorua city itself, Ron and his office seem to have been less wedded to the salaried coordinator model than their Hamilton counterparts. Perhaps there were firmer salary and employment restraints in Rotorua than in Hamilton. Or, of course, it may be possible that Rotorua district was simply not as active and effective in household budgeting as was the Waikato.

One early starter in Rotorua seems to have been Frank Venman who spoke of being asked to assist YWCA girls with basic budgeting. His connection with family budgeting in the Rotorua region is thought to go back to the 1960s but this could not be confirmed.

Social Worker Involvement

Another volunteer with early experience in Rotorua certainly seems to support the view that the service was not particularly vigorous in the mid 1970s. After twenty-six years as a chemist at the Forest Research Institute, Blanche Kingdon switched to the recently established Department of Social Welfare, commencing in 1975. As a social worker she soon came up against the financial difficulties her client families were having. It was not normal for DSW staff to engage in detailed financial matters but Blanche—as chemist turned social worker—became quite proactive in the matter. She used to pick up some of her clients in her car and take them to the Benefits and Pensions section to collect their entitlement. Here she got to know Stephen McBeth and she met also Ron Rossiter who she thinks was in Maori Affairs. It is interesting that she doesn't recall any role that Ron had in budgeting at this time. She may not have perceived the extent of his former employment in Maori Affairs. Or the Rotorua office climate for family budgeting may have been somewhat less sympathetic.

In national budgeting eyes, Ron was thought by many to be an equivalent of Keith Wills in Hamilton. It was assumed that he ran the same kind of provincial network of local advisers. But this may not have been the case. Ron actually demonstrated a more open understanding of the potential of the strictly voluntary sector. He became involved in some of the creative and flexible alternatives that were being considered as the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee began its work. And he was much less inclined to push for the full-time departmental coordinator model as the only or indeed even the ideal solution. So we may infer that any departmental role he had with clients was on a more modest scale.

Blanche says their service formally began as a voluntary group in 1979 with Stephen McBeth, Ron Rossiter, Harry Figgest (Police), Paul Richardson (Probation) and Jim Davies. She doesn't recall a public meeting or any major community affirmation. It just seems to have started. Glad Bestic was the first president. When Blanche retired after her 40 years in the public service she took up the part-time paid position of coordinator with the BAS. The remuneration was $100 a week. Presumably the Service had to conduct a fairly vigorous fund-raising programme to meet this and other office costs. If DSW was making a contribution through, say, the time and salary of Ron Rossiter, this is not obvious from today's vantage point.

By the 1970s the Rotorua Budgeting Advisory Service was standing on its own feet and as eager as any other for the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee to conjure up some funds to enable them to survive.

Other areas

Voluntary budgeting was not limited to the Rotorua vicinity. But the extent of the work in Bay of Plenty is not at all clear. No service has come forward with a commencement date in the 1960s.

However, those that did get started in the 1970s seem to have functioned with little outside assistance. In some, there was a strong parochial streak that denied the need for any assistance. The writer recalls the inimitable Bill Thodey of the Putaruru service fulminating against the wastage of public money in salaried coordinators "all over the place". Thodey was convinced that his local group provided all the household budgeting that was needed in the area. They had no paid coordinator—so why should anyone else have one? He was close enough to Hamilton to be aware of the significant salary resource that lay behind that comprehensive service. Perhaps he just didn't want the Putaruru volunteers to be pushed into a straight-jacket by a departmental office in the city.

# 4

Some "Indie" Services

We will now consider a sample of independent groups. They had no support from paid officers in Government departments or other organisations. They may be typical of several dozen that were functioning in most of the country from the 1960s to the mid-1970s.

# Palmerston North

Tony Finnigan has lodged a claim for Palmerston North to be accredited as the second major centre after Kaikohe. Certainly, it was also linked to the Maori Affairs Department and certainly took its inspiration from the "Kaikohe Scheme". Manawatu was in the forefront of the earliest community schemes that were fostered by Maori Affairs. But, thanks to careful documentation of its story, it is a good example of the services that were supported enough by Maori Affairs to get off the ground with good committees and enthusiastic volunteers, but not enough to make a dent in the departmental budget.

Personal link to Kaikohe

In the autumn of 1961, only a few months after the establishment of the Kaikohe service, Tony was on assignment in the north in connection with his employment as a tax inspector. He noted with a colleague a report in the local paper on the success that Paewai and Vuglar were having in the Kaikohe district. They were providing assistance to people who were experiencing difficulties managing their income.

My friend planted a seed in my mind when he said that it sounded like it was something that I could get interested in. Don't ask me where that brainwave came from.

On his return to Palmerston North the idea was revived again during a discussion with Sam Mishear. He was a well known Dannevirke resident and welfare officer with the Maori Affairs Department. The department was already interested in "The Kaikohe Scheme" and John Lewis of their office was what Tony called "the departmental officer for such matters". But it does not seem that John was actually active in budgeting until Sam and Tony sat down with him. The three of them agreed to take on a trial number of families. Interestingly, Tony—not John—became the Budget Officer. This would be consistent with the view that the original mandate of the local offices of Maori Affairs had more to do with "supporting" the work than actually carrying it out.

Public Meeting

There was sufficient interest and, without doubt, plenty of demand to encourage them to call a public meeting. This was held in the offices of the department in the Government Life building in Queen Street on Tuesday, 20th March 1962. There were representatives there from all walks of life, but principally from the agencies serving those in financial need at that time.

It is significant that JK Hunn, then Acting Secretary of Maori Affairs was present. This very articulate and educated man had accepted an invitation to come to the meeting and speak about what could be done. His emphasis was, Tony said later, on bringing the service to the Maori population in the district.

I remember that there were two, perhaps three, Maori missioners of different denominations present at the meeting. The Mayor of Palmerston North was in the chair and Mr and Mrs Mason Durie were among an attendance of some 35 people.

Tony recalls the points emphasised by JK Hunn. His recollection corresponds closely with the direction of the watershed Hunn report, which was received by Parliament about that time.

1.—There was a need to make integration work as opposed to segregation or assimilation (Any distinction between these terms was barely considered in those days—Ed).

2.—The movement of Maori families from the country to town.

3.—The problems of families in new houses, especially for people becoming able to take over ownership of former state rentals or dealing with extensive hire purchase commitments, mortgage payments and so on.

4.—There was concern that household budgeting should take place in a way which would promote an understanding between the two races.

A strong and representative committee was elected that evening and commenced operation. The original name of the organisation adopted at that meeting was Manawatu Household Budgeting Advisory Service. It is of interest that in the period from March 1962 to September 1968, 191 families were dealt with of which 102 were European and 89 Maori. Apart from Kaikohe, and Maori Affairs' own budgeting operations in Hamilton and Rotorua, no other budgeting centre then or in the next couple of decades was so heavily involved with Maori families. Clearly, Manawatu enjoyed the support of Maori Affairs offices and the departmental secretary as well as Minister JR Hanan. The Manawatu claim to be one of the very first groups to be formed outside the North is supported by this direct involvement. It is a reminder that a huge part of the earliest effort in household budgeting was directed to the needs of Maori families.

Incorporation

A constitution was mooted for Manawatu in May 1962 and the advantages and disadvantages of incorporation were debated for some time. Like many other founders of such services of the 1960s and 1970s, the locals felt little need to become an incorporated society. Their work was voluntary and operated on goodwill and a shoestring budget rather than organisational strategies and vast resources. Eventually, however, the importance of a proper constitution and the protection of the Incorporated Societies Act was realised. Discussions about "duty of care" were surfacing in many places in the late 1960s and the times were changing.

Tony remembers one or two incidents that could have had repercussions.

One of our early sponsors was concerned about the state of cleanliness of a family for whom she was rendering some assistance. She took it upon herself to give the children a bath. She was subsequently visited by a member of the men in blue warning her that a complaint of assault had been brought by the mother of the said scruffs.

There was also an incident relating to the controversial issue of managing chequebooks and signatories. Their practice was that advisers should countersign all cheques. On one occasion an advisor who was going away for a few days had pre-signed some blank cheques—

The cheques turned up to be cashed at the bank with only the signature of the sponsor thereon. Fortunately, they were not cashed. We never found out if they had been stolen; but our advisor was faced with the possibility of being accused of falsely issuing a document.

As family budgeting spread around the country the practice of countersigning cheques became an area of considerable disagreement. Even in the late 1970s there were several services still countersigning every family transaction. However, most were satisfied that the advisor only needed to have custody of the chequebook and the signatories should be two members of the client family.

Another major issue was the family benefit Post Office Savings Bank passbook. There were several times when the service had to recover these books from shop owners and businesses who had taken possession of them to cover family debt. This was not always a simple business as some creditors felt they had entered into a contract permitting such a provision. But it was an improper practice and began to be less common as reputable advisory services became established around the country. In later years, of course, direct crediting of all benefits would eliminate the awkward passbook system.

On 12th June 1967 a constitution received approval by the Manawatu service and incorporation followed shortly afterwards.

Tony recalls also that the Palmerston North service was quite heavily involved in the provision of education services for not only the people seeking assistance but for the general public. The service was oriented not just to get clients out of debt, but to develop constructive practices and family responsibility.

Funding

The Manawatu service functioned without the solid support of a paid officer. The volunteers managed to handle the case load for a number of years without digging deeply than their own pockets. But the luxury of paid assistance and the challenge of finding funds to achieve such help became beyond their individual means after a few years. So, along with others, they were keen supporters of 1970s proposals to achieve some government funding assistance.

The Manawatu Service's story may be typical of other places where Maori Affairs gave strong but nominal support to developing budgeting services. We remember that JK Hunn alluded to quite large numbers as early as 1961, when Manawatu commenced. It seems safe to assume that most of them were directly initiated or at least morally supported by Maori Affairs.

What is apparent is that in the late 1960s many centres were proceeding vigorously to develop modest budgeting services with small, active committees and voluntary reception systems. Rather than wait for Maori Affairs to take an initiative as it did in a few centres they set up their own systems. Rather than wait for the hiatus in delivery of government social services to sort itself out in the 1970s and perhaps provide some support or finance, they just carried on with the job they saw at hand. Some of them had been working from the very beginning without any departmental support or financial assistance, and they simply continued to do so.

All had various fortunes that depended greatly on the individuals at the centre of their organisation. An interesting note in a Federation newsletter in 1983 appears over the name of Mike Lawrence. He reported of the Manawatu Service that–

—the original founders of the Service appear to have withdrawn and set up a private company to do family budgeting as a commercial operation—they are even using an almost identical name.

The probability is that the original voluntary service was operating from the offices of the Accountancy firm of which Tony Finnegan was a principal. Mike Lawrence may not have been exactly clear as to the facts. But the smaller services were very independent, not to say idiosyncratic, and they found appropriate ways to serve their communities. Eventually, inevitably, they would draw together through some common procedures. The accounts of some smaller services will fill in this part of the diverse picture of family budgeting.

# Whakatane

Budget Advisory Service (Whakatane) Inc. is typical of the small centres that made a start in the mid-1960s. To stop people from being jailed for not paying their debts the service was started around 1965-66. On the 28th July 1969 the service held its first annual general meeting.

In common with many other enduring early services, Whakatane drew on broad representation from the community, including—significantly—the Department of Maori Affairs. Among the elected office holders were ministers, business people and an honorary solicitor. Other participants were representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Child Welfare Division, the Probation Service, Rotary and people from the community.

Whakatane also used a Liaison Officer who interviewed the clients in their homes. This also was typical of the smaller services. These introductory visits were then followed up by an allocated personal budget advisor from among the membership.

Conscious of issues of duty of care and other concerns, the service took the necessary steps to proceed with incorporation and this was achieved by the next annual meeting.

# Panmure

In Panmure Methodist Church in the mid-1960s John Russell, Bill Alexander, Doug Astley and Vic Portman were volunteers in the church's visitation programme. In the young community they encountered many families who were having difficulty with their household finances.

Doug says that the men invited Buck Pound to speak at a small meeting in the church. Four or five of their members became immediately involved in their own modest family budgeting service. While they followed the principles of Buck's Budget Plan, there was no committee, no constitution and no oversight. They just got on with the task and they had no difficulty finding clients.

Their enthusiasm and commitment were contagious and their single-minded vision centred on the unusual principle that "If we can't get them out of debt in six months, we won't take them on." Time and again they were able to achieve this. They stared down the family creditors until they would accept instalments and they negotiated favourable adjustments in debt.

It was not at all uncommon for an advisor to find a client an additional job or some extra overtime to help reduce debts. This work often replaced time that might have been spent in the pub consuming the housekeeping instead of augmenting it. In the early days of the movement, if the budget was not able to be balanced in those days of under-employment the small Panmure team had no trouble finding extra work and income for their clients. With the pay for a few weeks' work at Westfield a substantial debt could be cleaned up.

But it wasn't always possible to achieve debt reduction so quickly. John and the others may have had a drop-out rate that wouldn't have been accepted by a front office service such as the Queen St CAB. Indeed, he commented recently that many people couldn't face up to the challenge—they just gave up. It was all too hard for them. Perhaps some of those found their way to the more phlegmatic Jim Low at the CAB.

Nevertheless, the work that was being done by these members of his Panmure congregation made an impression on the writer when he arrived in 1964. He moved on to his next parish a few years later with a clear sense of the significance of the voluntary movement. In his 1969 appointment to Taumarunui he readily accepted responsibility as a committee member and senior advisor in the local budgeting service. For the next twenty years his life would be inextricably linked with family budgeting on the local, district and national scene.

John Russell reminisces

John encountered one couple where the man of the household was employed at the Westfield freezing works and had access to discounted meat. One might have thought this would ease their household budget. But not so. They claimed they needed $50 a week just for meat. In the mid 1960s when the average wage was around $50 a week that was a phenomenal amount of money. John's larger family managed on around $5 for meat so there was some discussion about the meat budget. He observed—

One reason offered for the generous spend was that "Well, we get it cheap"... However, there were debts and the budget had to be adjusted. At the end of the day, we balanced a budget to reduce their debts simply by re-jigging the amount they spent on meat.

John dealt with another couple who were both separated from former spouses. A major reason for seeking budget advice was that they needed to pay lawyers to finalise their divorces so they could marry. John worked patiently with them for more than two years but when they were finally able to set some money aside for their legal fees they seemed to lose interest.

I think they actually weren't quite sure if they wanted to get married. The financial crisis was a helpful excuse for them not to think about their relationship. In the end, we thrashed it out and they tied the knot. I wonder how they got on...

There would be plenty of other advisers who would get involved in much wider issues than merely sorting out a budget and making it work fortnight by fortnight. In Dunedin, advisor volunteers from the Home Science department of the university gave some clients demonstrations on how to put together an economic casserole. This was a revelation to people who only ever used the oven to make toast or to heat the house.

In the Federation's archive is a seven-day meal plan for client families of an unidentified service. Its recommendations for most weekday breakfasts included a meat course! But apparently only the husband had the meat—no doubt in recognition of the nature of his work.

# Whanganui – The "two tier" system

In the early 1970s when services were struggling with lack of finance for the perceived need to pay coordinators or, indeed, budget advisers, Whanganui didn't have much to say. Even in the 1980s, at regional gatherings called by the Home Budgeting Committee, they professed not to understand what problem was causing so much angst in other parts of the country. There were probably two reasons.

One was that, like many other places, their resources were sufficient to meet the obvious need that presented itself. Perhaps they were right and there were not the pressing needs that other centres felt. Whanganui was yet to recognise itself as a deprived region. But they may not have tapped deeply into the level of difficulty facing many people in the town. They would not be the first centre to protest that either there was no problem in their community or else that they were handling it well enough. Whatever, the reason, they felt they were managing.

The other more significant reason for their disdain for the luxury of a paid coordinator is that they consistently used the "two tier" system of advisers. Whereas the Keith Wills model of just one person handling initial enquiries and preparing budgets which were then passed on to the volunteers who cared for the family chequebook, Whanganui organised their advisers in teams. The team leaders were members of the management committee, usually chosen to represent segments of the local committee. Each of them conducted the initial interviews, usually in the family home. Once the budget was set up and the arrangements made for managing debt and weekly family needs, the assistant advisor then made the fortnightly visits and brought the family cheque book for week to week budgeting. With this use of volunteer advisers of two different levels of competency, Whanganui managed a reasonably self-sustaining system for a long period.

Fay Clayton was a Senior Counsellor and foundation member at Whanganui. Nine Easy Ways to Get into Debt was the title of one of two major articles she wrote for the Tablet, a Roman Catholic monthly. This article published in June 1970 claims "there are now well over 80 towns and cities in the North Island and an expanding numbers in the South Island." This seems an extraordinary number. When the services began to talk to each other in 1973 and 1974 the numbers were only three or four dozen. And when the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee did a conscientious trawl of the country in 1978 it pulled in only about 55. Was there a more vigorous phase in the late 1960s or was Fay's information not correct?

