Smith Family moves from welfare to family education support
The Smith Family, one of Australia’s best-known charities, has decided to quit welfare in order to focus on education because it believes that inter-generational poverty can best be changed through better education for children.
The organisation has worked for 85 years concentrating on welfare and emergency relief services in a policy it called “passive assistance”. Now its clients have said that they believe the greatest benefit to combat future family poverty would be to “help us help our children to get an education”.
Chief executive, Elaine Henry, said that the Smith Family had gradually been moving out of welfare when it realised that traditional welfare handouts were only stroking the symptoms and not improving life for disadvantaged families.
Ms Henry said that “things weren’t getting better for our families. The only way to prevent disadvantage is education, so that people can stand on their own two feet”.
Under a range of programs called Learning for Life the Smith Family now offers educational scholarships to assist with expenses, as well as personal support for the student with tutors and mentors to help develop literacy and technological skills along with personal development through extracurricular activities.
