About Us
History of the New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services
Budgeting advice given free by a predominantly volunteer work-force is unique to Aotearoa-New Zealand. It owes its origins to the close relationship that developed in the late 1950s between Gray Vuglar, the then District Agent for the Department of Social Security and Dr Manahi Nitama Paewai, a local general practitioner in Kaikohe.
The number of budgeting services grew under support given first by the Department of Maori Affairs throughout the 1960s and later by the Department of Social Welfare. The New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Inc was registered as an incorporated society on 21 December 1973 although records would indicate that this was a little pre-emptive as it is generally now accepted that the first national meeting of interested people took place in 1974.
The ongoing support that budgeting attracted from Government was formalised in March 1978 with the formation by the Minister of Social Welfare of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee. This committee travelled the country to establish how the various ad hoc groups were operating and what their needs were. The committee then employed consultants (later to become Budget Liaison Workers) as staff of the then Department of Social Welfare whose duties included training, coordination and promotional activities.
Concurrently, the Federation had volunteers appointed as District Representatives, whose roles were to represent the needs of geographically clustered budgeting organisations and to participate in national decision-making. The Federation assumed responsibility from the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee for the allocation of the Government grant to new budgeting services. In March 1988 the committee was disbanded and the coordination functions were assumed by the Federation and the positions of Budget Liaison Workers were disestablished.
The Federation opened its first national office in 1991 in Auckland and relocated this to Wellington in 1999. A network of Maori based budgeting organisations was formed and this developed gradually, until in 1997 that network registered as a separate incorporated society, Te Roopu Awhi Whanau ki te Penapena Putea Inc. Attempts to develop partnership continued through the appointment of representatives of each body to serve on the executive of the other and through a joint working party but this work was halted in May 1999 when Te Roopu Awhi Whanau ki te Penapena Putea requested Te Waa (time-out). The Federation has since pursued its own Te Tiriti partnership path.
In November 2002 the Federation’s Rules were changed to allow for up to two Maori Representatives to sit on the National Board. More recently the National Board has been well assisted with its own Kaumatua advising on Maori protocol. The Federation governance body was restructured in 1993 with the election of seven Regional Representatives to form the governance committee, first known as the National Committee, now known as the National Board. That committee produced its first management plan in 1994. This concentrated on improving the standards of all aspects of budgeting and in ensuing years the Federation:
- Introduced a standardised national training programme for budget advisers in 1994 (this was externally reviewed in 1998)
- Commenced a national certification of competency of budget advisers in 1994
- Released the first chapters of a comprehensive policy and procedures manual released in 1996 (the final chapters being distributed in 2002)
- Formalised by individual contracts the network of accredited Tutors in 1999
- Implemented greater structure to the annual checks for compliance to the affiliation criteria in 2000
- Started a series of ongoing training modules in 2000
- Commenced performance appraisals for all Federation representatives in 2003
- Introduced a distance learning version of the standardised training programme conducted by correspondence in 2002 and allowed recognition of external training to increase the flexibility of Federation training needs in 2004
- Developed a fully structured community education course entitled Budgeting for Change in 2004
- Updated the annual checks process, which became the annual Service Capability Review, a comprehensive service audit
- Established Field Officer positions to provide our membership with hands-on support to help improve their services and ultimately their communities.
- The NZQA recognised the Budget Adviser Introductory Course, allowing participants to gain unit standards towards the National Certificate in Social Services.
These measures have the approval of the majority of the membership and the quality assurance measures have proved a catalyst to attract professionally resourced, more holistic, and higher quality organisations into budgeting. Not all of the services, tutors and individual advisers were able to make these necessary adjustments and regrettably chose to leave the Federation. Some of these services continue to work outside of the Federation and may not offer the same level of training, quality assurance, and escalating complaints procedure that Federation services guarantee.
Founding Documents
Rules of the New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Inc
The Federation’s members are governed by the Rules of the New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Incorporated. This is a legal document registered with the societies registrar. Alterations to the Rules can only be made at a meeting of the membership and only when a majority vote is taken. The Rules currently contain 19 clauses governing the organisation and have 12 registered amendments, the most recent in February 2006. The most recent copy of the Rules can be found here:
Rules of the New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services IncMission Statement
The Federation’s Mission Statement is:
“The New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Inc. is dedicated to the development and education of budgeting skills through community programmes and free advice from supportive, confidential and culturally aware services.”