Associated with these cuttings of her article is some very descriptive advice on running a service, presumably also from Whanganui. One page of advice is annotated "These two we find especially helpful" so these "photostat" copies were probably available for other services, maybe even before the mid 1970s. It is clear that Whanganui was obviously managing an effective service. And they did it on the smallest of financial resources and the most resourceful use of volunteer contributors.

When budgeting groups began to get together nationally to discuss their problems from 1974, Dick Brownlie regularly protested that their service didn't need any help. Their system wasn't broke so why fix it? And why shouldn't everyone else do it the way they did?

Jennifer Nixon

In 2005, Jennifer Nixon contributed some recollections relating to Whanganui in the mid 1960s. She said the key people were—

Hugh Ross, who worked in Maori Affairs and was a friend of Dr Paewai in the Far North, Dick Brownlie, our Chairman, and five women including me. We were the committee and the advisers and had a secretary who took calls from clients in her own home and referred them on to us.

The personal and departmental link is significant. This was another very "low-spec" service with emphasis on hands-on work with people in their own homes and the minimum of operational rules and procedures. Recruitment, the way Jennifer describes it, was a pretty informal process:

I met Hugh Ross at a party and he said "Would you like to help people with money problems?" I said Yes and he said to meet him at an address next morning. He knocked on a door and said, "Here is Jennifer to help you with your finances" and immediately left! Les Robinson (now a life member) said I did exactly the same to him fifteen years later—but I am sure I didn't.

We would hope so, too. But nobody can be seriously critical of the personal enthusiasm of people who set up simple systems that worked well with the minimum of structure. In about 1984 the Whanganui BAS needed an office and Jennifer found a suitable place for $100 donation per year. A few years later they were using three rooms so the original light structure and two-tier advisor procedure had fallen into disuse.

Jennifer was one of a small team which produced the 1997 Federation handbook for coordinators.

# Taumarunui

In its early days the Whanganui style of service was emulated in other places in the region. When the writer arrived in Taumarunui in 1969 he had some discretionary time for extra-parochial involvement in the community and was soon drawn into the modestly structured Household Budgeting Advisory Service committee. This consisted of the postmaster, a bank manager, a minister, an accountant and a Rotarian.

Everyone in town knew that if you needed budgeting help you asked for Bert at the Post Office. He would get one of the committee to visit your family and recruit someone to be the adviser. Both partners to a marriage had to be present for all budgeting sessions and all budgeting was to be done in the family home. The system wasn't as patronising as to insist on signing every cheque but the advisor certainly carried the family cheque book.

The Taumarunui Budgeting Service was a completely volunteer operation and very simply put together. The "management committee" was an occasional get-together of the core team. The "manual" was word of mouth. The "training" was one of the committee taking a new advisor along for the first visits to the family. The word "accreditation" was never heard. There was no office, no stationery, no reimbursement of costs. Dave Mullan reflected later—

When I left in 1971 our modest service was assisting up to thirty families with, I guess, about ten or so advisers. It made a very significant contribution to the small town's families, not to mention the community itself. And it contributed a lot to my thinking as I moved on to Dunedin after three years.

The Two-Tier Structure

Dave noted particular strengths of the Taumarunui structure, copied almost certainly from Wanganui:

*—It made the best of use of the skills and knowledge of the most experienced volunteers by using them as team leaders or senior advisers.

*—It provided a simple way for new volunteers to be drawn into the programme instead of tossing them in the deep end without support and guidance.

*—It offered on-the-job training for people who were sometimes prepared to give a certain amount of time to make a creative contribution but would not necessarily have more time to meet educational and training qualifications that might or might not be relevant.

*—Another advantage was that the team leaders simply constituted the management committee and could regularly review specific cases and allocate new work based on their practical experience.

*—All that was needed at the central enquiry point was a phone answering facility with competent referral capability.

In an age of increasing educational standards for all who volunteer for this kind of community service this may still be a model that deserves more attention in many a smaller centre.

However, it must be noted that this service functioned for only about five years. Its failure was put down to the intransigence of the local business community. Businesses failed to support the principle of debt repayment by installment and some persistently issued credit to known clients of the budgeting service.

Without widespread acknowledgement of family budgeting procedures, many a small isolated community would continue to have difficulty gaining support for its work. Almost as soon as the Taumarunui service was abandoned, the moves to form a Federation and, later, the commissioning of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee, would begin to change the landscape for towns like Taumarunui.

# Tokoroa

The Ministers' Fraternal of Tokoroa sponsored the formation of the Tokoroa Family Advising and Budgeting Service in 1968. One of the clergy, Brian Olsen, was the first executive officer. A council of ten "eminent town leaders" was very active in publicising the work and reviewing casework every three months.

With moves towards a national Federation a few years later, Tokoroa initiated one of the first regional groupings—Bay of Plenty Family Advising and Budgeting Service. Another Methodist Minister, Richard Hendry, was Chair of the Tokoroa service in 1976 when they published their own Information Guide for Advisors. Colin McKenzie, second chairperson of their executive committee, is credited with the preparation of the excellent material. This was a properly printed 40 page book with detailed advice and instructions. It included pages of forms and official documents for debt recovery procedures through the Courts. It is thought that this publication was used in several other places in and beyond the Bay of Plenty. The writer recalls one turning up in Dunedin.

# Small towns everywhere

The lower South Island came late onto the Family Budgeting scene. The writer, in the newly established metropolitan-wide service in Dunedin, made up a short audiovisual presentation on budget advice and addressed service clubs and other groups all over Otago and Southland. He distributed large numbers of small leaflets with descriptions of a budgeting service, its principles, its operations and a schematic illustration of the simple structure used in Dunedin. Family Budgeting groups sprang up almost every place he was invited, almost without effort. The support of Rotary Clubs and increasing publicity about the need made for substantial growth in the number of centres offering a fairly soundly based structure and programme.

In his later travels for the Home Budgeting Committee, Dave tried to double up appointments with his church responsibilities. But one trip had no less than two side benefits.

On my way to one meeting of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee I flew into Nelson and interviewed a candidate for the Methodist ministry at the airport. I then addressed the local Rotary Club and met with a group of interested people afterwards. Introduced to a local baker I enquired about some spare bread—a strike meant that no bread had been available in Dunedin for some days. The bakery was situated next to the airfield where my hired Cessna 172 was parked.

Next morning $50 changed hands and we loaded over 100 loaves of spare bread over the perimeter fence. It filled the plane's back seats to the windows and I flew on to Wellington for the 10am meeting. The aroma of fresh bread seemed to pervade the whole of Wellington airport when I returned to the aircraft in late afternoon on a warm day. By sundown that night there was fresh bread at Dunedin Air Traffic Control, the Flying School office, and many homes around Anderson's Bay.

# Central Otago

Central Otago was a vast area where there had been no budgeting service at all up to 1980 or so. Peter Methven of the Rural Education Activities Programme heard about a regional seminar being run by the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee in Dunedin. He got himself onto the invitation list.

Peter clearly heard the message about both the need for family budgeting and the possibility of some form of government assistance. He returned home to Alexandra and became one of the founders of the Central Otago service. This now covers vast tracts of sprawling country up to more than an hour's travel away. This service could not provide this kind of remote oversight without the considerable financial assistance available these days. The Central Otago service is typical of many centres where family budgeting was developed through the firm national policy of the HBA Committee and the fledgling Federation.

Massey – a Service that Died

A service began here in 1962 with one person and one client, a Maori family. By 1965 there were 14 members of the Henderson Rotary Club involved and the work was made more efficient with standardised procedures and materials. There were 20 to 30 cases current most of the time and the average time for debt reduction was 18 months. The advisor countersigned all the family cheques, an issue which would come into controversy in later years. But the service was quite firm about its rules and conditions. Most advisers managed about three client families at a time and cases were not normally handed off to other volunteers as in the "two tier" system. They found the relatively new Summary Instalment Order legislation assisted their work in smooth repayment of debt.

The service operated out of the local business of Rex Williams and when he retired he continued to make himself available from home. But the level of enquiries dropped off and the service eventually disappeared, the gap being filled by other organisations with wider interests. The Massey story as "a service that had closed down" was featured at one of the HBAC regional seminars. It was not an untypical picture as the pressures of time and money bore down upon progressively smaller groups of volunteers.

# Dunedin – The Rotary Project

The Dunedin Budget Advisory Service has served the local community for more than forty-three years and has been closely associated with Dunedin Rotary club for all this time. In many ways, it rather owes its existence to this club and particularly to three past members, Stan Amsden, the late Brian Falck and Dave Mullan.

In 1972, the club's Community Service Committee, after consulting widely among the existing social service organisations, determined that there was a need for an organisation which could provide education and assistance for families which were struggling to manage their money. Phyllis Turnbull, of the Society for the Protection of Home and Family did not agree. She let it be known to all and sundry that anyone needing budgeting help was able to get it from her organisation. So they could, but on her terms, which were not consistent with the conventional family budgeting procedures that in 1973 were spreading throughout the country.

After Rotarians visited her office and became acquainted with her procedures, their Committee pressed ahead anyway. A public meeting was called on 8 June 1972 under the auspices of the Mayor and nearly 50 people turned up, representing almost as many organisations. The writer gave a comprehensive introduction to the kind of service he was familiar with in Taumarunui. He emphasised its voluntary nature and its insistence that family budgeting be carried out in the home with both partners present and so on. A few questions were asked and answered one of which included "Isn't there already such a service in town?".

This was Phyllis' cue. She got quickly to her feet and declared that the meeting and a proposed budgeting service were not needed in Dunedin as her organisation was already meeting all the need.

But the mood of the meeting clearly favoured a more comprehensive operation and with an overwhelming vote, the Dunedin Budget Advice Service was formed. It appointed a small steering committee of Bryan Falck of the Public Trust, Dave Mullan and Stan Amsden. The Methodist Mission Executive agreed for Dave to accept some responsibility so, as spokesperson, he was interviewed for the local TV news that day—

—at least Charles Croot attempted to interview me. But after we had been heavily made up for the camera he asked me just one question. "How will your organisation help anyone with budgeting problems?" I gave a comprehensive sixty second response that covered absolutely everything so the director presented it as one piece of talking head. Poor Charles didn't even get a "noddy".

The television piece was intended, of course, to encourage people to volunteer as advisers, but what the new Dunedin group got was an absolute flood of people wanting help. The phone ran hot for several days.

Within a few months Dunedin had recruited and was training several dozen volunteers and was handling at least as many client families and a vast amount of household debt. They obtained a volunteer receptionist to handle enquiries and the Mission made a small office available for Margot Brown and others in turn. Later they were allocated paid staff such as Jill Edmondsen from various government employment schemes. But none of these receptionists handled clients themselves; an important principle was that budgeting was to be done by experienced volunteers, in the clients' own homes not by a paid person in an office.

When Dave was transferred out of Dunedin in 1981, Jane Higham took over the role of chief adviser, but the office remained in the Methodist Mission building. In 1990 Shirley Woodrow became Co-ordinator and the office was relocated to be with other community agencies.

Men Only?

What characterised all the independent budgeting groups was their dependence on volunteers. In small and large centres. if there was no state or charitable agency able or willing to provide a service, volunteers were the answer. There were always risks, but for the most part, great care was taken in recruiting, training and managing volunteers. Guidelines were not available nationally, so most services produced their own.

The quality of these informal manuals varied greatly both as to medium and content. Each reflected the views of the writers or the local service. One such publication solemnly declared that "generally, this is not a task for women" and then went on to cover itself, "although there have been notable exceptions." An amateur forensic examination of this document suggests that it came off the same Gestetner duplicator that produced other papers clearly marked Hamilton Household Budgeting Service. Its apparently insensitive gender views were somewhat inconsistent with the realities of life in many family budgeting services around the rest of the country.

Generally, though, in the smaller centres, the people who wrote and published the guidelines were themselves volunteers. And, as with all volunteers, they came forward and did what they could within the limits of their own knowledge and skills and perceptions. Without them, the movement would not have existed in dozens of small centres by the mid-1970s. But the time was right for more coordination and more standardisation of materials and procedures.

# Summary

For part of the 1960s and most of the 1970s, the independent services were, by and large, playing a valuable role in communities in small centres in most parts of the North Island. The coverage was patchy but local knowledge and committed volunteers ensured that many people who needed assistance could find it. There were not many in the South Island.

Some of the groups were confident that they would continue to manage without any significant assistance. But there were stories of burned-out volunteer coordinators whose workload seemed to justify the engagement of a paid part-timer. Some of the services were absolutely patronising about handling the chequebook and instructing the clients what they could and could not do. Others were altogether too casual about how their clients' money was managed and got their organisations into difficulties with creditors. Some enjoyed generous grants from public bodies and businesses. Others functioned on the barest of expenses. Members dug into their own pockets when the funds ran out. Some, strangely, provided cash grants for their clients and others recognised this as the very antithesis of "advice" and "budgeting". But all of them, in their own way, tried to make the lives of some desperately underprivileged and under-talented clients a little better.

In the mid 1970s the disparate and scattered community of volunteer budgeters was never going to find an easy route to working together. But the writing was on the wall. The need for household budgeting was greater than ever. The model for effective helping was being refined. Some public recognition was being achieved. The reluctant ear of government was beginning to listen.

Nevertheless, the bean-counters of cabinet would not deal piecemeal with every last budgeting group in the country. They would say they could only relate to some kind of national organisation. It was an easy cop-out. There was no such entity.

# 5

Social Agencies in Budgeting

Manawatu was by no means the only centre where accountants involved themselves in family budgeting. Indeed, the only overseas organisation that bore any resemblance to the NZ model of voluntary family budgeting in the 1960s was a North American organisation called Credit Counsellors. This organisation originated in Arizona in 1958 and may have been the model which Vuglar came across in the Birthright context a year or two later. Certainly the writer recalls reading an article about it in a periodical available in New Zealand about that time. Credit Counsellors consisted of accountants who offered their professional services _pro bono_ to assist people get out of debt and manage their family affairs. They probably pioneered the principle of consolidating debts and pro-rating payments to creditors.

The writer found this model in USA and South Australia in the early 1970s when he was promoting the NZ model. At that time Credit Counsellors was still primarily a professional organisation. It seemed to be more of a free accounting service than a self-help educational organisation. It appears to survive in Canada in 2015 as a more voluntary body than fifty years ago and it is still rigorously "not for profit".

In this country, accountants have been very active as family budgeters in many areas. In a few places, the local service has been run entirely by accountants. They were apparently regarded of sufficient involvement to be invited to nominate one of the four members of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee when it was commissioned in 1978.

# Citizens' Advice Bureaux

The Citizens' Advice Bureau movement began in the United Kingdom just before World War II. It was formed partly to ensure that good and reliable information should be available for the population in the exigencies of wartime pressures. After the war CABx continued during the period of resettlement involved in adjusting to peace-time conditions, and they have remained a vital public institution ever since.

In 1970, Ponsonby and Freeman's Bay were being drastically changed by inner city and motorway development and general urban renewal. Huge social pressures on people led to the proposal to adopt the model for the Auckland City Council's first CAB. It was a combined initiative of the Council and volunteer effort.

In other parts of the country, migration of many Maori to the city, the steady flow of immigrants from overseas and the slowing of the economy after the boom days of the big wool cheques, generated similar social pressures. The self-help, voluntary model of CAB commended itself in every part of the country and within a decade a CAB could be found in almost every town of any size.

The main aims of the CABx, as described today, are

1. Ensure that individuals do not suffer through ignorance of their rights and responsibilities, or of the services available, or through an inability to express their needs effectively.

2. Exert a responsible influence on the development of social policies and services, both locally and nationally.

It soon became evident that one of the major pressure points for most CAB clients was home budgeting. The bureaux became the starting point for many voluntary budgeting services during the 1970s. Some brought in professional budgeters on an appointment basis and others formed volunteer groups of advisors who gradually took on a distinct identity. But the involvement of the CABx was so substantial—and its concerns for social welfare so clamorous—that when the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee was being commissioned in 1978, one of its members was appointed to represent the CAB movement. The "purist" family budgeting groups were a little uneasy about the status given to CABx on the Committee. Their fears were not allayed when they later heard that some CABx were being urged to take up family budgeting and affiliate with the Federation so they could get a share of the funds that might become available under the family budgeting umbrella!

# Gisborne

John Walker first became involved in budgeting through the Gisborne branch of the Society of Accountants. In 1980, he was asked to represent the profession on the management committee of the local service. He thinks this may have been because of the role of the Accountants' representative on the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee which had been established three years earlier. His experience was not directly related to the period under review in this publication, but it illustrates a role that professionals often played in local services earlier. John went on to be selected as one of the HBAC's Consultants, and speaks with warmth of its training events–

The fellowship was wonderful and progress was good, mainly because we were enthusiastic volunteers with a common purpose.

