We responded to some adverse events
Several forms of financial assistance are available following emergency events, such as Special Needs Grants, Recoverable Assistance Payments, and Advance Payment of Benefits. There are also three special forms of assistance that can be provided following emergencies: Civil Defence Payments for affected people, Enhanced Taskforce Green for clean-up work crews, and Rural Assistance Payments for affected farmers with a primary sector business.
As the 2017/2018 year began, we were supporting the ongoing recovery from the Edgecumbe floods of April 2017. There were several other small events during the year where we activated additional forms of financial assistance.
During the Auckland power outage in April 2018, we supported the Auckland Civil Defence Emergency Management response and used a range of communications to let our clients know about help available. We had a dedicated event page on the Work and Income website, set up alerts through MyMSD, directly emailed over 70,000 clients, sent text messages to over 26,000 clients with no email address, and used social media. We kept a call centre open over the weekend of the event to provide emergency financial assistance.
We are also responsible for providing the 0800 Government Helpline following significant emergency events, though this was not activated in 2017/2018.
