Submission to the Royal Commission on Social Policy giving a sense of the questions the department has been exploring and raising a few general policy issues to be addressed at greater length in later submissions. It states that the ‘most obvious and generally most contentious activities of the department are when it intervenes in crises in individual or family life’ but that ‘we are shifting the balance towards more positive welfare initiatives through programmes such as Maatua Whangai, family violence prevention, and the “stepping out” programme for long-term beneficiaries’. The three major challenges facing the department are identified as the sheer size and spread of the department, the diversity of clientele, and the complexity of social work. Among other broader issues, the following are identified as being relevant to the Commission: the partnership between government and community, community vs institutional care, the role of government in intervening in family life, a simpler and more accessible structure for benefits and a change to their eligibility rules, government assistance to families with children, the appropriate role of government in meeting cost of life changes, and the department’s bicultural approach. Some broader issues also identified include the issue of evaluating the outcome of social policies, whether the pursuit of welfare objectives exacts a cost in the form of reduced economic efficiency, the issue of what processes of accountability most appropriately apply to social policy, the ethical issue of the appropriate basis for the provision or subsidisation of goods and services, and the type of policy delivery most appropriate to meeting needs.