He also wrote of entertaining role-plays between advisors and clients. It was usually the clients who had the opportunity to create an imaginative problem to be solved by the advisor. In the context of the need for a "rainy day" fund, this was a typical scenario—

The client has to take the cat to the Vet but has no money put aside for this kind of emergency. The trainee advisor, at a loss for only a moment, suggests that the client kill the cat, skin and sell the skin, and make the meat into a casserole which would feed the family for three days.

There is another illustration about a cat in A Small Qango but it was more subtle with a neat double entendre. John didn't include it in his article for Budgetline so it is omitted again here out of respect for the profession which was so often at the forefront of volunteer help for families in financial crisis.

# Lower Hutt

In November 1973 the newly established Lower Hutt Citizens' Advice Bureau commenced a kind of budgeting advice service with the help of the Wellington Branch of The New Zealand Society of Accountants. The latter provided a roster of no fewer than 60 qualified accountants, who during the 1973/74 year helped with 40 different cases. This financial advice service continued to operate alongside the CAB's free legal advice, also offered by rostered professionals.

One CAB volunteer, Doug Irvine, set up some training to help CAB workers receive enquirers and deal with simple financial problems. More complex problems were handled by the rostered accountants on Thursday nights. By 1976 there was increasing pressure from clients seeking long-term help. A public meeting in September resolved to expand the service and give it a more distinct identity.

Lower Hutt is thought to have been represented at a Wellington meeting in late 1974 to consider forming a national federation. But it was not until 1982 that the service applied to join. With some other groups that made substantial use of professional volunteers, it hung back for some time. There was, in some cases, a sense of being not quite in tune with the bulk of the volunteer services around the country.

However, Lower Hutt offered some interesting programmes, including budgeting for secondary school students and the large number of employees thrown out of work by the wholesale closing of car assembly plants at that time. The group also considered a major study on the theme of Poverty in Lower Hutt. In 1983 there were 350 enquiries for budgeting help, many still being seen by the rostered accountants on Thursday evenings.

Two years later the number of ongoing cases had doubled to 160 and there were 22 volunteer Budget Workers who were reasonably well trained along with people from other community and ethnic organisations. Doug Irvine was the driving force behind this comprehensive education programme. Another couple of years later Maree Frost joined the CAB and began to take over the work done by Doug.

By 1990 the volunteer team, although down to 12 or 14 was coping well and the accountants' evenings were under less pressure.

Over the years the Thursday nights were excellent value and a much-needed service, but times had changed, debts were greater and the experienced budget workers were the most useful tool to handle (clients') problems.

Lower Hutt people were definitely satisfied with the generous services offered by accountants over a long period. But with a good structure of trained volunteers they found they were able to meet the demand without ongoing recourse to a cadre of professionals. This experience would be reflected in some other centres.

Lower Hutt people also considered that having the budgeting service integrated into the CAB worked very well. They felt that having separate services with their own identity and accommodation would be a waste of resources. This relationship was common in other centres at the time and still exists today in several centres.

#  The Charitable Agencies

Salaried social workers, accountants and bank executives feature largely in Family Budgeting history. They, and other professionals who dealt with people, were often the first to be aware of needs. And often they had the necessarily skills and knowledge to deal with the situations they came upon. It was absolutely typical that family budgeting as an organised movement began with the two Northlanders whose professional positions in the public service brought them into contact with the need.

The model that caught the imagination of Gray Vuglar in 1960 appears to have originated with Birthright NZ Inc. It seems they have offered this style of budgeting as part of their formal counsellor-client relationship. Many organisations over the years have emulated this kind of model. Some made use of volunteers for regular home visits but others worked with clients who came to central offices and were supported by experienced staff, many of whom were paid. The exact nature of the Birthright model of the 1950s has not been identified but it must surely go down as the precursor to what became The Kaikohe Scheme.

From the 1960s, there is plenty of evidence of social service organisations offering budgeting advice of some kind as part of their normal counselling service. Qualified social workers sometimes did the initial budgeting negotiations, handing the routine work on to clerical workers or perhaps volunteers. The social services of the various churches all found that their personal support and counselling work inevitably had to be supported with practical financial assistance. Some were able to refer clients to a budgeting service. Many elected to set up their own budgeting systems.

Comprehensive?

In many such organisations the budgeting offered was not comprehensive, but consisted of managing some part of the client budget and doling out sums of money for particular purposes on a regular basis. Of course, some of the formal agencies were much more patronising than the voluntary budgeting groups would wish. Home and Family Society in Dunedin, in the person of the indomitable Phyllis Turner, "managed" their clients completely. Her office seems to have received the family income and held everything themselves. She managed accounts in the clients' names and personally doled out cash or cheques when they appeared at the office. Her system was quite authoritarian.

Other organisations were more flexible, merely holding the family cheque book to impose some discipline on impulse spending. Others again merely received part of the family income and kept the creditors at bay with a proportional repayment programme. However they operated, large organisations employing social workers to do budgeting of any kind tended to be regarded with a little condescension by some of the smaller volunteer organisations.

Credit Unions

Few of the larger social work agencies were able to match the regular in-the-home presence of the volunteer advisers. Indeed, some organisations deliberately excluded themselves from developments towards the establishment of a national federation in the early 1970s because they recognised that they were offering an ambulance service rather than a self-help educational programme of the kind aspired to by budgeting services. But the level of support they were giving to needy households was, in some cases, quite prodigious.

# Church Agencies

Most church social service agencies became involved in direct budgeting assistance through the personal work of their own social work counsellors. Routine budgeting assistance was often given to beneficiaries, usually in the context of an office visit for counselling and other advice. At one stage Presbyterian Social Services Association in Auckland was handling several hundred clients. But even they agreed that their system was somewhat inimical to the principles of the volunteer groups in the 1960s. All financial counselling was done at their office. The organisation took control of the situation and "managed" it whereas the principles of family budgeting even at that time were "advice" and "education"

The Salvation Army operated a number of residential facilities through their Samaritan offices in the main centres. People seeking help with accommodation were sometimes taken into care for short periods to help them get their affairs in order. Single, indigent men and mothers with children were the predominant residents. In this context, their personal income was used to make a contribution for board and lodging, some pocket money was handed over and a trust account was opened for what was left over. Although every institution was autonomous and no general principles were in place, it seems clear that in the years under review Army social services did not offer any kind of budgeting advice as a stand-alone service. In the local setting, however, Army officers and members were no doubt active in community budgeting services as these developed. Again, there was no policy laid down about this.

Some church missions did provide what amounted to a kind of banking service for walk-in clients. The Methodist Mission in Auckland had a very vigorous drop-in programme for single men with a large clientele. Their comprehensive service included personal budgeting and funds management of any clients who asked for it. Some attended the Mission only for the budgeting service.

With any model of budgeting there were risks. But the idiosyncratic systems of some agencies and their social workers did not always match the enthusiasm of individuals who handed over their entire income to have their problems solved. The Auckland Methodist Mission experienced one unhappy event involving clients' funds. It was probably not the only service to become the victim of its own less than thorough accounting procedures.

There was never a time when cash was handed out by church agencies on a wholesale basis. There was a recognition that the problem was usually a budgeting problem. However, detailed budgeting work was done by only some of the many church agencies that addressed social need. Others adopted the approach of assisting with expenses by way of temporary shelter, petrol vouchers, food parcels, clothing, and chits for purchases at opportunity shops and other retail facilities. The years under review did not provide many opportunities for social work agencies to refer impecunious clients over to a voluntary budgeting organisation.

As with the whole range of church groups, their situations and methods were far enough from procedures being promoted by groups that were trying to form a national federation that the church organisations came only slowly to sit at the table. The Society of St Vincent de Paul was an interested party in the initial meetings for the Federation. But other organisations, such as the vigorous Anglican City Missions did not see personal budgeting advice as one of their priorities.

Even when the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee was conducting regional consultations, most church agencies ignored the events or apologised because of their own perception of procedural differences. Some remained in touch with the movement and later became affiliated members. Many, however, were glad to have no responsibility for individual trust accounts and the large sums of money that might pass through their systems.

It is perhaps interesting to note that this lack of institutional involvement of most of the denominations is in contrast to the number of their members who participated in the voluntary movement. The very nature of the movement lent itself to personal involvement of church members rather than institutional involvement by their denominations.

The recent establishment of a national organisation of Christian budgeters does not reflect the institutional church of the 1960s. Although initiated by one major local church, Spreydon Baptist, the organisation seems to a person to person service along the lines of the federation but not affiliated with it. It claims to be a Christian service for Christians.

# Local Authorities

At the same time that the first CAB was being put in place, Auckland Council discovered that no fewer than sixty different groups and agencies were active in Ponsonby and Freeman's Bay. The traditional responsibility of councils normally extended only to what Dick Kouwenhoven called the four Rs: Rates, Roads, Rubbish and Rats. But the Government of the day was moving towards encouraging councils to take responsibility for more personal aspects of local body health and welfare. Auckland city did not wait for national government to act: it resolved to investigate the causes of isolation and to get some idea of the severity of the situation. Towards the end of 1970, the council appointed Peter Harwood as the first local authority community advisor in the country.

He was to train and roster volunteer staff, liaise with agencies to whom clients would be referred, gather information of value to local residents, encourage locals to initiate and develop services in existing facilities or initiate services needed in the community such as budgeting and homecraft.

And, with the assistance of a local working panel or management committee, the appointee was to provide feedback on Council policies. This high level of apparent support inevitably supported the view around parts of Auckland that the only way to do family budgeting was with a paid professional in a central office. Even when the work passed into the hands of community volunteers the greater Auckland family budgeting team still provided a central office with face-to-face budgeting.

Local Body Responsibility

By 1972, when the new Department of Social Welfare was being put in place, parliament enacted legislation that encouraged local bodies to provide or assist in providing for the benefit of the inhabitants of the district. In consultation with the new DSW, councils were given a mandate to "promote or assist in promoting cooperation and coordination of social welfare activities" in their districts.

Manukau City

Manukau acted promptly. The city clearly had more than its share of problem families and the city leaders responded very well. Their Health and Bylaws Committee began to coordinate welfare and social services and it initiated leadership training as well as managing recreational services. The Council approved a new designation of Social Services Officer of which Dick Kouwenhoven became the deputy shortly afterwards.

It was said that no other city in the country could match Manukau City for the human resources it provided for direct community service. So it was no surprise that Manukau authorised some of its own community workers to engage in family budgeting. Dick Kouwenhoven and others provided face-to-face budgeting in this way while the community services policy was riding high. In four years from 1972, Manukau established CABx in Manurewa, Mangere, Papatoetoe and Papakura. All four of these supported separate and independent budgeting services operated from within CAB facilities. Only a couple of years later the City Council published contact details for Mangere, Manurewa, Onehunga-Mangere, Otara-East Tamaki, Panmure-Glen Innes and Pakuranga.

Back in 1972, the Manukau Health and Bylaws Committee, with funding from the Manurewa Lions Club, published an excellent 20-page handbook for family budgeting advisers. This comprehensively described the ABC budget process and continued with specific details about how family visits were to take place. Advisors were told they "must inform" families on methods of saving on household expenses, including

—Plan meals well ahead

—Purchase cheaper cuts of meat and learn how to cook them  
—Do not cut down on milk—it's cheap and nutritious

—Take a cut lunch to work... etc

There is plenty of other information about Court procedures, Summary Instalment Orders, debt repayment and a series of forms, letters, reckoners and so on. This is one of the first formal attempts at a detailed handbook anywhere in the country. It is a testimony to the enlightened policy of Manukau Council and its staff at that time.

Other Local Bodies

Dick Kouwenhoven noted the significant shift in responsibility after government challenged local bodies to become more engaged with personal and social needs:

Under this Act some other local authorities would soon follow the Auckland lead in employing community advisers in order to develop policies for the provision of social services. Such new initiatives and undertakings earned the full support of participating Councils, providing professional staff and appropriate facilities, the selection and training of volunteers and the requirement to operate within their annual approved budgets.

Hastings City was one Council that rose swiftly to the challenge of the new opportunity. In April 1972 the Council, in partnership with a group of Hastings citizens, called meetings to discuss community needs and the resources to meet them.

One of the first needs highlighted was for budgeting advice. A small group of volunteers began to work families in financial difficulties. The demand accelerated and the Hastings Budget Advisory Service was formally constituted the following year. Wayne Froggat was appointed to the staff of the Community Social Service in 1974 and gave great support. The following year he and Marion Struthers produced and published a comprehensive handbook which, incidentally, made significant contributions to later national publications. By 1976 the service was handling 38 cases, using the "two tier" system with volunteers in area teams.

Between 1973 and 1983 this service was assisted by no less than 120 volunteers. The service produced educational brochures that were distributed in the community by churches and service clubs.

While this service was community-based, its debt to the City Council's Community Social Service department is freely acknowledged in the brief record of their early days. The Service's letterhead asserted that it operated "under the supervision of the Hastings Community Social Service". City officers—not to mention Council policy itself—gave huge support and mana to the service.

Clarification

Dick Kouwenhoven noted what he thought was an interesting report in 1976. The Municipal Association Conference was being held in Christchurch. The Director General of the Department of Social Welfare presented some formal definitions for the roles of voluntary and public bodies.

**Voluntary Welfare Organisations** have a specific responsibility to the individuals and categories of people they serve. Their role can be seen as the provision of necessary social service as identified and supported by the community.

**Local Authorities** can be said to have a responsibility to meet the special needs of the specific locality by the provision of services, and encouragement to voluntary welfare agencies.

**The State** has the responsibilty for the overall well-being of the country. This involves the development of policies, a concern with standards, and the direct provision of certain services on a national basis.

It is probable that these three roles had probably never been so specifically spelled out before. If the distinctions between them, from today's perspective, seem a little blurred, they nevertheless made it clear that at least there were roles for all three sectors. And the place of local bodies in both "provision" and "encouragement" of services gave heart to those who looked to their local councils for this kind of help and often failed to find it.

# 6

The Centralised Services

# Auckland

Neither of the centralised services in Auckland and Christchurch was an early starter with family budgeting. The service in Queen St Auckland stands alone as the largest of the independent, voluntary family budgeting organisations. Buck Pound was one of the main driving forces behind its establishment. His personal introduction to budgeting was not fired through connections with the Kaikohe nor with Maori Affairs. It was born, like that of some other early volunteers, out of the heat of personal challenge to manage his own finances when he was demobbed after the war.

My journey into budgeting started in 1946 when I came home after the war with a wife and the only accommodation I could get was a fishing bach on the edge of Lake Rotorua. Even though I had worked in the bank before going into the Air Force, I didn't know anything about household budgeting and in only eighteen months we were flat broke having used all my gratuity and back pay within that time. I got to know my neighbour and asked him how he did his budgeting. He said, "Give me an hour and I'll be right over." He subsequently arrived with bunch of tins already labelled, one for housekeeping, one for rent and so on and that got me started using the tin system. It meant that I had to get my pay in cash and it became a little ceremony putting coins into the different tins.

The ABC Budget Plan

Buck says that the system worked except for the times that they would borrow money out of a tin to go to the pictures and then forget which tin needed to be replenished. It was then that he decided then to plan a budgeting system that would divide expenditure into three different categories. Category one was for regular committed payments; category two for housekeeping, allowances, petrol and gifts; category three for contingent, variable items such as clothing, holiday spending, repairs and so on. The leaflet could be filled in by anyone with only a small amount of supervision and it included conversion tables for weekly, fortnightly or monthly amounts and so on. This budgeting plan became famous as the "ABC" system.

It was so successful that many of my friends asked for copies of this budget form and I used to cyclostyle them and hand them out. This encouraged me to help people to set up their household budgets using one cheque and two savings accounts.

When Buck became manager of the Parnell Bank of New Zealand he met Theo Loof who operated a debt-collecting agency. Theo also was deeply concerned for those who could not repay and were loaded up with debt. He and Buck went out to lunch and discussed the problem. Buck later observed that the lunch that day was the moment when he realised his ABC form would work well for getting people out of debt as well as for routine budgeting.

Budgeting Training

The next inspiration of Buck and Theo was that perhaps they could set up a budgeting education programme using Buck's system to calculate a surplus that could first the repay debts and then save up for financial goals. Transition House, who were the Bank's landlords agreed to print these budget forms free for them to use.

Dick Kouwenhoven, a social worker in the very community-oriented Manukau City Council joined them and they commenced voluntary budget training sessions on Saturday mornings. An average of twenty people attended these courses at various venues throughout the region—so participants did not have to travel too far. The programme was a significant advance into preventive education for household budgeting.

