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Audio‐Video Review

Audio‐Video Review handling. This game is claimed as a 'must for all service providers, young people in Years 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 and just about everyone who thinks being out of work and poor is easy!' For the purposes of this review, however, the game was played by three adult people - a journalist, a lawyer with considerable experience in the Department of Social Security and a social worker, so we only partially met the game's player criteria. The reviewmay, as a result, be somewhat biased. From the outset there were arguments. The rules are not particularly specific. For example, they state 'You can only finish the game if you have secure income and housing' and yet there was no indication of what constituted such a happy state, let alone how to acquire it. So we wandered hopelessly and aimlessly about the board, tossing our dice, parting with our food and rent vouchers, plunging deeper and deeper into debt and deeper into misery and depression. This was no 'fun' game as the literature claims. While it is a game of chance, it also requires a degree of systematic cunning. To be a winner, one must concentrate on acquiring the right credentials to gain access to secure income and housing. Bya process of trial and error, players discover that there is little use in heading for a secure income or housing without one's birth certificate or driver's licence. This is no game for the guileless. And if one were committed to the work ethic and headed for industry, this was no guarantee of the prized security. Predictably, the winner of our game was the lawyer with the background in Social Security. The maze took a little over an hour for the lawyer to reach the end successfully. Had there been more players who were less devious, we might still have been playing. No wonder recipients of welfare acquire pejorative labels, although I suspect the authors of The Welfare Maze Game would not intend players to reach that sort of conclusion. The game is educational in its way, but if it is used in the classroom be warned: it can really accommodate only six players and its playing time will almost certainly exceed conventional class hours unless players are unusually well-informed, in which case the education provided is probably superfluous. Those who are service providers should need little convincing that to be poor and out of work is not easy, but those who do hold such a belief may find The Welfare Maze Game enlightening. But for this reviewer, next Christmas please give me Monopoly! ELSPETH BROWNE Social Worker St George Hospital Kogarah For the eager, the desperate, the lonely, For the technocrat, the good communicator and the visually oriented perceiver. The Journal now has a FAX (02) 879 6440 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy Wiley

Audio‐Video Review

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 1991 Australian Association of Family Therapy
ISSN
0814-723X
eISSN
1467-8438
DOI
10.1002/j.1467-8438.1991.tb00841.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

handling. This game is claimed as a 'must for all service providers, young people in Years 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 and just about everyone who thinks being out of work and poor is easy!' For the purposes of this review, however, the game was played by three adult people - a journalist, a lawyer with considerable experience in the Department of Social Security and a social worker, so we only partially met the game's player criteria. The reviewmay, as a result, be somewhat biased. From the outset there were arguments. The rules are not particularly specific. For example, they state 'You can only finish the game if you have secure income and housing' and yet there was no indication of what constituted such a happy state, let alone how to acquire it. So we wandered hopelessly and aimlessly about the board, tossing our dice, parting with our food and rent vouchers, plunging deeper and deeper into debt and deeper into misery and depression. This was no 'fun' game as the literature claims. While it is a game of chance, it also requires a degree of systematic cunning. To be a winner, one must concentrate on acquiring the right credentials to gain access to secure income and housing. Bya process of trial and error, players discover that there is little use in heading for a secure income or housing without one's birth certificate or driver's licence. This is no game for the guileless. And if one were committed to the work ethic and headed for industry, this was no guarantee of the prized security. Predictably, the winner of our game was the lawyer with the background in Social Security. The maze took a little over an hour for the lawyer to reach the end successfully. Had there been more players who were less devious, we might still have been playing. No wonder recipients of welfare acquire pejorative labels, although I suspect the authors of The Welfare Maze Game would not intend players to reach that sort of conclusion. The game is educational in its way, but if it is used in the classroom be warned: it can really accommodate only six players and its playing time will almost certainly exceed conventional class hours unless players are unusually well-informed, in which case the education provided is probably superfluous. Those who are service providers should need little convincing that to be poor and out of work is not easy, but those who do hold such a belief may find The Welfare Maze Game enlightening. But for this reviewer, next Christmas please give me Monopoly! ELSPETH BROWNE Social Worker St George Hospital Kogarah For the eager, the desperate, the lonely, For the technocrat, the good communicator and the visually oriented perceiver. The Journal now has a FAX (02) 879 6440

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy – Wiley

Published: Mar 1, 1991

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