Debbie Power
Regional Commissioner Northland
Work and Income, Ministry of Social Development

This speaker's paper is available here.

As one of the thirteen Regional Commissioners leading and managing a Region, Debbie is tasked with delivering the full range of employment and social assistance support to 41,000 clients in her Region. She has a management team of 16 with 9 frontline offices covering a provincial/rural mix of clients.

In her role she has been strongly focussing on collaborative working relationships across the region and in developing strategies to address the unemployment in Northland which has one of the highest rates of social exclusion and a disproportionate number of Maori beneficiaries.

Northland has been one of the first regions to work towards creating a cohesive social development strategy involving territorial authorities and agencies and Debbie has been instrumental in working closely with a range of government agencies and community groups and in providing opportunities for staff to work differently with clients.

Debbie joined the Department of Social Welfare in 1980 and has held management positions in Income Support as the Area Manager Benefit Crime in Northland and in the Department Work and Income New Zealand where she was the Regional Operations Manager in Northland.

She was the lead negotiator for contract negotiations with the Northland Site Collective Contract and has been a member of the national Department of Work and Income Collective contract negotiation team with the PSA in 1999. Debbie has also been involved with several national projects.

Debbie is currently completing a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies through Massey University.

New Zealand State Services Commission