Face to Face Budgeting

However, like many other parts of the country, Auckland region was beginning to spawn a number of small family budgeting groups. Many came about as Buck and Theo spoke to local clubs and enthused local people. None of the Auckland groups appears to have grown out of the influence of Maori Affairs although that department did still have a mandate for assisting throughout the early 1960s. No doubt many locals were simply inspired and encouraged by the Aucklanders' education programme. There was not much co-ordination between these early groups. The procedures varied according to the wisdom and enthusiasm of each local team.

However, the Saturday morning training groups offered by the trio of Buck, Theo and Loof made a substantial contribution to the groups' success. As active budgeting services sprang up in the suburbs, many participants in the Saturday courses were invited to become volunteers in appropriate budgeting or community services close to their homes. They were presented with probationary certificates and given appropriate supervision as they took up budgeting work with families in crisis.

Fund-raising and consciousness-raising

In October 1971, Buck Pound, as secretary of the Auckland based Family Budgeting Service wrote to a large number of Auckland Business Houses. The letter reported the formation of a committee representing Rotary, Lions, Birthright, District Law Society, Auckland City Council, Manukau City Council, Banks and the Social Workers Association. It further reported on a meeting of all voluntary budgeting services in the region. This gathering included delegates from various church organisations and was presided over by Mr. Merv Corner, general manager of the Auckland Savings Bank. Buck's letter concluded with two important points—

—firstly this is a voluntary organisation aimed at helping people who are genuinely over-stretched and in distress. These volunteers are not debt collectors and will not charge people or business houses for their spare time services.

—secondly, it is in the interest of all that finance becomes available to pay for the maintenance of a central office which should be in operation early next year. A conservative estimate indicates that approximately $8,000 is required annually to operate this office. We would need to raise this money by donations from the Auckland Business Houses and by a Government grant.

Even though the optimistic assumption behind the last phrase was unsupported by evidence of definite government interest, the enthusiasm for a central, staffed office survived. As a result of herculean searches and much persuasion in the matter of rents, their walk-in service would open in a room in the Auckland Citizens Advice Bureau in October 1971 with a phone provided by Auckland City Council. In a letter a couple of years later, Theo Loof set out the details of their comprehensive project. The document is an excellent statement, notwithstanding the lack of success in raising $8000 thought to be required.

In late 1971, $800 was successfully solicited from business houses in the Auckland area. A capable and active retired business man staffs the office on expenses only.

Bill Grove, recently retired, manned the office for the first year and was followed by the amiable Scotsman Jim Low who remained in the position for a decade or so.

Two Aspects

In the early 1970s, then, Auckland was developing two strings to its budgeting bow. There was a sophisticated programme of training events throughout the region to help people avoid problems in the first place. There was also a central office with an appointed but largely voluntary officer available for regular hours to give direct assistance to families in difficulties.

If the education programme required no financial assistance, the central office certainly did. Obtaining funding to maintain the coordinator and office would continue to haunt the keen Auckland committee for years to come.

As well as offering some coordination to the growing number of voluntary services in the region, Auckland followed to some extent the centralised model of Maori Affairs in Hamilton and Rotorua. So they judged that it was preferable for clients to attend the city office where possible.

But the country's government agencies in community care were all being re-structured. Maori Affairs was under pressure to expand its role while still conscious that it had a financial tiger by the tail. There was some departmental resistance to extending the work on any scale at all, never mind a project covering the whole of metropolitan Auckland. Soon, in any case, Maori Affairs would move out of family budgeting altogether. Existing salaried operations would be moved to the new department of Social Welfare, pending fuller departmental consideration of the whole issue. But in the hiatus, nobody wanted to hear about the problems of Auckland. Nevertheless, the vision for a central, salaried office continued to linger.

Volunteer Groups

Such an office-based, salaried strategy was unsustainable for most of the country. Without a well-endowed local body or social welfare or church organisation to meet the salary costs, most centres were committed to volunteer operations. Many also were dedicated believers that family budgeting should be done in the home. Their advisors went to the clients for the regular budgeting sessions. Some large services did not even require clients to call at any kind of central office at all. For some later years, even the large metropolitan service in Dunedin provided initial access only by telephone.

With the coming of the 1970s the pressures on household budgeting became steadily greater. Gone were the days of easy access to secondary employment for short periods while paying off a hire purchase account for a large item. An emergency service located in the heart of a large city was not easy for people in outlying areas. So some Auckland suburbs continued to develop their own local groups. The central committee was able to give some advice to groups in its region but more needed to be done to foster the work and to encourage acceptable standards. And the primary issue of fund-raising—preferably from the public account(!)—was always a preoccupation. Buck Pound comments—

Before long other parties joined us three and a desire grew from within to form a proper regional body and in the long term a national organisation. In part (our) ultimate purpose was to effectively act as a lobby to Government for recognition and that budgeting work indeed deserved financial support.

Two Years Later

Theo Loof's 1973 letter, mentioned earlier, goes on to reflect what was being achieved only two years after the office was established—

General Meetings in the ASB Cafeteria bring together about forty volunteer budgeters from around the region. New groups are being assisted in all areas.

Across the region there (are) 150 trained advisers. Training courses are continuing and one event yielded 22 new advisers

Referrals are received from business houses, DSW, State Advances Corporation, Maori Affairs and Church organisations.

The "well-tested" ABC Budget Plan has been distributed from Whangarei to Dunedin, including Government departments. This has been a heavy cost for the Auckland service.

DSW has been asked for financial assistance, it being clearly established that the voluntary work is a necessary extension to that Dept. The sum of $10,000 would enable the society to employ a fulltime Budget Advisor.

Although a previous minister of the Crown promised financial assistance, it has been found that such grants could not be "authorised".

This letter well demonstrates the two features of many a service in any larger centre. Such services were meeting increased demands on every side. But they were desperately short of a modest amount of finance to keep going. Any centre where an office attempted to be open and available for several hours a day was totally dependent on volunteers. For some people the pressures became too great and personal health was threatened. A few simply walked away from the impossible situation. Management Committees were at their wits' end to find funding for even the most basic expenses.

In 1978, when the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee invited submissions, the invitation stated that applications for paid coordinators could not be entertained. Notwithstanding this very clear declaration, Theo Loof ended a very well set out four-page report on the Auckland work with a plea for a full-time organiser. He was desperately conscious that Jim Low must soon give up the vital work in the central office. All too often advisors could not be found in the suburbs and Jim took on some cases himself. Pleading that this principle be considered by the HBAC before the seminar took place, Theo wrote,

We feel that the investment in a full-time organiser, who has the full support of your Department, is a must from the humane point of view, as well as a sound economic proposition.

The Committee did not discuss the matter before the seminar but the merits of the cause were not ignored. The appointment of another paid officer in Social Welfare took place as soon as funding could be found, and it happened first in Auckland. It was a straw in the wind. It indicated the direction of government thinking that would find its fulfilment in 1988 when the work of the HBAC was wound up.

# Christchurch

Christchurch's beginnings are not clear. It came late to the budgeting scene but perhaps not as late as September 1975 which is the first record we have. This is about an "Annual Meeting of the Christchurch Household Budget and Advisory Service". It was chaired by the Mayor of Christchurch. Thirteen people were in attendance, notably Alan Mayall, who had probably been struggling with a very modest part-time salary as secretary/organiser for some time and was recently doing it for no remuneration at all. Frank Rogers was also present. Both names are inseparably linked with the Christchurch service and later, the national scene.

"From the Minutes we see that Christchurch City Council has made a regular grant," ( _not_ a donation, said Frank, insisting that the entry in the accounts to be changed to that effect). In spite of this valiant effort to institutionalise the practice, this grant was about to cease. Alan informed the meeting of the invitation to affiliate with the national federation. This was cautiously considered and the proposal to join it was—

—Carried, with the proviso that the matter should be thoroughly investigated before a commitment made. (Note: The meeting was concerned that the scheme should not involve the Service in heavy financial expense).

We are not told if the meeting authorised expenses for a representative to travel to Auckland. But we can guess. Christchurch was strapped for cash, primarily because they were committed to having a paid officer at the centre of their structure and the Council grant was to end. Funding would be always on the agenda.

Mr Anderson informed the meeting of efforts in the past twelve months to raise finance. A promise by the late Mr Kirk in February 1974 that the matter would be considered on completion of the Government Survey (whatever that meant—Ed) had not been met. Further written approach to the Minister of Social Welfare had been rejected. The suggested sending of a deputation to the Prime Minister had also been refused, (in deference) to a Cabinet colleague's decision having already been handed down.

But the Labour Government had just been defeated in a landslide and Norman Kirk's promise would count for nothing. It would take time to get in touch with the new Minister. Furthermore, when contact was made, Christchurch would find sympathy but no direct action. The desperate report on fund-raising went on to propose approaches to individual local bodies and even to suggestions that clients be charged $4 to $8.50 per month and business houses be charged a percentage of debt repaid to them. The Committee was asked to "adopt these measures". But Alan Mayall knew those proposals would go down like a lead balloon with the fledgling Federation.

The primary problem was the salary for the part-time paid secretary/organiser, of course. Ms J Hickling was selected out of twenty applicants for the position and she was on the payroll. Christchurch knew of no other way of managing its affairs.

Increasing Desperation

The Committee wrote, somewhat testily, to the Federation in mid-year, protesting that nothing had been heard from the latter for some time. What progress was being made with funding assistance? Their Committee's view, as expressed many times previously, was that "some form of permanent financial assistance" was essential for the services—

—and in the case of the Christchurch service, very urgent. Continual pressure on the Minister of Social Welfare for financial assistance must be maintained if Budget Services are to get anywhere.

The Annual Report for this year indicated that the service was on the point of closing when Christchurch North Round Table underwrote the entire budget for a year. The City Council had come to light with a modest grant and other donations had been received. The Minister of Social Welfare continued to deny individual requests for assistance but the national Federation was being urged to keep up the pressure on him. Seemingly in contradiction, the report states that the service could "cope with more clients" and some forms of promotion and publicity were to be explored.

The minutes of this meeting were no doubt forwarded to the national FFBS Secretary Jim Low in Auckland. Theo Loof was shown this letter and burst into print in an incensed letter to President Keith. He wanted to make some personal observations about Christchurch. And they were not complimentary.

Look at (only) 84 interviews per year —with (only) 11 actually accepted and others just an interview... This Committee ... employs ... some part-time person, or pays an accountant... to do... advising. Salary plus costs $2700... The minutes show a pre-occupation with a search for donations... and emphasis on "what's been paid off to creditors"... they operate with a top-heavy set-up and the principle... (of) this touting for donations—is wrong.

Warming to his task, Theo went on to contrast the position around the rest of the country. He perhaps forgot for a moment that his President was actually receiving the largest salary ever associated with family budgeting to that time. But he would at least know that Hamilton was handling hundreds of enquiries a year and had hundreds of clients in regular supervision. Theo's mind was only on Christchurch—and his own region:

Auckland operates on an entirely voluntary set-up... through Jim's voluntary work and 70 volunteers, in a light-weight fashion... The small operations in the rest of the country "make do" and many are kept alive by our encouragement...

A clue to Theo's outburst about the way Christchurch conducted their service may be understood in one small phrase he adds about the Auckland service. He pointed out that their costs are "covered by one donation from the Auckland Savings Bank— _and I pick up the rest_." Theo ran a debt collection agency and became an instigator of the Auckland budgeting service out of his concern for people who were caught up in debt. It was a deeply personal project and expressed a lot of his Christian philosophy of life. When it became necessary, he put his money where his mouth was. We may guess he didn't detect the same passion in complaints from the operators of what must have seemed to him a brashly commercial model in Christchurch.

Keith's reply to Theo agreed that the Christchurch performance was "deplorable"—

—particularly when we in Hamilton have 381 families under guidance with 101 applications in the last six months with an acceptance rate of 90 families.

He refrained from sharing his feelings with Christchurch and sent a conciliatory letter welcoming them to the Federation. However, from the benefit of hindsight we may say he went a bridge too far down the route of encouragement—

I understand that there is provision for the appointment of an officer in Christchurch at some time in the future, attached to the Department of Social Welfare.

This gem of misinformation was what Christchurch wanted to hear, of course, but it didn't have any basis in fact. Perhaps it was gossip from inside the Department where no doubt the issue was discussed among staff. Or else Keith was relying on a report from Theo that he had talked further with Auckland DSW Wilf Canning and they agreed privately that the DSW should have stepped in six years earlier. Canning had apparently said it was high time that someone saw the Minister and sorted the matter out properly with the Department. Having perhaps realised that he had said too much, Keith went on carefully to cover himself by adding "However, I have no official confirmation of this at this time."

Summary

Christchurch and Auckland were each special cases in their own way. They each had a large volunteer workforce but they managed centralised offices. These structures sometimes found that the business community was less inclined to assist. Local businesses in smaller centres could more easily identify the benefits an effective local budgeting service would bring to their bottom lines.

Auckland and Christchurch also lacked the local body support that was given in places like Manukau and Hastings where City Councils encouraged their community social workers to include budgeting advice in their normal roles.

And, of course, it was an ongoing irritant that the DSW operations in Waikato and Bay of Plenty remained ensconced in their comfortable positions and often merely advocated that every centre should do the same as they did. So the big centralised services had to adapt to meet the simplest costs of administration. Auckland did this with panache but was totally dependent on a virtually full-time volunteer. This was not necessarily a sustainable position. Christchurch's commitment to a part-time salary was clearly unsustainable. The large central services were vulnerable.

Something would have to change.

# 7

Federation

The path to forming a Federation did not spring only out of some vague feeling that the various services and budgeting bodies would like to work together. To some extent the path was laid out for them by Governments of the day and paved with the hope of some eventual funding for the voluntary sector. The first State support via Maori Affairs in 1960 was not deliberately emulated except for (Whangarei?), Hamilton and Rotorua. But from about 1971 a gradual change in public policy can be seen to have taken place.

# Government Attitude

Among all those budgeting services who were pleading for public assistance, Auckland took more initiative than most. One request made in November 1971, soon after the Auckland Service was formally constituted, received this interesting reply from Hon Duncan McIntyre, Minister of Maori Affairs:

I have been very pleased to learn that the Minister of Social Security arranged with you for a Departmental Representative to attend your meeting scheduled for 9 December, in an advisory capacity. I feel sure that such a liaison will... assist the formulation of a policy within the proposed new department of Social Welfare with regards to budgeting services.

While this news had overtones of the Kaikohe Scheme it certainly seemed to mean that the new DSW would maintain a watch on Auckland budgeting affairs. Regional delegates and other interested parties, including the above government observer would continue to foster an effective regional service. In 1973 they were working steadily towards a formal constitution for a regional budgeting strategy. The support of the central office and organisation was obviously giving local groups around the region a great deal of assistance. Naturally, many people who applied for help at 395 Queen St were referred to budgeting groups in their local areas.

However, the benefits of Auckland's central office, of even such a low-cost operation, did not attract sympathy for direct financial assistance, not even for administrative and material costs. Governments of the day were reluctant to get involved in local causes especially when managed almost entirely by volunteers. They were also not keen on increasing their dependence on voluntary organisations when the new Department of Social Welfare was seen to be their primary response to social need. The people at 395 could at least understand the former problem—after one more abortive attempt to persuade government to release the purse strings a little, it was reported:

Although (Government is) sympathetic, we feel sure that a quite generous grant would have been made had the Government been approached on behalf of a national organisation rather than a local one.

This was the first hint that Government would be more comfortable to do business with a national organisation than with individual services throughout the country. Successive Governments were acknowledging the great work that was being done, but promises made at election time became apparently impossible to fulfil in the changing political landscape of the day. And they were doubly difficult to deal with in the context of the huge variety of needs of the various services. It would have been a political hot potato to consider a grant for Auckland when effective but smaller operations such as Whanganui or Dunedin disdained the need for any assistance at all.

In the sparse file for the period is an interesting letter from the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations. Their Chief Executive Officer offered assistance in the formation of a suitable national body for family budgeting. Coming out of the blue as it did, this offer must have seemed a little mysterious to Theo and Jim in Auckland. The explanation would seem to be that after one interchange between the importunate budgeters and the Minister of Social Welfare, some enterprising personal secretary must have been told to see if the NZFWO could help or advise about forming a national organisation. However, like a lot of Government assistance to voluntary bodies, the somewhat obscure letter was too little, too late. The family budgeters were going to do it themselves.

In one of his comprehensive articles for Budgetline in 2004, Dick Kouwenhoven, records the wide scope of Auckland's work, but also the difficulties it faced. Auckland, he said—.

—had no funds of its own and no means of maintaining the regular communication (that was) keenly sought among its members. The membership remained, from a geographic and national perspective, uninformed, while working in isolation.

Nevertheless, he listed notable achievements: the registration as an incorporated society with a written constitution, organising seminars and local training courses, publication of articles and information pamphlets and the calling of a number of public meetings.