Purpose of the Federation
The Purpose of the Federation is outlined in the Rules. In short, the Purpose of the Federation is to fulfil its mission by:
- Providing budgeting services for families and individuals
- Providing support systems and structures
- Providing resources to services
- Providing standardised training for budget advisers
- Having Te Tiriti o Waitangi basic to its policies and practices
- Providing a policy development process
- Establishing, maintaining and monitoring standards
- Recognising and valuing the work of volunteers
- Identifying gaps in service provision
- Advocacy to relevant organisations for the betterment of services and clients
- Publicising and promoting budgeting
- Providing education for the wider community, nationally.
Code of Ethics
All Federation services must abide by the agreed Code of Ethics. The Code is taught to all advisers during initial training and revisited regularly during in-service training and at Federation events. All services must agree to the Code before they are considered for affiliation. The Federation takes the Code very seriously.
NZFFBS Code of EthicsPhilosophy of the Federation
All Federation services agree to the Philosophy of the Federation. In fulfilling the constitutional objectives Te Tiriti o Waitangi is fundamental to the policies and practices of the Federation; that the Federation recognises and supports the Charter of the United Nations, the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and the Bill of Rights of Aotearoa-New Zealand; and that in delivering the ethical considerations referred to above, the membership hold to the philosophy that:
- Community education and advice is fundamental to the promotion of good family budgeting skills
- Budgeting is an essential need that benefits many people in each community
- For the sake of the client family quality will not be compromised
- Budgeting assistance aims to give or restore the client’s independence in money management
- All forms of budgeting, including provision of total money management, must include an element for educating the client
- Budgeting services need to have adequate resources of people and systems
- Budgeting services need input and support of their local communities
- Budgeting needs a strong national organisation in which the membership has confidence with clear national roles in coordination of effort and support, including assisting with funding of budgeting services
- The national body should advocate for a fair deal for budgeting clients and the communities and make policy-makers aware of client and budgeting service needs and concerns
Functions of the NZFFBS
The fundamental purpose of the Federation is to support its members. The support the Federation provides is separated into four functional areas; communication and quality assurance, training, resourcing, and advice and advocacy.
Over 30 experienced representatives currently volunteer for the Federation. Categorised as Maori, district, and regional representatives these people work actively to support members, create opportunities for networking, coordinate communications across the country, and ensure that a consistently high level of quality service is delivered by Federation members.
As part of the overall Federation networking and communication strategy, district and regional representatives are responsible for coordinating district and regional meetings each year. These forums ensure collective knowledge and best practice is communicated throughout the network and provide opportunity for training workshops and presentations from industry and government experts.
Maori representatives support the Federation partnership policy, which promotes consultation and communication with Maori to increase the effectiveness of its service to Maori clients.
Federation support of this network of volunteers provides a necessary link between budget services and the Federation decision making and governance body. Policies and practices that negatively impact budget service clients are communicated very effectively through this network, which allows the knowledge of budget advisers to feed into the strategic decisions made by the Federation National Board.
The two main aspects of the Federation’s quality assurance strategy are the annual service capability review and reaffiliation round and the Federation complaints procedure. Annually, every Federation budget service undergoes a comprehensive audit focusing on both the management of the budget service and the delivery of services to clients.
Each year every service must reapply for affiliation with the Federation and the results of its review are considered during reaffiliation. The service capability review has been developed over three decades in consultation with government, the community, and Federation staff, volunteers, and clients.
The service capability review and annual reaffiliation process ensure a very high level of quality service is delivered by Federation members and afford a level of protection to clients that non-Federation budget services may not offer.
If a client is in anyway dissatisfied with the service delivered by a Federation member they can lodge a formal written complaint, which will be thoroughly and rigorously investigated as per the Federation complaints procedure. Federation affiliated budget services can offer this level of protection to clients in New Zealand.
Further detail on the Federation’s complaints procedure can be viewed here:
The Federation contracts a trained pool of accredited tutors annually to provide all of the training needs for its members. The tutors are systematically appraised to ensure their delivery standards are kept very high. The tutors own skills are also kept up-to-date through national tutor forums.
The Federation’s network of tutors is able to provide training in all regions and districts throughout New Zealand. The Federation provides a very comprehensive and up-to-date training programme for budget advisers.
The Budget Adviser Introductory Course is a complete, structured training programme delivered by accredited Federation tutors. The course has been developed over a number of years in consultation with the community, experienced advisers, and budget services.
