Urgent Debates — Department of Child, Youth and Family Services—Report

I have received applications from Katherine Rich, Judy Turner, and Dr Muriel Newman under Standing Order 376 to debate the report of the chief social worker of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services into the deaths of Olympia Jetson and Saliel Aplin. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility, and, notwithstanding that the House held an urgent debate on 4 November on a baseline review of the department, I am prepared to accept the applications. The first application was lodged by Katherine Rich, and I therefore call on her to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The report on the investigations into the deaths of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson makes incredibly sad reading. If we look at the short lives of those girls, we begin to question whether they had any chance at all. Those girls lived in 10 homes. They attended six different schools and they lived in an incredibly violent home. They lived with their grandparents for a space of time, and for most of their lives were continually under the notice and watch of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. They were continually under the watchful eye of counsellors for most of their lives.

It is quite clear that all the different social services agencies had a fair understanding of one piece of this family’s story. Each of the social services agencies held one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that made up the total picture. Unfortunately, because those groups did not speak with one another, because there was insufficient communication, the pieces in that jigsaw puzzle never came together so that the risk to those girls could be identified. I am not going to pretend that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Would the member’s own colleagues allow her to have her say.

💬 Dail Jones: On both sides of the House.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I am talking particularly about people very close to her.

I am not going to pretend that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services held the knife. I am not going to pretend that the department is responsible for the deaths of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetston—Bruce Howse is responsible for the deaths of those girls. However, I would not be doing my job as an Opposition spokeswoman if I did not hold the department to account and highlight the deep concerns that I think most members in this House have about the workings of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

Over the last 4 years we have seen a lot of reports. In June 2000 we saw the James Whakaruru report, and in December 2000 we saw the Judge Mick Brown report. We have seen blueprints, we have seen reviews, and we have seen report after report, but, sadly, most of those reports gather dust because the Government has failed to implement most of the recommendations and suggestions they contain. The names of the children have changed, but many of the issues remain the same. Many of the issues facing the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services have not changed in the last 4 years. Sadly, that has been to the detriment of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson. That has meant that the services those girls received from the department were not up to scratch and befitting the care of New Zealand citizens, particularly New Zealand citizens who are in need of the type of support that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services should, hopefully, be able to give.

The Masterton office has an incredibly difficult job. At the moment, that whole area is the child-death capital of this country. That community has faced a number of really difficult issues, such as the Lillybing case and the Ratima case. But that means that the onus on the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services to provide better services is all the more important. In the last 4 years, that office has been restructured. In the last 4 years, it has lost staff—staff with leadership roles.

One particular staff member had played a very important role in terms of setting up the roopu team within that office. The roopu team looks after the cases of Māori children in the area. It is supposed to provide specific, culturally sensitive services to Māori children in Masterton. Unfortunately, though, while on a chalkboard the theory may have looked as though it would work, the staff members who were part of that team were, in my view, on a hiding to nothing. They were overworked. For some reason—and the Minister today was unable to explain why—the roopu team in that office had a caseload that was 36 percent higher than the general team’s caseload. The members of that team lost one of their key staff members who had played a huge role in the establishment of the service they provided. They were restructured. They had a difficult time. Frankly, it was a time-bomb ticking. If the mistakes had not been made in respect of the Aplin and Jetson girls, they would have been made elsewhere.

We need to have very high expectations of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. It deals with the nation’s most vulnerable children. It is not good enough for the Minister to blame just two staff members and pretend that the rest of the department is going along swimmingly. We all know that that is not the case. The baseline review has told us that that is not the case.

The baseline review made very disturbing reading, and I think the Government was quite cynical in its timing of the release of that report. Because it wanted to release that report at the time so that it could say “Oh, well, we’re going to be doing something about it.”, when this one came along. We have been waiting for this report to come along since the beginning of the year, and the Minister has sat on the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services report, and I believe actively discouraged the Commissioner for Children from releasing its report.