National Strategy

In 1973, Dave Mullan, Chief Advisory Officer at Dunedin was able to be in Auckland for a few days on business for his church employers. His concern about family budgeting was more about common standards and mutual support rather than funding as such. But he, too, had become aware of what seemed to be some softening in the Government's position. He arranged to meet two or three of the budgeting enthusiasts in Auckland. The subject of government assistance was high on the agenda for everyone. But there was also much agreement around the benefits of some coordination. The Auckland region had already demonstrated the strengths of working together and they had put together a reasonably effective regional structure.

# The First National Gathering—1974

During 1973 Dave had considerable correspondence with Alan Mayall of the Christchurch service, for whom funding was a fundamentally important issue. In November they wrote to all the known groups in the country—initially they could find only about ten or a dozen—inviting representatives to come to a meeting in Wellington. The letter argued that if even only half a dozen services attended they would represent quite a wide range of work procedures and principles. In particular there was a need for some common understanding of the terms used by various groups. Dave emphasised the apparent willingness of Government to talk to a national group rather than consider individual approaches. And he pointed out that the Community Volunteers Scheme was attracting some public funding to its broad programme. His view was that funding might be more easily sought for recruitment, training and administration of volunteers rather than paying for face to face budgeting.

Replies from eight organisations came in promptly but there was not a determined willingness to press ahead with what would obviously be a very costly exercise for some. Further correspondence took place during the first part of 1974. Dave was able to make more personal contact with the Auckland people. With persistence, the list of known services was gradually expanded and the merits of a meeting commended.

By September 1974, it seemed that a reasonable number of services would make the effort to get to Wellington and a date was set for 29th November, just about a year since the idea was first mooted.

Dick Kouwenhoven recalled that the meeting was held in the Citizens Advice Bureau offices in Wellington. The formal minutes are no longer available. But the agenda apparently provided for a wide-ranging open discussion in which each service was able to introduce its own work, principles and statistics. The great diversity, even among a group of only about two dozen attendees, was immediately apparent. Virtually all the groups introduced in the previous sections of this account were represented. And, although their particular points of view were vigorously promoted, most of them were willing to seek and find some common cause.

Some brought detailed submissions with them. Auckland's, thought to have been prepared by Jim Low, has survived. It speaks of uniformity but also variety; and of the great value of sharing information. It points out the "tremendous service" to families in trouble, relief of personal stress and even the saving of marriages. But it also affirms the obvious benefits for business and even the country's economy. Auckland's view was that when the services worked together, Government departments and the commercial world would both utilise the services and assist them in a practical manner.

There were some prepared questions for consideration in small discussion groups. Concerns centred around fears that if the movement accepted funding from DSW, the department would then flood the services with compulsory referrals.

Resolution

After further vigorous discussion in a plenary session a substantive resolution was achieved. The concept of a NZ Federation was adopted in principle. Such a body would develop common definitions and procedures and would safeguard the interests of the services. Especially, people hoped that it would be able to negotiate with Government and put in place some formal structure for ongoing funding.

Auckland pointed out that they had already registered their body as an incorporated society under the name of "New Zealand" and their draft constitution could be made available. They also had a management committee which could act as a steering committee for the national organisation. These offers were readily taken up. Theo Loof and Jim Low were asked to act as a caretaker administration together with Keith Wills of Hamilton. Their first chore would be the preparation of a set of rules appropriate to the proposed national body.

Assurance

Another contribution made by Auckland in the months before this meeting had been securing another interesting assurance from Social Welfare Department. It seems that in some communication, Auckland was assured that should a national meeting of services take place, the Department would ensure attendance of their own representative. In the event, Deputy Director John Grant attended the Wellington meeting and gave further firm assurances of the "support" of the Department. By a set of felicitous coincidences, it was John who would be appointed to the chair of the Home Budget Advisory Committee three years later.

Within a few months the Steering Committee was able to circulate a draft constitution, based on the work they had done for their own only a year or two earlier. The name was to be National Family Budgeting Services Inc, but this would not survive. The objectives proposed were—

—to coordinate and assist family budgeting organisations in NZ

—to act as a link between budget advisory services throughout NZA and to represent these services when required in dealings with Government Departments, business houses and the general public

—to engage in promotional and education activities regarding family budgeting

The draft was scrutinised by solicitors and circulated to all known services. They were invited to indicate their agreement in writing, to make formal application for affiliation and to nominate members of the proposed national committee.

# Difficult times

The Steering Committee dealt with a lot of correspondence. There was a growing awareness that some kind of federation of services could be of great assistance to almost all of them. A few sought formal assurance that there would be no "actual interference" with their methods. But, overall, support was growing for the movement.

One circular from this era gives a full account of the Committee's work and included a proposal that the "secretariat" be able to supply services with—

—at least two types of budget forms

—information about training of prospective advisers

—information about Summons, Judgements, Court Orders, etc

—guidelines for lectures to schools, couples and groups.

They also noted that they had been looking at gaps in budgeting service around the country and had not found any trace of a budgeting service in the capital city. They ruminated that perhaps the Department of Social Welfare might be able to provide information.

The three members of the Steering Committee put in a very thorough year under trying circumstances. They achieved results right up to expectations. They moved the services a considerable distance along the road to a formal Federation.

Staff Assistance

About this time the Federation circulated to its growing membership the information that several services were employing other paid workers under the government Temporary Employment Programmes TEP and PEP. One or two services also took advantage of the short-term Student Community Service Worker scheme. Such engagements were only for short terms that hardly warranted the training involved so the HBAC pressed for a more flexible arrangement for budgeting groups. As a direct result of this submission a new programme was initiated with a longer time span—The Voluntary Organisations Training Programme. Budgeting groups availed themselves of these opportunities to strengthen their work. But permanent, trained staff whether paid or unpaid was the primary need. Jim Low wrote a determined letter to his Executive:

... that the Federation recommends the appointment, by the Department of Social Welfare, of suitable persons as Co-ordinators, responsible to the Department only, and working alongside the Federation in activating, improving and assisting budgeting groups throughout the country.

Although he was echoing a long-declared opinion in Auckland and Hamilton, it was a little out of step with what most of the budgeting groups desired. Auckland was not given much encouragement by many of the smaller services who got by on a vague diet of goodwill, passion, importunity and personal contribution. Time was the enemy for Jim and Auckland in 1975. But from the benefit of another forty years, one might say they were right. In 2015 most client applications for family budgeting are initially handled by staff who draw at least some level of financial support from government funding.

1975 Meeting

In October 1975 the Steering Committee sent a circular to all services calling a meeting of all who could attend in the CAB Offices in Auckland on November 24th 1975. This meeting would confirm the constitution that had been circulated. And it would appoint a properly representative national management committee. The following names were offered.

HGB du Faur, JP, Tauranga

AW Finnigan, Palmerston North

Theo Loof, Auckland

Jim Low, Auckland

Dave Mullan, Dunedin

WL "Buck" Pound, Auckland

Keith Wills, Hamilton

It soon became evident that the Steering Committee had not given a great deal of thought as to how this group might be able to meet without funding. But they delivered on a strongly submitted request for some kind of geographical representation.

So the Federation, launched in principle in Wellington in November 1974 was firmly constituted in Auckland in November 1975.

There were no funds. There was no structure beyond a small group of enthusiasts with little prospect of being able to hold regular meetings. But a couple of weeks later a very positive affirmation came arrived from the Director-General of DSW.

I was most interested to learn of the establishment of the Federation and I would be pleased to arrange for a representative of this Department to be available to attend whatever meetings may be called. In addition, I would like to offer the full co-operation of this Department to the Federation in relation to any advice or assistance which may be required.

This was a very clear statement of the DSW's commitment. But, like the Federation's own original resolution, it was "in principle". At some point there was talk of paid DSW staff in the major centres. And Auckland heard that a "Home Counsellor" position had been transferred from Maori Affairs to DSW although it had not been advertised nor filled in either department. But beyond these hints of some action inside DSW, there was nothing. Indeed, notwithstanding the assurance of advice and assistance given by the Director-General, there would be no further staffing or funding for nearly three years.

# The Caretaker Federation

From early 1976, the nationally-based Management Committee did the best they could. The country's burgeoning services endured another long period of careless independence and abortive funding applications. To exacerbate the difficulties, some services still showed signs of lingering suspicion about anything that might come out of the national scene.

The Auckland and Hamilton members of the Committee were conscientious and vigorous in communications. They did their very best to keep things moving along. Many times they had to answer urgent enquiries about progress with funding policies from centres like Christchurch or Palmerston North. Sometimes they received querulous concerns about whether the voluntary services could continue to be voluntary if any funding regime were put in place. But like everyone else, the Committee was completely strapped for cash and personal resources. If services could sometimes secure a donation or two to help with expenses for actual budgeting, the Committee had nowhere they could go for help—who would support a body that was basically administrative?

Frustration

A very small file of correspondence has survived to give a picture of the amount of work done and the frustrations experienced during 1976 and 1977. The Auckland and Hamilton members were not always helped by advice in correspondence from equally frustrated committee members in other parts of the country. Indeed, communication just between Auckland and Hamilton was itself apparently something of a challenge. In 1977 Secretary Theo initiated some exasperated correspondence to President Keith. He enclosed a number of official documents and requests for information from at least two Government Departments. He spoke of a visit from some "SPECIAL DEPARTMENT" who—

—urgently required a meeting with us and came up from Wellington to Auckland. You came from Hamilton to here and us three locals spent virtually a whole working day with them, with the idea that, finally we were getting somewhere after knocking on doors since the year 1970—and with the Department of Social Welfare having, by that time, an entire fat folder on our activities in this voluntary work of Budget advisory Services. Result since last February? None. Just more fresh papers to fill in....

Meantime Jim Low is in his fourth year of working, daily for nothing. I cannot even pay for all his expenses and the balance comes out of his pension. The small Auckland Savings Bank grant is inadequate and again this year I will have to apply for some assistance to the Kiwi Lottery. By the time I have spent filling in those forms I would probably be better off paying him myself—last year I had to shop around a whole lot to obtain in the end, from them, $200.

I think it is high time, after seven years, that we are told the position. If there is no help forthcoming towards our daily work, if no merit is seen in our suggestions for budget training to people in general (and let them go on screaming for more and more money because they cannot make ends meet) then we should be told. Promises to look into these things, including election promises, do run out of time like patience. I have even reached the stage where I cannot mention budgeting to my wife without being told that I am mad to carry on against all odds.

Please see if you can get some answer that is meaningful and relevant.

Sorry, Keith. Kind regards.

It may be no surprise that the author was told that Theo's one-man debt-collecting business was put at risk because of the time he devoted to the Auckland operation and the management committee of the Federation.

There was also an acrimonious correspondence with the Registrar of Incorporated Societies who sent threatening letters regarding the lack of financial returns. How, demanded the impatient Secretary Theo, could the Federation lodge an annual financial return if it handled no money? Well, retorted the pedantic Assistant Registrar—

—I still require a NIL return and a statement to this effect and a certificate stating this action has been approved by all members in general meeting.

But there were no general meetings.

Month by month, this issue among others equally pressing was pushed aside. Nobody could afford to come to a national meeting. Nor did there seem to be any purpose in pulling people together at great cost to some of them, when there was nothing to report. Secretary Theo Loof summed it up in his impassioned letter to President Keith in mid-1976. In urging Keith to raise the family budgeting issue with Hon HJ Bert Walker, who seemed to be quite sympathetic yet very uninformed about the Federation, he pushed Keith to press for results. "Only then, said Theo, "Can we call a meaningful Federation meeting." After all, the gatherings held in 1974 and 1975 had strained the finances and the goodwill of services who attended. Furthermore, their primary purpose had been achieved.

Meanwhile, the disparate national Committee did its best by correspondence and an occasional meeting of those who managed to get to Auckland at their own expense. They fielded questions and doubts on all sides. They patiently gathered affiliation forms. They did what they could. But there would make no great advances for family budgeting during this period. The public purse—if we may mix a metaphor or two—sat stubbornly on its hands. The fragile Federation could do no more.

The next initiatives would lie with the Government.

# 8

Government Support?

In 1973 the Government was aware that the country was covered, to some degree or other, by many different kinds of institutional services which included family budgeting.

Officers of the Department of Social Welfare in Waikato and Bay of Plenty, under a historic mandate involuntarily inherited from Maori Affairs, provided central reception centres for clients (Whangarei, if it was one of the three, was evidently inactive when Maori Affairs handed these officials over to DSW). Hamilton and Rotorua recruited volunteers in rural centres to pick up the day to day work. Keith Wills of Hamilton, at one time, verbally claimed to be handling 800 clients in ongoing budgeting work.

Auckland and Christchurch had growing centralised offices that were funded on a shoestring. But they were exploring every possible source of funding they could identify while also trying to respond to growing pressure from needy clients. Auckland's excellent educational seminars were valuable for both clients and possible recruits. Both groups were vigorously lobbying members of Parliament and had secured some kind of promises that assistance would be forthcoming.

Some major church social service agencies were doing a considerable amount of budgeting on behalf of their normal clients. But their work was often on somewhat idiosyncratic lines and they did not necessarily wish to erode their donation base by either surrendering their procedures or joining any movement to secure more funding.

Local authorities were given new powers to take initiatives in community welfare. Budgeting advice and guidance was included in some programmes.

Most of these institutional services needed funding and they were keen to avail themselves of any Government assistance that could be found. But, in some cases, they were not so enthusiastic about joining a national body whose standards and expectations might be different. Including the institutional agencies in any possible approach to Government would be a challenge.

Local volunteer services were operating independently with some success but feeling the pressure of need at this time. Perhaps because they lacked the resources of the institutional agencies, or because they saw themselves as offering a more creative, distinctive service than being merely "chequebook caretakers" they began to join the pressure for change. In cities and towns all over the North Islands and in a few centres in the south, there was increasing pressure for the State to again pick up some responsibilities for funding the volunteer movement.

#  Political Attitude

The Labour government of the early 1970s was not persuaded to develop a policy of support for the volunteer budgeting cause. It was not particularly uncomfortable about receiving approaches from individual groups. It recognised that the problem was a widespread issue (if not also a bottomless pit to throw money into!) and it was aware that previous governments had already put some funding to particular areas. But it did not wish to widen that precedent to include more centres. It would prefer to assist through a national organisation. This attitude was one of the first indications of the need for such a structure for family budgeting.

In 1975 the National Party swept into power on the wave of its famous—or infamous—"dancing cossacks" television advertising. The new Minister of Social Welfare, Hon HJ Walker, soon appeared on TV's Seven Days programme saying "there should be no poverty in New Zealand". He spoke of his "support" for the household budgeting movement. He apparently went so far as to say he himself had counselled four or five families. Budgeting groups around the country noted his interest and felt that at last they had a serious supporter in Government.

A few months later, in July 1976, Frank Rogers wrote to the Federation Executive in Auckland reporting on a recent meeting his Christchurch committee had held with the new Minister of Social Welfare. The Minister seemed sympathetic but said that new grants would not be made to individual local welfare organisations. Worse, the Minister seemed to have no knowledge of the Federation.

It seemed that the new group had failed to clarify for the Minister and his secretary that the budgeting Federation was already functioning. This was a little discouraging for the energetic little band. Secretary Theo Loof wrote another frustrated letter to Keith Wills, who was not able to make frequent trips up to Auckland: "It is unfortunate that you have apparently not been able to make Auckland..." Theo really wanted to have a major discussion about the Christchurch attitude which some Aucklanders felt was prejudicing their good relations with DSW. At least Theo had some good news to report from a meeting with Wilf Canning of the DSW in Auckland. He claimed that Canning had agreed with him that "the Department should employ budgeting coordinators on the same lines as Hamilton and Rotorua". They were, said Theo to Keith, "on the same wavelength". Alas, time would reveal that they were still tuned to the wrong frequency.

Meanwhile, President Keith, under some prodding from Theo, wrote a comprehensive letter to remind the Minister that a national body was already in place:

It is unfortunate that by some oversight I may have omitted to inform you of the formation of the above body...

Keith's letter is unduly obsequious. The Minister should have been informed by his own Department representatives immediately after the formation of the Federation in November 1975. However, Keith went on courteously to explain the objectives of "publicity, education and advancement" (he might have said, "money, money and money"). But he emphasised the precedents of Hamilton and Rotorua with which he was so familiar and proposed that Government help—

—should now be extended to include an officer based initially at all major district offices of the DSW to assist existing groups and to foster the formation of new groups so that a natural expansion of this work would be possible to allow this service to become available to all those who have need of it. It is clear that without Government help of this nature, some areas, particularly large urban areas, cannot function effectively, if at all...

On behalf of the Federation, Sir, I ask that you instigate an early study of the situation with a view to putting into effect, in some measure at least, the above request.

The reply of Hon HJ Walker on 20th September 1976 is illuminating. In the first place, he admitted that Jim Low had indeed informed him of the formation of the Federation in late 1975. It wasn't an apology but it was at least an acknowledgment. The Minister went on to say he was concerned about the "fragmented and uncoordinated" nature of the service around the country. So, along with official responses on every issue since a proposal was formulated for building an ark in ancient times, he said he "would seek more information."