Recently, the course has been accepted for recognition on the New Zealand Qualifications Framework and sits within a Level 4 Certificate in Social Services. They are recognised by Te Kaiawhina Ahumahi (Industry Training Organisation for Social Services). Federation accredited tutors also deliver ongoing training modules to budget advisers.
To ensure the high quality of advice given, there is a policy requirement for budget advisers to keep their skills up-to-date by attending one three hour ongoing training module per year. The modules are developed in-house by the Federation Training Manager and relevant, external training can be recognised to fulfil this requirement. This is an easy requirement to meet and is the absolute minimum required of advisers to ensure their skills are kept current for the protection of clients.
The resourcing function of the Federation is a major initiative. A number of manuals, guides, and handbooks have been developed to support the capability of budget services. These guides are regularly updated and offer an extraordinary level of detail. An organisation could virtually set itself up using these comprehensive guides alone.
The Federation also works constructively with other organisations to develop relevant resources to assist service delivery. The Federation has worked with Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Insolvency and Trustee Service, Inland Revenue Department, Work and Income, Cancer Foundation, Mercury Energy, ANZ / National Bank / PSIS, Problem Gambling Foundation, Metro Water Auckland, and other organisations and continues to actively seek partner organisations in the creation of resources for its members.
The extensive experience of the Federation has been used to create a complete set of forms and stationery for services and advisers to use. The stationery ensures a consistency and high level of quality advice is offered by Federation budget services.
Along with stationery items, the Federation has a broad and constantly updated range of pamphlets, posters, videos, and library resources that are made freely available to members.
A free monthly newsletter is produced by the Federation that includes articles on relevant current issues and Federation network news and events.
In terms of information technology, the Federation has invested in the development of a client database and management programme and continues to maintain this website.
Also, each year the Federation covers the cost of listing all member services in the Telecom white pages where they are easily located under ‘budget advice services’.
The Federation completely covers the cost of development, printing, and distribution of all its resources. A considerable discount can be achieved by printing stationery in bulk and the centralisation of this programme saves individual services substantial amounts of both time and money. This is just one of the many ways the Federation supports its members and ensures their resources can remain focused on service delivery.
The fourth function of the Federation is its advisory and advocacy arm. The Federation advocates both on behalf of its membership and also on behalf of its members’ clients. The Federation also uses its extensive level of industry knowledge to offer consultancy and advice to government departments and industry bodies.
Sometimes this advice is directed by the Federation through the media and submissions but often the Federation is approached directly by government and industry leaders to provide input into various policy and practices. The Federation is a respected authority in financial literacy and consumer and household finance and is constantly in demand to share the considerable accumulated experience of its budget advisers.
Organisational Structure
The governance structure of the Federation is known as the National Board. The Board currently comprises seven representatives from the seven Federation regions, two Maori representatives representing Maori-based budget services, a Treasurer, Patron and a secretary. Various co-opted representatives and advisers may sit on the board from time to time. The Board has appointed a Kaumatua.
There are also currently two sub-committees, the Training Committee that provides advice to the national board and the Training Quality Review Team who monitor training quality in a moderation process.
The Federation is managed by staff in the Federation national office. There are currently eight permanent staff managing various Federation functions and the administration of the national network. Four Field Officer positions have been introduced to support services.
As well as the volunteer Board representatives, the Federation also utilises 23 volunteer District Representatives. They are democratically voted in each year, and represent the views of geographically clustered budget services. This very successful participatory model ensures the views of grass roots services are heard in the national decision-making forum.
A network of accredited tutors is contracted each year by the Federation to deliver the Budget Adviser Basic Training course and Federation ongoing training. The tutor network is constantly monitored to ensure there is adequate availability of training for every member service in New Zealand.
At the grass roots level affiliated budget services deliver free budget advice to clients. Every budget service is a separate organisation in its own right, governed by its own management committee. All services are managed by a budget service Coordinator/Manager. Most importantly, each service is staffed by predominantly volunteer budget advisers and support staff. Federation budget advisers are professionally trained, committed, and well supported.
The Federation organisational structure can be viewed here:
Federation Organisational StructureNZFFBS People
National Board President:
Subcommittees:
_
National Office:
Margaret Elsworth
Training Committee
Training quality review team
CEO Raewyn Fox
National office staff
Field Officers
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