I feel sorry for the Office of the Commissioner for Children, because it puts its heart and soul into many of the reports it writes. This morning I reread the report of the James Whakaruru case. Many of the recommendations in that report, in my view, have been ignored, and many of the recommendations are retold today in the Aplin report. The names of the children have changed, but the facts of the difficult nature of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and the dysfunctional nature of that department, have not changed. We have seen no progress in 4 years. We have seen no progress in an area where all New Zealanders, frankly, deserve to have a better service.

I cannot understand why parents like Ron Burrows can ring up and talk about incredibly concerning issues for them and not even have a note taken. I cannot explain, as a mother, how any child’s note stating “My father is going to kill me.” is not even seen as worthy of being a separate notification. I cannot understand how Saliel Aplin can say things like “Bruce is going to kill us.”, and for that to be largely ignored or dismissed.

The real issue here is that one does have some people working at the frontline who have largely become desensitised to the issue of family violence, and I include the police in that as well. We have a group of people who deal with some gut-wrenching situations; but that is no excuse to pretend or to believe that family violence has become normalised in New Zealand society. We need to be able to aspire to a better situation for our families in this country. Right now, how can any parents feel confident when they ring up the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services that their views are going to be, first, noted down; second, listened to with any seriousness; and third, dealt with in an appropriate way?

At the moment we have 3,132 children whose cases have been classed as notifications by the department, but they have not even been allocated to a social worker yet. The sad thing is that 75 percent of all abuse cases come from the lower rankings of urgency, and that is the level of urgency of those 3,132 cases; so who knows whether there is another Coral Burrows, another Saliel Aplin, or another Olympia Jetson waiting amongst that large group of 3,132 children.

Judge Mick Brown must be feeling very frustrated because he put together an excellent report. In that report he told the Government that it needed to reduce the unallocated case list to zero within 6 months. That Minister over there signed up to that recommendation. Sure, later on he diluted it down into a blueprint or some other diluted version, but at the time he said that the Government would put in place that report. Right now, with the unallocated case list being so incredibly large, not only has the Minister failed, but it looks like he has abandoned that particular objective altogether.

I believe that New Zealand children do deserve to have a better service than they are receiving from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services right now. There is no way, given the performance of this department, that I would let it anywhere near my children. When I am dealing with Department of Child, Youth and Family Services cases, I find it difficult to explain to often very distraught parents who have had their children removed why, in certain circumstances, the department failed to protect them better than if they had been at home. In Dunedin, where I am from, we had children absconding and taking drugs. In Christchurch some children absconded out of the department’s care to prostitute themselves in the Square. We have also seen stupid mistakes made like putting children who have been abused into care with other children who are abusers. We need to have incredibly high standards.

The Opposition would not be doing its job if it were not raising these issues as being important. As I said, I do not believe for a moment that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services is responsible for these kids’ deaths. But who knows: it might have had an influence. If the risk had been assessed in a way that most New Zealand families would have liked, then perhaps those girls might not have been in the care of that family at that time. I always remember Judge Mick Brown coming before our Social Services Committee. I asked him what one does when one sees intergenerational dysfunctionality in some families. He looked at the members of the committee and said: “Well, frankly, we have to come to terms with the fact that there are some families in this country that I wouldn’t leave my dog with.” I think that more often than not, some children are left in situations where family violence has become normalised and accepted, and in situations that most New Zealand parents would be very hard pressed to believe were good for children.

There are a few ideas in this report that I think deserve better research. I am extremely disappointed that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services has dismissed the commissioner’s suggestion that the roopu teams be reviewed. I do not see the point in having separate services for Māori if they are going to be under-resourced, understaffed, and put under such immense pressure that they are on a hiding to nothing and will be in a position where they will fail the Māori children they are looking after. I do not see why the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services ignores the commissioner’s recommendation that a review of resourcing be done immediately.

I think it is also important to look at the whole issue of child protection teams. We all know that local people—local communities—have a better understanding of some of the families in need than some call-centre stuck in the middle of an urban centre where it has been unable to work closely with the families. We need to be able to look at local protection teams, because if that had been the case, perhaps some of these puzzle pieces would have been put together so that a full picture of the condition and care of these girls could have been established at the time.