I recently asked the Chairman of the New Zealand Council of Social Service to report to me on the extent and coverage of the present services and to provide an evaluation of this type of welfare activity. Once this background information is received the Cabinet Committee on Family Affairs will be in a position to consider this whole area, and particularly your suggestion that Government assist in the further expansion of this service.

It may have looked like a delaying tactic. But as we now know, the Minister had indeed made such request to NZCOSS. And it was made a month before Keith's latest enquiry. The Government was at last doing something.

# NZCOSS Survey

The NZ Council of Social Services had been specifically instructed to gather information on household budgeting services and to "make recommendations". A working party was established and they prepared and mailed a questionnaire to all known budgeting services in 1976.

Thirty-four groups responded. It was found that nearly 1500 ongoing cases were being assisted by over 1000 advisers. Many reported substantial pressure to continue their work and were unsure that they could step up to meet the increasing demand from the economic conditions of the time. A third of the services were based in Citizens Advice Bureaux. Almost all the services relied heavily on the goodwill of volunteers.

An undated schedule of two dozen services is in the archive. It cannot be from this survey but it provides interesting data which would reflect some of the statistics uncovered by the NZCOSS working party in their survey.

Gore service had three active cases, but Hamilton claimed 636, up from 423 the year before. Auckland, like Hamilton, included a lot of local "branches" and "estimated" 500 cases. Hastings was a costly service, at $11,250 (but funded by the City Council of course) for 55 active cases but Presbyterian Social Services in Auckland reckoned their costs to be in the realm of $30,000 to handle a million dollars of "beneficiaries' money". Most services were based in towns: Nelson, Waiuku, Taupo, Huntly, Dargaville, Tokoroa, Putaruru, Opotiki, Glen Innes and so on. Most put the cost of their service at under $300 a year. As to where the money came from, many said, "out of our own pockets".

The working party discussed their findings fully with the Auckland members of the Executive Committee of the fledgling Federation on 3rd Feb 1977. This is the meeting alluded to in Theo's frustrated letter to Keith Wills recounted earlier. There were several hours of very wide-ranging discussion. Indeed, several of those who met with the working party had to take the day off work. There was, at this time, little awareness of the implications of public servants summarily demanding meetings with budgeting volunteers who actually worked in other employment.

But the meeting took place and it covered many issues, including the direct funding of services or State employment of budgeting coordinators in certain regions. President Keith reported to all services on the breadth of the discussions but cautioned—

— I must stress that no decisions have yet been taken and it is not expected that the Government will be in a position to offer assistance for some time yet, and then possibly only in selected areas where there is a well established need.

Keith's circular then emphasised that it would be of value for groups to keep the Federation's Management Committee up to date with information concerning their work and especially the pressures on them to expand the service. We have, he said in a final sentence, very few bargaining details with which to work.

Report Trends

When the report of the NZCOSS survey was distributed, some clear trends emerged. It was noted that budgeting services were available in most parts of the country and that the introduction of a sound personal plan had very positive effects on families. The commercial sector and the courts both benefited as well. The working party agreed with Federation members that the commercial sector had some responsibility to restrain certain practices.

The NZCOSS working party found that there was a fairly common pattern of assistance throughout the country. This was fully spelled out in this first thorough survey of family budgeting in the country. It is worth noting the procedural detail that the survey was able to identify in its report.

—An initial interview was held with potential clients

—A family budget was worked out with both husband and wife

—All income was banked into a family joint account

—An advisor maintained regular contact, usually weekly

—Debts were paid off and some cases were extending beyond this point

—Only limited advertising was carried out

—Some groups offered speakers for schools and clubs

—Full-time coordinators were provided by some agencies

—Only minimal training was given

A third of the respondents were based in Citizens Advice Bureaux and the working party regarded this as helpful. But the current economic situation and rising cost of living were generating a large increase in demand and increase in the amount of debt.

Respondents were ambivalent about whether or not there should be more financial input for publicity and promotion. Too many of them were aware that every effort to solicit volunteers tended to result in a new rush of clients. But the overall impression was that services were under great pressure and that some parts of the country were not covered at all.

The report clarified and promoted the principles for budgeting services that should be operating nationally:

—The service should be provided at the working face by volunteers

—Budgeting services should be provided by local groups

—There is a need for some national interchange of information and setting of minimum stands and guidelines

—Professional leadership and coordination is required

—More work needs to be done before these principles can be put into effect.

High Priority

The Council's recommendations to Government were quite comprehensive and are summarised as follows:

—that the development of budget services be accord a high priority (by the Government)

—A full-time officer be appointed to advise, coordinate and develop services

—A steering committee be commissioned to provide general coordination and policy-making

—Additional resources be provided urgently to assist coordinators and help with administrative costs.

Cabinet did not act decisively on these recommendations at the time. Governments before and since have had no difficulty in ignoring reports produced by qangos such as NZCOSS. But this was a comprehensive survey: it was initiated by the Minister, it asked the right questions, it listened to the answers and it delivered a series of excellent recommendations. It would eventually be the stimulus to great development.

But not quite yet.

# Can the Community Do Better?

It was almost another year before there was a response. It was yet another discussion paper. And this one seemed to know next to nothing about family budgeting. It was as if all the statistics and principles and recommendations of NZCOSS report had been classified Top Secret. This was a cause of great frustration to the Aucklanders who had spent an entire day trying to fill out the picture that the working party was painting. It seemed that information shared was simply ground lost.

Change of Emphasis

This new paper was prepared by the Social Development Council which was a policy group _within_ Government rather than NZCOSS which was largely a group of practitioners assembled for advice. SDC's mandate, in an age when inflation was beginning to bite into the financial and employment resources of many families, was to seek **ways in which family income could be augmented**. It considered its first role was to engage the public in some discussion on the topic. A substantial discussion document entitled Family Finances—Can the Community Do Better? was widely distributed and invited comments.

The paper aired many somewhat doctrinaire proposals for further direct financial support to needy families. It was thought that child care facilities could receive more subsidies. Home aid services could be extended. Education could be provided for home management skills and budgeting. There could be more loans and advice offered at grassroots level. And health and education services could be given further subsidies.

Unfortunately, the actual distribution of the discussion paper was made over the Christmas period. There was not much time given for submissions. On 17th January 1978 the Dunedin management committee weighed in with a hastily prepared but solid criticism, pointing out that in 41 pages of ways to augment family income the discussion document dismissed budgeting advice as a source of extra disposable money in about six lines.

This reference, para 116, suggested that—

—the provision of education for home management skills, such as budgeting, could help a family to make better use of its existing resources—

—but made absolutely no reference to all the groups that the NZCOSS working party found to be active the previous year. And it dismissed "assistance with home management skills" as being "obviously limited" unless it were "made compulsory". And, in any case, there was "obviously a limit beyond which this would not help".

This patronising, dismissive attitude is the only reference in the entire paper to the work being done by dozens of groups around the country. It did not even acknowledge the distinction between education and actual budgeting. The paper certainly offered no suggestions about increasing the ability of budgeting groups to serve the wider needs which were obviously identified by the paper.

It is not clear what other responses there were, but the forthright submission from Dunedin was comprehensive in scope, trenchant in expression and heavily critical of the omissions in the discussion paper. The writer reflected on it later:

We agreed that the increasing costs of the most basic family requirements were, in effect, creating a new poor. But it seemed to us that budgeting advice was a very significant way of increasing the spending power of individuals. This could be done without actually putting massive financial demands on the public purse.

Our view was that merely to provide more money for the poor was only one strategy open to government. We pointed out that perhaps three-quarters of the community lacked money management skills but didn't need to worry because they had adequate funds to do what they needed. Capacity to manage personal finances was often more important than the actual amount of money available.

The Dunedin Committee regretted that the Council did not appear to—

—regard the willingness of large numbers of volunteers to engage in (the budgeting exercise) as a significant community resource that is already available to improve the capacity of New Zealand families to handle their finances. We are left to assume that the (Social Development) Council has not really acquainted itself with the extent of the work already being done by such services throughout the country.

They went on to suggest that $30,000 per year distributed among the federation's services for administrative expenses would produce an effective easing the financial strains of hundreds of NZ families. But they also issued a couple of caveats:

We would not want the Council to propose some kind of means testing to identify what they might patronisingly call "deserving" clients. And we are strongly opposed to advisers being paid to do direct family budgeting work. Our urgent request is for government to provide finance to recruit and train and administer volunteers.

Dunedin people were in favour of what the SDC called "redistributing resources" but they pleaded for the redistribution of **skills** as well as **funds.** An appendix to their submission stated that their group, after only three or four years, was handling about 80 client families in total household debts of some $72,000. Annual income of $350,000 was being supervised and the whole programme was run on out-of-pocket costs of only a few hundred dollars a year. This was mainly the Methodist Mission's contribution of telephone reception and a little administration. The key to the Dunedin operation was the voluntary time of some 3000 hours a year by the 80 volunteers and their 6000 miles of travelling.

The Auckland-based Federation committee also made a major submission along similar lines as did other individuals and services. Since the Council seemed to be fixated on simply making more money available, all these submissions might have been seen to be a bit off target. Events were soon to prove that they were not. As 1977 drew to a close, nobody was predicting any swift response. But somewhere, something had touched a chord in the mysterious mind that is government.

The services would not have long to wait for action.

# 9

The Home Budgeting Committee—1978

In early 1978 the largely uncoordinated and desperately frustrated Family Budgeting Movement had before it two significant possibilities. These represented both gift and threat.

On the one hand, there was the probability of a constructive period of creative development as Government attempted to make some response to the obvious need. It was evident that there would eventually be some kind of funding contribution from the State to family budgeting. But on the other hand was the threat of the idiosyncratic family budgeting movement being taken over by the bureaucracy of the public service.

The implications of funding were yet to be discerned. Would individual services have to give up their autonomy? Would clients be compulsorily referred from state welfare agencies? Would new standards be required? Would an accreditation regime put unrealistic demands on some services? What would be the quid pro quo for access to public funds?

For a time, the Federation was at a crossroads. It was beginning to look as if whatever direction it chose might lead only to new challenges.

# Action at Last

In March the Government made an announcement.

At the time, some people in Dunedin thought the action was a response to their criticisms of the "Family Finances" paper. This view is (wrongly) reflected in the companion volume A Small Qango, p13 (where another error credits the wrong organisation with this particular paper). Some hindsight and detailed research have shown that the spark which ignited the flame was actually the detailed research conducted the previous year by the New Zealand Council of Social Services. The statisticians had done their work and the specific needs of the budgeting services were at last being officially recognised.

In March the Director General of Social Welfare circulated a memorandum to all known services. This introduced the background to the NZCOSS survey and summarised its findings. The letter identified the reliance of services on the goodwill of volunteers. It acknowledged the increase in demand as well as in actual debts. It recognised the difficulties of publicity and advisor recruitment. In particular, it noted the need for coordinators, and it appreciated the difficulty services had in raising funds without becoming mere debt-collecting agencies for local businesses. It recognised some need for education to prevent people from having to seek help with their finances.

The Government, in the light of these issues, had decided to create the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee. The letter went on—

The membership of the committee approved by the Minister is:

NZ Society of Accountants – Raymond Burns

NZ Citizens' Advice Bureaux—Duncan F Macdonald

Federation of Family Budgeting Services—David S Mullan

Department of Social Welfare—John W Grant

The Committee would be chaired by the Assistant Director-General (Administration) John Grant. The terms of reference were to administer funds, to support the home budgeting service, and to

...advise the Minister of Social Welfare... on policy measures ... (and) to support the provision of home budgeting services.

A one-off sum of $50,000 would be made available to the Committee.

Of the four members, Dave Mullan was the only one who had extensive personal experience with family budgeting. He had to run this demanding invitation by his employers, the Dunedin Methodist Mission, but there was unanimous support for him to accept the appointment. In retrospect, he wrote—

Nobody could have guessed what would be entailed. Between 1978 and 1988 I would attend over 120 meetings of the Committee, mostly in Wellington. I would be involved in a couple of dozen all-day seminars and other events all over the country.

It was a huge boost for the movement that I was able to travel so readily and work with so many groups and individuals around the country. It was a big commitment that at times swallowed upwards of half my working hours. Even when I moved to Trinity Theological College in 1982, this substantial national commitment was generously factored into my regular work for nearly six years.

During those years he had the privilege of working with some outstanding public service administrators as well as others from a more personal social work perspective. Two of the HBAC members were particularly sensitised to minority issues and were able to make some suggestions and bring some influence to bear on the DSW as it made early moves to a greater appreciation of Tangatawhenua and Ti Tiriti issues.

All members of the committee were determined to make the very best use of the limited funds that were initially available; to mobilise to the greatest possible degree the volunteers offered by the Federation; and to develop ways of matching public resources of cash and personnel to the growing need and the expanding volunteer network.

In a sense, the rest is history. It is not the purpose of this book to cover the work of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee, nor to recount the story of the Federation's development from that point. The former is already covered in the companion book A Small Qango and the latter is well chronicled in the Federation archives. However, the HBA Committee was in place for no fewer than ten years and a brief summary of its work may be relevant. It provides a sketch picture of how the DSW funding began to flow to family budgeting and how the Federation became finally established as an independent body.

# Routine Work

The HBA Committee's first objective was to evaluate the work that was being done. It was nearly two years since the NZCOSS survey had been carried out so an early step was to seek much more detail about the levels of service available throughout the country.

In particular, the Committee invited services to state what they considered were their most urgent needs. Another schedule in the office archive consists only of about two dozen services so its exact date and origin are not clear but it probably indicates the level of activity at about this time. For the most part it contains significantly small requests for assistance. The services asked for money for travelling costs, for advisor training, office or phone, stationery and promotional materials. Only a couple of services asked for more than $500. The groups claimed to have a total of about 900 workers. This figure probably includes no more than five salaried staff in the three or four church agencies and the Department of Social Welfare.

A series of regional seminars all over the country provided an opportunity for the Committee to introduce itself and seek submissions, statistics and advice. The same year a major national conference was convened. Travelling expenses were paid for one representative from each service and others were welcome to attend at their own cost. For the first time, a large number of people was able to come together from around the country. Over fifty people applied themselves enthusiastically to two major themes:

1.—How could the services be best strengthened, developed and expanded within the limits of the funds available to the Committee?

2.—Was there a real need for a national coordinating body?

Some prepared papers were presented and there was lively discussion as the merits of various styles of budget advice were considered. People did not limit themselves to the official themes—many other topics were brought to the attention of the Committee. Some of these were considered too far from its mandate at that time but many become major aspects of its deliberations and actions in the future. There was clear agreement that ongoing funding through a strong Federation was needed.

The day was of enormous value both for the participants and the HBAC members. Dick Kouwenhoven's contribution to the Federation's history in Budgetline No 168 has a very comprehensive account of this first major event.

An early outcome was the preparation of a standard handbook for budgeting services. The Federation's Executive Committee in Auckland was invited to organise this on a budget of $2000. The HBAC planned for Dave Mullan to travel to Auckland so he could meet with them as they considered this request. Shortly afterwards Chair Keith Wills responded. Yes, the Federation would organise the draft of the handbook (this was done on time and within budget and a copy is in the archive). And, yes, wrote Keith, the Federation would accept the challenge to extend their membership to be fully representative of budgeting organisations. And, in response to implied criticism that their management was based too much upon Auckland, they listed the full membership for the HBAC's information:

Chair Keith Wills (Hamilton)

Vice Chair Theo Loof

Secretary Jim Low

DS Mullan (Dunedin)

AW Finnigan (Palmerston North)

R Brownlie (Wanganui)

WL Buck Pound

R Tout

R Stout (Paeroa)

This information, intended to rebut criticism that the Executive was not widely representative, highlighted a major problem. The geographical spread meant that, to all intents and purposes, the Federation was still managed by the small cadre in Auckland and Hamilton. Keith's letter could conclude by looking forward to the future "with optimism". But with half of his National Executive living out of Auckland, there would be difficulties ahead.

HBAC. However, a year later, only 35 were formally affiliated. What seemed to be a slow take-up of the invitation to join the Federation was perhaps partly related to the lack of reliable information. But there were also significant groups hanging back from making a commitment. Both organisations would continue to work to improve this situation

Second National Gathering

In 1979 the second in what became a series of national events brought together an even larger representation. It was again funded as a seminar of the HBAC, which ran the morning programme, but the afternoon was made available for the Federation to conduct its long-delayed "annual" meeting. The Executive Committee of the Federation brought a draft of a new constitution which was more appropriate to the national situation. The difficulties of an Executive with half its members spread all over the country were acknowledged. The new national management committee would be made up of people in the same region as the President. After some delicate back-room negotiations as to possible conflict of interest, Dave Mullan was elected as President and the Dunedin service's very competent management group was given responsibility for the national work.

