Identify and outline a selected piece of social policy In May 2004 New Zealand government and Inland Revenue introduced a policy package that was rolled out gradually up until October 2007. This package was to change the lives of many New Zealand families with children who were living on or below the poverty line. (OECD, 2007). The package would provide families with significantly larger incomes with the use of tax credits to better equip people in being able to move from state support and into paid employment. This essay will outline how the Working for Families package seeks to achieve this. As well as simplifying the system and incorporating more collaboration between the tax system and benefit system Working for Families consisted of four main components. An increase to the minimum family tax credit rates, this is the main payment a family was paid per child and was formerly known as “family support”, and this enabled support to be available to more families. Working parents were paid an in work tax credit, this replaced the child tax credit that previously existed. The in work tax credit provides a family with more financially, as it is paid per family, whereas the child tax credit was paid per child. The in work tax credit is not available to a family who are receiving a state benefit. The accommodation supplement became available to more working families. The last component was the child care subsidy and out of school care subsidy rates being increased and the eligibility threshold was increased making it more available to approximately 70% of families with dependent children (OECD, 2007). Explanation of why this is a social policy Social policy is explained by Duncan (2007) as being actions that impact on the well-being of all people in society. This means policies are created in societies according to what the members of that community deem as being important. This also depends on what the priorities are of policy makers. Duncan explains that there are five objectives of social policy; citizenship, equality, social justice, freedom and need. The working for family’s package is a prime example of this as it allows all members of society access to health, education and other core services that a low income family would not otherwise be able to afford. This therefore addresses Duncan’s goal of policy called citizenship. Reducing child poverty is also a large aspect of this policy as it seeks to improve the household incomes of working families employed in low paid work who are struggling to meet the costs of daily living. This would be addressing Duncan’s goal “equality” and “need” as it will entitle these citizens to be able to live without being disadvantaged (Duncan, 2007). Objectives of Working for Families package The most significant objective this package was designed to address was the reduction of child poverty by targeting assistance to low and middle income families and ensuring that these families were receiving an adequate income to be able to meet the costs of living.The package was designed to encourage people to move away from state support and into employment. This would be achieved with the implementation of the next main objective of increasing family incomes by rewarding parents by “making work pay” and supporting people into work. The next objective was to have more affordable housing with the implementation of the accommodation supplement and provide parents with more assistance with childcare costs. The availability of the Accommodation supplement and subsidised child care helped in being able to achieve these objectives as it helped alleviate some of the financial barriers that make the decision of moving into employment for families difficult. While the in work t