I join with Katherine Rich, who has just resumed her seat, in saying today that I am glad these reports are now in the public domain. I thank the Children’s Commissioner for her report, which was prepared partly under the previous commissioner, and also the chief social worker. These reports are from people who have standing, ability, and insight, and we should take them seriously—as I know Katherine Rich has done.

What do these reports say? They make, I think, a very, very important point. They say that the systems are working well, but that the practice carried out by two people in these cases was not as it should have been. That is not to blame those people, to point the finger at them and say that they are to take full and total responsibility for this—although I point out that they no longer work for Child, Youth and Family Services—it is simply to say what these two independent people have concluded. This is a case of: system, good; and the use of that system, not good at all. That is what these reports conclude, and that tells us a way forward.

I also want to mirror the comments made by Katherine Rich in saying that this story began in 1992. That is when the elder of those young girls was born. By 1994 we are talking about a mother who was seeking a protection order against her partner. We are then talking about the ongoing changes in those girls’ lives—where they lived, who looked after them, and the circumstances they had to encounter. As Katherine Rich has just said, one wonders, when one looks at this, how those girls ever, ever had a chance, anyway. In the end, the tragedy came to a head when their stepfather Bruce Howse killed them.

We also know from these reports that there was a good possibility that if practices had been matched to the protocols in place and to the way things should have been done, those two young girls may well still be alive. That is the tragedy the reports tell us about. What will New Zealanders do? How will they respond to these two reports? They know, when they are looking at this Government, that they are looking at a Government that puts every ounce of energy it can into trying to improve the circumstances of young people who come into contact with Child, Youth and Family Services. We do not ask people to take our word for it. Labour has been in office for 4 years. Therefore, I am happy to stand on any platform in this country and list the amount of money put in—a 50 percent increase—the number of social workers, the changes in protocols and practices, the ways we have asked Child, Youth and Family Services to work with other departments, the changes in practice management for good social work, and so on. I could list page after page of changes this Government has instituted. I have no fear of standing on any platform and answering any questions about this Government’s commitment to these children and families in this country.

I remind those people who get up in here and ask for reports to be read out and to be reminded of them, and so on, that we were the ones who asked for the reports. I personally asked Mick Brown to write his report. I personally asked Treasury, the Social Services Commission, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and the Ministry of Social Development—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: And State Services.

—and the State Services Commission to work together on the baseline review. That was totally supported by my colleagues Michael Cullen and the Minister of State Services. All those Ministers worked together to make sure that the baseline review worked. So when people get up in the House and debate this report, they should remember it was the Government that asked for it. We saw it through. We are transparent, we are accountable, and we are responsible. We do not duck a single question, because we want people to know, we want New Zealanders to know, and we want Murray McCully to know—he is laughing about this, over there—that for 4 years we have been serious about this issue.

I will sit down soon, but I want to leave New Zealanders with one simple choice. When they look at this report, they will be asking themselves: “Who would we want to be stewards of Child, Youth and Family Services?”. Would we want a Labour-led Government to be stewards of Child, Youth and Family Services? This is a Government that has put in money, time, and workers. It has had reviews, it has had support, and it has had non-governmental organisations working with it. Government members have travelled to talk to social workers about what we want and need. We have put in every ounce of energy. We have backed what we have said with real money. Would people want that Government, or would they want a National-led Government? Under the National Government there were seven restructurings in 9 years, five changes of name, and a cut in budget every year between 1993 and 1997. Griff Page, who led this organisation in the middle of the 1990s, in on the record as saying: “This is the most demoralised organisation I have ever had any contact with.” Would people want that? Would they want the performance of Katherine Rich? She came into the House and used James Whakaruru to try to justify her argument. James Whakaruru died when the National Government was in power. Labour was the Government that received the report. We were the ones who put what was in that report into practice. Mrs Rich went through the whole report without mentioning one policy or one promise, without putting one dollar on the table, and without showing one sign of what a National Government would do if it were in this position. So the choice is easy. People do not have to take our word for it; they just have to ask: “What would Labour do?”. It would do more of what it has done. It has put the money in; it has done the hard yards. What would National do? It would destroy this department. There is no choice.