While putting a strong Federation in place was a primary objective of the HBA Committee it was proactive in a number of other areas. For instance, it continued a wide-ranging programme of regional seminars. It obtained massive Post Office sponsorship funding to produce Managing Your Money. This excellent free booklet was promoted on national television. All of the first 100,000 were gone in a month. Finding further funding, the HBAC ran a further printing to meet the substantial demand.

The Committee sponsored the appointment of departmental Budgeting Liaison Workers in many DSW regional centres. While not entirely consistent with the philosophy of some of the old-time "steam" budgeters, this development was of great assistance to many services. Indeed, it was a hint of what was to come on a wider scale in the future.

The Committee also encouraged the Federation to be effective at regional level through District Representatives. For some years in the 1980s these people were encouraged to initiate district and regional events and were brought together for training and consultation. The HBAC's funding of District Representatives, as well as Federation annual meetings, was vital for this stage of the development of the national movement.

Other Issues

The HBAC explored a number of issues that were not directly related to voluntary family budgeting. For instance, New Zealand's insolvency legislation as it affected budgeting clients left a lot to be desired. The Committee became drawn into contributing to the drafting of new principles. Education Department officials also met with some of the Committee to work on units on budgeting that would be introduced into the secondary school curriculum. Their concepts, modelled around adult budgets and adult needs did not prepare young people for budgeting in real life as teenagers (the same complaint has been levelled at a novel proposal for budgeting education in 2015!). The Teenage Budgeting Programme that was first developed in Dunedin was commended but was too revolutionary for wide acceptance. As the discussions on teaching budgeting in schools dragged on, each side was advocating "real life" but seemed to come out with quite different concepts of what real life was all about.

Federation the Priority

However, the main focus of the HBAC was always on establishing the Federation and providing appropriate funding. In achieving this primary goal, the HBAC showed a degree of imagination and versatility that was not common among public bodies of its kind. This led some services to suggest that the Committee, rather than the Federation's rather fragile structure, should be the primary body to assist and develop services.

This was never to be. The members were determined that a proper structure should be found to balance the provision of a modest level of public support for the team of volunteers at the workface. The Federation became its vehicle of choice to manage this balance. When the structure was put in place there was no great surprise that the Committee was decommissioned.

# Federation on its Feet

After Dave's term of office, Frank Rogers became President and joined the HBAC as the Federation's representative. Dave was commissioned to continue on the Committee on the nomination of the Director General. The independence of the Federation was now clearly established and it was only a matter of time before the funding available to the Committee would be directly available to the Federation. By the late 1980s there were some 1500 advisers attached to the 90 affiliated services throughout the country.

"Unfortunately", wrote the new President in one of the first issues of the occasional publication Budgetline, "Rescue budgeting is a growth industry." The professionally printed magazine was an excellent introduction to the new address for the Federation office in Christchurch. It also was another stage in the gradual shift of responsibility from the HBAC to the new organisation.

Frank pushed for this autonomy and felt it was slow coming. There was an awkwardness about the reality that Budgeting Liaison Workers in the DSW seemed to have more clout and support than the Federation's own District Representatives. But the dual system had to remain in place until DSW accepted full responsibility for funding and administration.

This was achieved in early 1988, the HBAC was discharged and the Federation was on its own. In the time of the fourth President, Jane Higham, who had been Chief Advisory Officer in Dunedin for some years before moving to Auckland, a national office was established. Reasonable funding for the organisation was in place. The movement was at last assured of funding for an ongoing role as coordinator and facilitator of family budgeting. When Jane finished her term of office she took up the role of Chief Executive for the Federation.

Summary

In just three decades, family budgeting had grown from a small operation in a remote Northland town, to the point where almost every part of the country had access to help. From enthusiastic support—but not much funding—from Maori Affairs, through the tumultuous policy changes in social welfare, to formal acceptance by the new Department of Social Welfare, it had been a rocky ride. There had been many distractions along the way and many changes of direction.

At the personal level, many advisors, like Gray Vuglar himself, placed their voluntary work very high on their personal priorities. Some sacrificed some significant elements of personal and family life to do what they felt must be done. There were several casualties of the unrelieved pressures in places where resources were completely insufficient to cope with the need. At least three coordinators of volunteer services are known to have experienced major failures of physical or emotional health. Any number just simply became exhausted and had to be replaced. In some cases entire services foundered because just one person had to give up.

Apart from these toilers at the coal face, there were many who contributed beyond the call of duty in devising ways of promoting the budgeting cause. Only imagination limited the ingenious ways by which some extracted donations and grants from cash-strapped businesses and local bodies. Only sheer persistence in the face of weasel words and unfulfilled promises over many years eventually persuaded politicians of the merits of the budgeting cause. And in the Departments of Maori Affairs in the 1960s and Social Welfare through the two decades under review there were public servants who themselves worked to influence their political masters. They made a particular contribution by using the public service system to help shape dreams and hopes and vague aspirations into a comprehensive structure for ongoing support.

Beyond 1988?

It is not significant that the nature of the work in 2015 depends much more on salaried people than was originally envisaged. The change in personnel style is facilitated by money handling systems and computer programs that were never conceived of when Buck Pound first labelled his little tins. It is not important that family budgeting these days is more about preparing the budget than the routine work of carrying it out. It is not appropriate now to point out that most family budgeting is now done in an office rather than in the family home. What matters is that people can now get help with their household budget in every part of the country with the assistance of competent staff, be they paid or voluntary.

In the short paper attributed to Theo Loof, probably in 1979 the writer ends—

The subsequent expansion of the Federation has been exceptional, the volume of its charitable work most impressive, and its position in the community ... indispensible... Present and past contributors are rightly proud of what has now become an institution. May it long continue to be a highly regarded service to the community of this country.

That the Federation contributes so much to the enhanced family budgeting picture of 2015 is not due just to the efforts of the vast numbers now involved in this great work. Nor is it just due to the monumental contribution of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee from 1978 to 1988. Today's immense organisation owes some part of its being to the dedication and persistence of unsung volunteers who laboured through the two largely forgotten decades from 1960. In the face of ever-growing demand for their services, stubborn resistance from politicians and even internal differences of opinion among themselves, these few persevered with a dream. They conceived a united Federation that would work in cooperation with Government to produce an effective and consistent service throughout the country.

Once the Federation was properly constituted in 1979 the dream was in their sights. When the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee was decommissioned in 1988 the dream became reality. In partnership with the Department of Social Welfare, the Federation and its people launched out on their own.

But that is another story. And it would never have come about without the dedication and persistence of their predecessors of the first couple of decades.

# 10

A "Steam Budgeter" Reflects

I have journeyed with the idea of this book for more than twenty years. It is hard to believe that now both of us are reaching the end of the road. My adventure with prostate cancer is drawing to a close. And the book seems to have gone as far as it can. There are too few resources, too few people still around with clear memories of those two decades. So, with all its imperfections, this text will have to bear its own modest tribute to the budgeters of those times.

But, from the benefit of hindsight and in the context of the phenomenal resource applied to family budgeting in these days, I want to make one or two personal comments.

Tangatawhenua Issues

It is fascinating to me that the model of household budgeting that began among predominantly Maori client families, showed few signs of involvement with tangatawhenua families in the two decades reviewed in this book. Beyond the Maori Affairs officers and their successors, there is little mention of things Maori. This would be partly because the sources did not especially categorise their clients on the basis of ethnicity. But it may also be because both the client base and the probably conservative mindset of the helping organisations were actually rather monocultural. Issues of Te Tiriti—so much a part of NZ society today—were limited to brief and irritating sideshows at Waitangi on 6th Feb. It is hard to recall those times and the attitudes of budgeters who had their heads full handling case after case day after day.

Of course, from 1978, the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee began to be sensitised to Te Tiriti issues through the awareness of two of its members. This was in the period in which Government departments were beginning to take these issues seriously. Both policy development and service delivery of DSW were profoundly affected. And on more than one occasion the Committee was given a stiff challenge from the Beehive on what it was doing or not doing for Maori.

The Federation, however, would come only rather slowly to the party. Its history after the withdrawal of the HBAC will presumably reveal growing awareness and profound concerns about bicultural issues. But the way in which these concerns were addressed seemed to create a new series of difficulties which have prompted other tensions. Laurelee Duff's contribution to Budgetline in 2005 teases out intriguing strands of another story that needs to be explored.

Pasifika Issues

A sensitive issue for some Pasifika family budgeting clients was the amount of money they wished to give to their church. Substantial pressures were customarily put on members of some congregations to support some special project in New Zealand or the village and church back in the home country.

It is an interesting irony that many people were attracted to family budgeting through their desire to take seriously their responsibility to their churches. But in some Pasifika churches, family names were called in worship at offering time and sometimes the amount being given would be announced. Or when a church was being opened, even in expensive Auckland, it was normal for visiting congregations to bring their own very generous offering to assist in paying for the new project.

In the context of Pacific Islands practice, it was very difficult for devout families to draw back from this kind of responsibility. Some found themselves in budgeting difficulties in the first place because of their response to the call of the church. Occasionally the only outcome was a break either with the budgeting service or the congregation.

Change of Direction

Similarly, any exploration of the present scale and style of family budgeting will doubtless notice the place given to salaried coordinators who are actually doing budgeting. It was a cornerstone of some of the 1970s services that clients did not receive any budgeting advice from the first person they spoke to. A coordinator was merely a contact person who listened to the need, explained how the service could help and then sent an experienced advisor to meet with the family. This had many advantages:

—It provided a short pause for some clients to re-think their need;

—It eliminated the need for an employed officer—indeed some services used only a phone number, and

—It did not require a specially trained salaried individual at reception

Some services managed quite large client lists with this kind of service. But the predominant concept in the minds of most budgeters at that time was of a central office where clients could be dealt with face to face. Volunteers in busy services of this kind not infrequently became overwhelmed. Finding money to provide salaries for these positions was a continuing anxiety for their committees. It should be no surprise that businesses, local bodies and, eventually, the State itself, were widely importuned to go along with this particular model.

Ethical Issues

A cynic might observe that the whole family budgeting movement could be just a ploy by the well-to-do to keep the poor in their place. Trapped in cycles of poverty for generations, some families have experienced family budgeting as a means of surviving without actually changing their circumstances.

The dignity of families was at the heart of the early days of benefits under the new Social Welfare Department in 1971. One recalls with nostalgia the days of benefits that were deliberately pitched at a level which enabled dependent families to enjoy a reasonable lifestyle. This would always be a difficult issue: if one can be paid almost as much as a worker without working, why look for a job? But for many, there was an air of generosity about the benefit regime that went along with the new Domestic Purposes Benefit. Enabling single parents to set up home with a family was a remarkable and generous gift to disadvantaged single parents.

Another singular feature of welfare policy in the 1970s was the double fortnightly benefit that was paid at Christmas. This was to acknowledge the need for a little extra on the table and in the stockings at Christmas time. All this modest largesse went by the board in the benefit cuts of 1992. Some supposed concessions made in the "Robin Hood" budget of 2015 do not really represent a return to the more compassionate policy of the early 1970s. They are more likely a modest pragmatic insurance payment against huge costs for failed families twenty years down the road.

There is probably plenty of room for more investment in some needy families. But nothing will replace the contribution made by those who actually help people to administer the money they do have.

Duress

There has always been concern about the compulsory requirements laid upon families who seek assistance. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon Leon Gotz, was among the party that first visited Kaikohe and listened to Paewai and Vuglar. He was adamant that civil servants should never be in a position coerce people into accepting advice. Clients, he said, should certainly not be forced to put all their income into a bank account. He expressed this view in the news media in such strong and personal terms that Paewai demanded a public apology which was eventually forthcoming.

From the very first days in Kaikohe, Paewai and Vuglar advocated the establishment of a departmental coordinator for their growing service. Maori Affairs resisted this and, for the duration of their direct involvement, appointed only "liaison" officers and then only in district offices. The issue was largely a matter of departmental budget. But it also related to questions around the principle of a state servant using institutional authority to lay personal requirements upon people whose circumstances gave them little room to resist. If such pressure had to be applied, it was reasoned, it should be applied by volunteers, not by public servants.

It is of interest that this admirable concept was abandoned in the appointment of the three "special cases" in Maori Affairs. But the unsatisfactory nature of such a position exacerbated the reluctance of the new DSW to accede to this model and become directly involved in face to face family budgeting.

In later years the issue of duress was always at the forefront of discussions about the involvement of the Social Welfare Department. If the government was to provide financial assistance to budgeting services, could DSW make direct referrals to the service? And would the service be bound to accept the family, regardless of the degree of cooperation offered? Furthermore, if a benefit client refused to accept advice, could the department refuse to pay over the benefit?

Most of these issues have been resolved over the years since. But for some years they were hot topics as the voluntary movement began to draw itself together.

Economics

It is impossible to find figures to compare today's vast budgeting operations with the work being done largely by volunteers in the period covered by this book. But one has a sneaking suspicion that the balance of government funding and voluntary effort might have swung differently.

The Home Budgeting Advisory Committee began with an open mind. It entertained some hopes that the Federation would exploit the volunteer resource more boldly than it eventually did. But the precedent of Maori Affairs and Social Welfare departments and their paid budgeting coordinators was too difficult for the Committee and too attractive for the budgeters. It was also the easiest solution for the public purse which on the one hand would like to outsource some personal services but on the other continues to be challenged with providers whose standards and accountability fail.

It will be for another, wiser head to chronicle the story of the Federation from the late 1970s. This, too, will be a remarkable story of persistence and adjustment. It, too, may well be a story to inspire those who put all their energies and skills at the disposal of others. For "the lucky country" and its "rock star" economy are throwing up at least as many victims as it did in the 1960s. If what the HBAC once called "a modest injection of Government money" continues to be successfully matched to the talents and time of dedicated individuals, it is clear that some of the victims' pain will continue to be eased on a vaster scale than ever before. The steam budgeters of the 1960s would never believe it...

Dignity

Theo Loof visited one of them in 2008. We don't know who he was but he was 94. Theo said that what stood out in their shared memories of the early days was their common motive in helping to "repair people's dire circumstances". But they agreed that the greatest benefit of the programme was restoring "a family's personal dignity within the community."

It is for something along those lines that a generous Government now makes a very large investment in family budgeting. It is with that kind of motivation that hundreds of budgeters and coordinators, paid, partly paid and not paid at all, give their time and passion.

The few of us who are left from the early days salute them! They may be on a slightly different route. But the objective is the same.

# 11

Reminiscences

Each time this story has been attempted there was an attempt to collected hard information about the two decades under review. Not much was submitted. However, the history of the movement is littered with personal stories and a few of these are now offered.

Stan Amsden—Bank Fooled

A young de facto couple with a six month old baby appeared to be a fairly straightforward case which could be cleared up in six months. However, they were getting married and wanted to spend up big on wedding clothes. Stan managed to steer them on to a costume hire service for both of them and a one-night honeymoon in a motel. This was achieved by stretching the budget a bit. Not long afterwards their bank asked him to help them recover a debt of $600 from his clients.

Of course our budget account was with the local Antitrust as per procedure, so I told the manager 'Tough luck, buddy'. He admitted his bank had run a promotion for new accounts and they had provided my clients with an overdraft of $200 along with a book of thirty cheques! Apparently it was a good honeymoon.

Bev Thatcher—on the Office Steps

When she moved to Coromandel Bev had been a Womens Refuge Advocate in Auckland and had completed a Salvation Army Budget training course. She became involved in a little budget advisory work by sitting on the front steps of the WINZ office and talking to people as they waited to be seen by their caseworker. After a while she was given a desk in the waiting room of the office.

Buck Pound— Computer Budgeting

Buck was always disappointed that the Federation didn't accept his offer to use his computer budgeting system in 1980. It was refined to balance to the cent and it could easily cope with variable income. In A Small qango there is an account of Buck's presentation to the Federation.

With brilliant graphic illustrations and Buck's lively presentation his theme of "budgeting by exception" prompted an uproar. Vigorous discussion in small groups was followed by an even more vigorous plenary session. The usual stirrers had a field day and even solid sympathisers of the ... cause found themselves expressing anxious reservations. To imagine that a computer could take over the role of a budgeting adviser! But Buck had been invited to speak a little provocatively on "The Challenge of the Future" and there was no doubt that he had got the juices flowing.

Christine Mullan—The Teenage Budgeting Programme

I started using the Teenage Budgeting Programme when I was around 11 years old. My parents paid me a set sum per month and we budgeted it to cover all of my costs. These included schooling, clothing, savings, entertainment etc. I would get the lump sum paid into an account and kept a record book with set amounts under each expense. The interesting part for me as a child was it was my decision whether I replaced old shoes or just carried on wearing them until it was a necessity, not guided by trends or fashions. I remember I could put my savings into negative, as all the funds were in one account, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing as it took a while to build the savings back up again.

The experience taught me to compartmentalise costs in my head, even though it was clearly logged in a book. It also taught me the value of things that kids just ask their parents for, without thinking about the cost.

I was paid about $120 a month and looking back that would have been a huge amount based on the average income in 1974 of $8000. It certainly eliminated the constant arguments that our family might have had about what should be bought and what shouldn't. Each decision was mine and mine alone.

Stan Amsden—Success of a Sort

All of the family sat around the table on Stan's monthly visits. The man of the house had three credit cards and wondered why he could no longer use them to pay of each account in turn with payments drawn in cash (at 23% interest of course). Stan reckoned it was a tense time. Every time the man raised his hand to scratch his head the three kids all ducked. But Stan said it was eventually a successful case—mainly because the Alsatian dog was always chained up before he arrived!

Dave Mullan—Priorities in the Budget

There was a fine line between encouraging people to accept a tight budget and pointing out that they actually didn't have any choice—they had to do this or go under. It was usually the "discretionary" expenses that were the sticking points. The importance of what the man of the household "needed" to keep up his social obligations at the local pub often loomed as large as the housekeeping. Without a generous budget for smokes, an advisor might be told, the household stresses would be that much higher.

While I was in Taumarunui in 1970 I got my private pilot licence for a total cost of some $450. A year or two later I found myself doing initial budgeting with a family where the man of the household was expecting to be allocated $8 a week for cigarettes. It might have given a little perspective to his addiction to suggest that he could learn to fly in a year for that sort of money. But of course you wouldn't handle the matter like that!

Buck Pound—After Retiring

While in the Bank, Buck Pound had often handed out budget forms to customers who were in debt and offered to help them fill them in. Sometimes he went to their homes to help them balance the budget and set their system up.

A few months before I had to retire on turning 60, one of the Bank's inspectors called to see me. I showed him the budget form and suggested that the Bank could well use this system to get recalcitrant debt-ridden customers back in credit. He took my form and indicated that I would be hearing from Head Office. The outcome was that I was asked to stay on and start up the Bank's Financial Planning Service as Manager. I was to set it up on the top floor of Pakuranga Branch, given three staff and two computers and printers costing a total of $30,000.

It didn't take him long to progamme the computers, train two girls to input the data, and start to look for opportunities. In the first year they completed 560 plans. From then on the banks sent their indebted customers to him. To consolidate his clients' debts Buck asked for a personal authority to advance loans to his clients: he was given a million dollars. He said it lasted only six months but he just went on making the loans anyway and no branch objected.

In retirement, Buck invested in a similar computer and started his own business working from home. He did seminars using overhead projector slides. He prepared financial plans by interview and mail order. He wrote for many publications promoting financial planning. At one stage he counted up that he had processed nearly 3000 plans and seemed to be going day and night.

His book Dollars 'N' Sense and his computer system sold well and all the proceeds were given to Missions or Charities.

Blanche Kingdon—"A form of budgeting"

Born into a forestry family, it was no surprise that once the Rotorua-based Blanche had qualified in chemistry she found a job in the Forest Research Institute. But, after 26 years, she "had an epiphany" and moved into social work for the new Department of Social Welfare. In that context she became involved in "a form of budgeting" long before the Rotorua service was set up. She used to pick up some of her social work clients and take them to the Benefits and Pensions section to collect the benefit. She is a little cagey as to exactly what happened next—it was not strictly a social work role approved by DSW—but it is clear that she handled a good deal of the money and assisted her clients to manage their financial affairs. She went on to be a major contributor to the Rotorua Service as coordinator and president.

Bev Thatcher—in her Car

Bev used her car as her travelling office. It was commonplace to see Bev parked up around Coromandel, meeting with clients in her car. Bev says it could be a lonely job and sometimes a little scary. She remembers one man who had just come out of prison for grievous bodily harm. She did a home visit to him in his caravan—but only once!

Bill Thodey—"It happened to Christ"

Bill was an Anglican Lay Reader and is thought to have been involved with family budgeting in Putaruru from 1964. He was possibly recruited through the Maori Affairs Budgeting Officer in Hamilton but seems to have cared little for its authority. Bill was remembered as a passionate, practical, no-nonsense operator. His expostulations at one event called by the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee in the early 1980s were very memorable. He was not much in sympathy with what he saw to be the high-flying ideals of the organisers.

Someone wrote of him that on one occasion when he was very unhappy with the direct his local organisation was taking he took himself along to a committee meeting to make suggestions. When his views were rejected, he said something like "It's what happened to Christ".

Dave Mullan—No, thanks

In the early days in Dunedin one lady rang the office in great distress and not a little trepidation. She asked several times if her husband had to be involved and only reluctantly agreed to an appointment for an advisor to call at their home. Dave fronted up at the door and it was opened by a man who pretty much filled the doorway from top to bottom and side to side. On being appraised of the reason for the call he just announced "Well, she's changed her mind, mate. And you can bugger off".

Stan Amsden—the Other Woman

She was a widow in her sixties, rough and ready, generous to a fault with begrudging teenage grandchildren, dilapidated accommodation and the power cut off. Her biggest creditor, the milkman, was owed some $300, but after Stan spoke to him he wrote the entire debt off saying he felt sorry for her. Apparently he hadn't seen her six cats.

This case had a successful outcome in eighteen months. She smoked very heavily and after my visits my wife would sniff my clothes and say, "You've been with that Other Woman again"!

Stan kept in touch with her over the years and attended her funeral when she died of emphysema.

Dave Mullan—Motivation

It is interesting that the budgeting precepts of Dr Paewai in Northland in 1960 were irrevocably grounded in his Mormon faith. He was committed to the principle of the tithe and generous giving to the church. In his own experience, this principle pushed him in the direction of drawing up a precise budget and developing budgeting principles to stick to it.

I had similar experience, being encouraged into preparing careful personal family budgeting by a call to "sacrificial" giving in my first parish in 1960. This church commitment put pressure on Bev and me to learn to budget effectively. But the Paewais and the Mullans weren't the only budgeters with that kind of motivation. Buck Pound, Theo Loof, Dick Kouwenhoven and many of the early federation enthusiasts were all people of profound Christian concern. Methodist clergy seem to have played a role out of proportion to the size of that denomination. Church interests or motivation were never discussed in budgeting circles but in my intensive years with the movement and in the research for this book I discovered that many of the other "steam budgeters" had active faith links with a local church.

Making it clear

A small adviser's handbook that turned up in the archives includes a concise list of items called "The Adviser's "Kit". Obviously enough, it is a list of bits and pieces the advisor would need when meeting the family. Equally obvious is a bracketed explanation of the first item on the list:

"Notebook (to take notes in!)".

Timeline

1950 Nathan Paewai chooses to move to Kaikohe as GP

1958 Capitalisation of Family Benefit permitted to purchase housing

1959 April. Gray Vuglar arrived in Kaikohe on transfer within the Social Security Department

1960 Gray and Paewai commence budgeting an at risk couple

1960 Public meetings in Kaitaia to set up Citizens Advice Council. Budgeting procedures first outlined

1960 Hunn Report identified three types of Maori and argued for planned migration and assistance for Maori. Report is sidelined by Walter Nash—too close to election

1960 National becomes Government.

1961 February: JK Hunn visited Kaitaia. Maori Affairs picks up sponsorship of budgeting movement.

1961 Maori Affairs (Hunn & Hanan) resurrected Hunn report. They adopt and promote "The Kaikohe Scheme".

1962 20 March: Manawatu public meeting to set up service. JK Hunn attended.

1963 Maori Affairs' Ministerial Officer EL Newman writes of 52 budgeting services plus 23 possibles

1965 Three "special case" positions created in Maori Welfare for Home Budgeting: Wills, Rossiter and Reeves

1970 Auckland CAB established on British model

1970 Peter Harwood first local authority community adviser

1971 DSW Act drew together seven different Acts

1971 Auckland Committee formed at public meeting—budgeting office in CAB and regional educational programme

1972 National defeated in landslide—Norman Kirk became PM

1972 DSW accepts two (or three?) Home Budgeting positions from Maori Affairs

1972 Dunedin service commenced

1972 Manukau City began to coordinate welfare and social services

1973 "NZ Federation", primarily of Auckland groups

1973 Dave Mullan met with some members of Auckland service

1974 November. First national meeting of budgeting services, invited by Mullan and Mayall. 20 Attended. Agreement in principle for Federation

1975 November: Second meeting formally sets up Federation Management Committee. Big questions.

1975 NZCOSS set up to define and develop Social Service

1975 Second national meeting: representative national committee formed.

1975 Newly appointed Minister of Social Welfare speaks of budgeting experience and seems to be sympathetic.

1976 Director General of DSW defines roles of voluntary and public bodies.

1976 NZ Council of Social Services Survey of all known services—working party met with Auckland members of Federation Management Committee

1977 Social Development Committee: Family Finances—Can the Community Do Better?

1978 March—HBAC commissioned with $50,000

1978 August—First HBAC Conference 38 services

1979 November—Second HBAC conference. NZ Federation constitution adopted

References

Primary Sources

NZ Federation of Family Budgeting Services Office has only one meagre collection of papers, now roughly sorted into chronological order. This record includes most of the items that are quoted but not specifically attributed in this text.

It is composed of papers from at least two sources—

(a) Copies of a small collection of 1970s documents apparently lodged with the office after the Federation became independent around 1988.

(b)Key items that were retained by the author after the publication of A Small Qango. No other record of the HBAC is known.

Regrettably, a comprehensive file on the founding of the Federation 1973 – 1982 went missing when the writer left Dunedin in 1982. Exhaustive searching has failed to locate it but it was clearly marked as an important archive and may yet turn up.

The other significant source is the excellent thesis of **Yvonne Bush,** The Beginnings of the Family Budgeting Advice Service in New Zealand. Thesis for MA (Applied) in Social Work, University of Victoria, Wellington. A bound copy was obtained by the Federation in the 1990s. Yvonne gave permission for extensive use of her work. Her thorough interviews with Paewai and Vuglar provided a remarkable background to The Kaikohe Scheme.

Other Sources

**Clayton, Fay.** Nine Easy Ways to Get into Debt and another article published in the Tablet, a privately published Roman Catholic monthly. June 1970

**Derby, Mark**. Ngā take Māori—government policy and Māori—Depression, war and urbanisation, 1930s to 1960s, Te Ara—the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 13-Jul-12 http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/nga-take-maori-government-policy-and-maori/page-4

**Dougherty, Ian** , A History of Citizens' Advice Bureaux in New Zealand, Dunmore Press 0-474-05586-4

**Finnigan, Anthony,** Notes of an address at a Palmerston North celebration.

**Graham, Doug**. Address given at a Dunedin celebration.

**Hastings Budget Advisory Service.** Brief Resumé of the Development and functioning of the Hastings Budget Advisory Service 1972-1983.

**Kouwenhoven, Dick**. Some Aspects of Family Budgeting Services in New Zealand. Sadly, Dick's 154-page history of family budgeting was lost along with 17 other substantial papers that he wrote between 1974 and 2004—his own list of them is in the archive.

**Mullan, Dave** The author's A Small Qango and other personal sources and his personal knowledge of the period have been liberally drawn upon.

**NZ Government Cabinet Committee on Social Policy** , Family Finances—Can the Community do Better? 1977

**Pound, Buck**. Notes and newspaper cuttings on personal experience with the ABC system, Auckland CAB, BNZ and private computer budgeting operation in retirement.

About the author

Dave is a retired Presbyter of Methodist Church of New Zealand. He's a passionate pioneer in Local Shared Ministry, consultant in small churches, publisher of niche market books, producer of prosumer video, deviser of murder mystery dinners and former private pilot.

Dave trained for the Methodist Ministry at Trinity Theological College and eventually completed MA, Dip Ed as well. He and Bev married just before his first appointment in Ngatea where their two children arrived. They went on to Panmure and Taumarunui. Longer terms followed at Dunedin Central Mission and the Theological College. During this time he was also involved as co-founder and second national President of Family Budgeting Services and adviser to the (government) Minister of Social Welfare in Home Budgeting.

Dave's final four "working" years were part-time, developing the first Presbyterian or Methodist Local Shared Ministry unit in this country and promoting the concept overseas. Retirement has brought a whole lot more opportunities and challenges including publication of over 100 books of which he wrote about ten and a blog in which he tries to write fairly seriously on a range of topics.

An ongoing adventure with prostate cancer brought Bev and Dave to the Hibiscus Coast Residential Village near Auckland in 2014 but in early 2015 his prospects seem much improved.

Contact Dave  
 **colcom.press@clear.net.nz**

davemullan35@gmail.com

Visit Dave on **  
 http://dave-mullan.blogspot.com  
http://www.colcompress.com**

### Dave's other general books

**A Small Qango** Dave's account of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee to the NZ Minister of Social Welfare, 1978-1988. This small committee had 120 meetings and ran seminars, consultations and training events. It functioned like to no other Quasi-Autonomous Government Organisation with a degree of independence that left some of the Head Office boffins breathless. It achieved huge financial support for family budgeting volunteers throughout the country. A5 978-1-877357-17-6

**Attwood of Hepburn Creek**. The life of Thomas William Attwood, who settled in the Mahurangi 1907, initiated the NZ Fruitgrowers' Federation and represented NZ fruitgrowing interests in South America and UK 1923-1925 and then went on to found the NZ Alpine and Rock Garden Society. Lady Anne Allum of Auckland was his daughter. A5. 134p. ISBN 1-877357-01-4

**In and Out of Sync.** Dave's life story up to 2013. Extracted from a more substantial text, this book presents Dave's personal family background and professional life and ministry. Reviewers have said it offers a significant and insightful view of the Methodist Church of New Zealand in a turbulent and challenging time. A5 220p. ISBN 1-877357-10-3

**John Roulston, Grazier of Calkill & Runnymede**. With Val Mullan of Brisbane. Our attempt to trace the life of the mysterious and very distant relation from the Upper Brisbane Valley. He left a fortune to family members in four countries when he died in 1929. Most of them had never met him. A5. 122p. ISBN 1-877357-00-6

**The Almost Attwoods.** Ed Dave Mullan. Personal stories of the 143 descendants in the first three generations from James and Emma Attwood of Lewisham. A5. 220p. ISBN 978-1-877357-4-9

**The Saga of Wasp.** Revised and enlarged collection of Dave's short stories, 2014. Some include significant historical material from his early working life with the New Zealand Forest Service. But all were written mainly for fun. Also available as epub, 2015 180p ISBN 978-877357-12-X

These books are available from ColCom Press stock or printing on demand. Some are soon to be made available in eBook format through Smashwords

Contact Dave

colcom.press@clear.net.nz

http://www.colcompress.com

### Dave's books on church and ministry

**Diakonia and the Moa**. Although published in 1983 this book offers a distinctive understanding of the role of the "permanent" Deacon in the modern church. A5 170p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-9597775-0-4

**Ecclesion — The Small Church with a Vision.** Reflections on the contemporary church and suggestions for revival of the small church in vigorous new styles of Sunday church life, mission and ministry. This book introduces the thinking behind the Lay Ministry Team concept developed for Methodists and Presbyterians in the Bay of Islands Co-operating Parish in 1992. It is being completely revised and updated for e-publication in 2015. A5 140p 978-908815-08-5

**Fresh New Ways — Emerging Models for Mission and Ministry in the Local Congregation**. Ed. Dave Mullan. Papers and reflections from a significant Australian conference, this book details (a) new structures for the church or parish and (b) innovative styles of ministry. A5 130p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-76-X

**Koru and Covenant** : With J J Lewis and L.W. Willing. This book offers biblical reflections in Aotearoa and note some links between the Christianity of the 19th Century Maori and the religion of the Hebrew Scriptures. Warmly commended by authoritative reviewers and some years after publication still very relevant. A5 120p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-60-3

**Mital-93—The Church's Ministry in Tourism and Leisure.** Ed: Dave Mullan Presentations at an Australian Conference are supported by dozens of flax roots ideas that have helped. "A fascinating study... an enabling resource" (Pat Gilberd). 82p. 220p From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-22-8

**The Cavalry won't be coming**. Dave Mullan. Introduction to the concept of Local Shared Ministry in which a team of volunteers spearhead the mission of the small church which is discovering that all the resources for ministry are held within its own membership. Being revised for epublication in 2015. A5 134p, From: Trinity College, 202 St Johns Rd, Meadowbank, Auckland. trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz ISBN 0-908815-99-1

As indicated, these books are available from Trinity Methodist Theological College, Auckland.

trinitycollege@stjohns.auckland.ac.nz

Other ColCom Books

During the last 25 years Dave has published well over one hundred titles for other writers under the imprint of ColCom Press. Most were done in very short runs for niche markets and were delivered to the authors. Some may be still retrievable in some form in 2015.