These reports are received by the Government. They are taken seriously by the Government. They will be acted on. People know that if anybody else were in this position, nothing would happen. They know that we can be trusted to be responsible and accountable, and that we will act.

The review of the deaths of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson is yet another devastating commentary on the ineptitude of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. This is a further example of systemic failure, where policy and guidelines were not followed, and it must bring some response from the Government to recognise that the current model of Child, Youth and Family Services is flawed, and that much more can be done to ensure that education, police, and health and welfare agencies work together far more collaboratively than in the past. The price of failure is the loss of young lives, as we have seen with these two young girls. It is totally unacceptable.

Within New Zealand First, we have deep concerns about the working of this particular Government department. It does need higher procedural compliance standards. I notice that the Minister said that the Government has had only 4 years in which to sort out this department. I remind the Minister that he has had far more than 4 years—in fact, he has had 13 years: 9 years in Opposition and 4 years in Government. And still this department has not delivered on some of the things that it should have. We have seen many, many reports—the report today is not the first—and they are damning. The issues remain the same. Many children are paying with their lives. The names that we see continually roll on. I wonder how many more lives will be lost before we have some action. It is not that I blame the social workers totally, or the Government in entirety, but this department does need to take stock.

One of the things that concerns me, and it became evident in question time today, is that there are policies and procedures in place in the department, but they are not followed. What is the point of having policies and procedures if they are not followed? Do the social workers know what is contained within their policies and procedures? Do the social workers and the team in the department need to have some revision on those policies? Time and time again in the reports we see lots of recommendations, but what is the point of the recommendations and of spending time on the reports if there is no accountability and if the recommendations are not followed? Today, in question time, we heard that within the department the Minister has implemented a team-based approach with the police, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Health. But, guess what? The procedure is not followed.

How many more times will we see events like this? We know for a fact that the caseloads within the department are extremely high and that the number of social workers is lower than perhaps it should be. We know that last week an advertisement was put in all the major newspapers, to ensure that social workers of a high quality will be brought into the department. What appears to be happening is that there are a lot of children but an insufficient number of experienced social workers. What happens? Children appear to be slipping through the cracks. It is not good enough.

We have waited for this report for a long, long time. Now we have some more disturbing information. I remember asking at the last financial review about this particular report, and was told it would be coming within the next couple of weeks. But did it? No, it did not. It is months and months late. The advertising for social workers is continual. We do not want a service such as this to be under-resourced, but it always appears to be lagging behind the action. We need to have a far better situation in Child, Youth and Family Services than the one we have. The families of New Zealand deserve a far better service. If we asked people today whether they had any confidence in this department, unfortunately, the answer would be a resounding no. That is not something that we as politicians want to hear.

It is imperative that this department is able to perform its statutory functions well, but time and time again we hear that it is falling over and not following its procedures. What is more, there does not appear to be any accountability. When are the procedures going to be followed so that the people of New Zealand can have some confidence in this department? From the various reports we have seen—and I am sure that everyone else will be looking for them, too—many, many changes have been advised. We need to hope that they are implemented in a far better way than in the past. We will monitor them very carefully in our Social Services Committee, and the individual political parties will also do that. The reports indicate ways to go forward, and monitoring closely is one of those ways forward.

I would like to state that New Zealand First believes that child protection should be a priority for the Government, but the Government seems to have been diverted by its pursuit of the politically correct. Privacy issues need to be put aside and the safety of at-risk children put first. It is the birthright of our New Zealand children to have a safe environment to grow up in. These children are our future, and they must be safeguarded against violent behaviour. It is time that the Government got tough on crimes towards children, and the only way to do that is to ensure that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services works in the way it is supposed to, and in conjunction with all other social agencies. The procedures are obviously in place, but the implementation of those procedures is not as it should be.

The way forward is clearly mapped out by the various reports. We need to follow that way forward. The price of failure is far too high for the children of New Zealand and for New Zealanders. We need to be confident about this Government department. We often see editorials in the papers decrying what is happening with our children in New Zealand. It is time, too, that the fence at the top of the cliff was replaced by a requirement for more parental responsibility. Extra funding for the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services ambulance at the bottom of the cliff will cure nothing.

The case of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson, the two girls who were murdered by Bruce Howse in December 2001, hangs like a grim backdrop to the more recent loss of 6-year-old Coral Burrows. Today we have seen the release of the two long-awaited reports from the chief social worker of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and the Commissioner for Children, Cindy Kiro, which outline the details of what went wrong from a Government perspective and make a series of recommendations for change. I know some of my fellow MPs who are here today will have read those reports from cover to cover by now, as I have. They will be sharing my feelings of both sadness and disbelief that, yet again, a whole community could somehow fail those two young girls, despite all the overt talk in most parts of New Zealand society about how our children must come first and about how much we love them.

Letting two children live their lives in an almost never-ending stream of violence and emotional abuse is not about love or putting children first. It is about the New Zealand underbelly—a place where beating up and abusing women and children is such an everyday matter that it is accepted by the family, neighbours, community groups, police, the Department of Youth, Child and Family Services, and other adults as OK and just something to get along with. It is about a New Zealand where adults, even when they are police, teachers, or social workers, appear to prefer to listen to and believe adults rather than to listen to and believe children.

Those two reports are not just a harrowing indictment of some of the State agencies involved with Olympia and Saliel—and I stress that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services is not the only agency talked about—but also provide a chilling insight into the reality around New Zealanders’ tolerance of violence against children.

The reports reveal a whole range of issues, which I do not have time to go into fully this afternoon. First of all, it is quite apparent there were a number of critical failures in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services social work practice. The critical failures included social workers who were so familiar with the family that they seemed not to comprehend the serious nature of what they were dealing with. One of them wrote a letter to the children’s mother that was intercepted by the killer and, in all likelihood, helped to precipitate the children’s deaths. In this case there is a more direct causal relationship between the action of a social worker and the deaths of children than I have seen in similar reports. I would think that common sense alone, much less years of social work training, would suggest that to send a letter about possible abuse by a stepfather into the home where he lived might actually create a dangerous situation for the abused people living in that home. But, no, that social worker obviously did not give this factor any consideration when he or she wrote that letter.

I am not here to denigrate social workers. They have one of the most thankless and difficult jobs in our community, especially those who work for statutory agencies like the Department of Youth, Child and Family Services. However, when social workers are working with one of the most disempowered and vulnerable groups in our community—abused children—surely higher standards must be expected at every point in that social worker’s working life. The Brown report and the baseline review of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services have both clearly demonstrated systemic failures on a number of fronts. Those latest reports are actually a case study of what goes wrong when a department is poorly managed, has chronic failures in its information systems, and does not train, supervise, or support its social workers properly.

One thing that needs to happen if the Government is serious about reforming the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services is that the chief social worker needs to be enabled to play a much more significant role as part of the leadership team of the organisation, rather than being someone in a minor position off to the side, as appears to have been the case up until now. The key role of care and protection—the statutory function of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services—is played by social workers. Best practice needs to be led from the top, not diverted by dodgy management systems that are focused on maintaining the status quo and making the numbers look good, instead of ensuring that the department has enough social workers who are experienced, well trained, and sufficiently supported in their work to not make the kinds of fundamental mistakes that have been highlighted by those reports. I am pleased that the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Steve Maharey, indicated earlier this afternoon in the House that the Government has some sympathy for the chief social worker playing a bigger role at the top of the organisation.

A second key issue arising from these two reports is the seeming inability or unwillingness of adults to listen to what children are telling them, and their preference for hearing the evidence and statements of other adults. There is a need for adults, whether they are social workers, teachers, mental health workers, or police, to be prepared to spend time with children and to listen to what they are actually saying. If the New Zealand Government is to support the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we are about to pass into law through the Commissioner for Children legislation, we should expect public servants to be willing and able to listen to children and not just ignore them in favour of what they, as adults, are hearing from other adults.

Thirdly, it is apparent from these reports that there is a semi-acceptance in many parts of our society that domestic violence is OK—that it is really just a minor matter—and that, somehow, sexual abuse is a lot worse and domestic violence is somewhere much further down the scale. The adults around this family seem to have accepted that the domestic violence in their home was just a fact of life that rarely needed any action taken. That is very peculiar, especially given all the training and focus that has gone in recent years in trying to ensure that the police take domestic violence seriously.

Again, the needs of the children involved seem to have been of minor importance. The report found that social workers have used a lack of resources as an excuse to try to disguise poor social work practice. That is simply unacceptable at any level. The care and protection of children should come first, and I commend the writers of both the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and Commissioner for Children reports for not trying to hide behind a lack of resources as some excuse for what happened. This Government is pouring more resources into the department. I hope that in future, the Government, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, police, the Ministry of Education, and all sectors mentioned in the report will take the recommendations of the report seriously regarding how they deal with children who report and who are visibly victims of abuse.

One aspect of the report in relation to schools particularly disturbed me, which was the suspension of one of the girls from school for a month because of her poor behaviour at school. I find it incomprehensible that the reaction of the school, when dealing with children from a situation that it did know about, was to suspend the child and put her back into the home, rather than keep her at school. I hope that the education sector is paying as much attention to this report as the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services is.

The Green Party supports the push from the Commissioner for Children for a return to community child protection teams to protect abused children. Those teams existed until they were abolished foolishly by Labour in 1989. It seems from that report—and all the other reports—that the ability to work cooperatively between agencies is a critical factor that we need to have integrated into social work practice again.

The Commissioner for Children’s report also highlights the inadequacies and gaps in the provision of mental health care for children and adolescents. I renew my call, which I have made very often, to the Government to act more urgently to bring the resourcing of child and adolescent mental health services back up to a more reasonable proportion of the blueprint guidelines. Again, it is children who miss out, because their mental health services are the least well funded, proportionately, of all our mental health services.

I commend the Commissioner for Children and the chief social worker of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services for the honesty and lucidity of their reports into this most difficult case. I just hope that those reports are not, yet again, wasted and used as a parliamentary doorstop or filed in the rubbish bin.

Finally, it is important to note that the Commissioner for Children’s report does make considerable mention of the way in which the media dealt with children in the family and outside it, and with the victims themselves in the aftermath of the killings. Some of it makes most distasteful reading, and I hope that the Press Council, schools of journalism, journalists, and editors will pay some attention to the commissioner’s findings and recommendations in that area.

But in the end, all of us are accountable. I hope, yet again, that this might be an occasion when New Zealanders think a little more deeply about our fundamental attitudes to children in our care. The serious way in which all colleagues in the House have talked about this matter this afternoon reflects, I think, the way that we all feel about it. We all want to change for the better what has happened. I hope that that determination can be reflected in every level of the New Zealand community, right now.

The two reports from the Commissioner for Children and the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services are a damning indictment on the Labour Government’s ability to provide a child welfare service that adequately caters for at-risk children. The reports are quite frightening. Again, they highlight systemic failure within the department. It is very easy for us in Parliament to forget that we are dealing with real people and bad things.

I want to put on the record what the commissioner reported about Saliel, who was 12, and Olympia, who was 11, each of whom were killed by a single knife wound on the night of 3 December 2001. According to the police, Saliel was found lying on her back surrounded by blood. She would have lost consciousness within a minute and died within 10 minutes. Olympia was found leaning over her bed in the prayer position. It could have taken anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours for her to die from blood loss. Their stepfather was convicted of their murders.

I say that we have to do something so that this situation does not happen again. It is so awful for members of Parliament to read these reports and to hear that Government departments have failed again in one way or another—whether by social workers, the police, or education services. It is easy for us to read that, but the reality is that it is children’s lives we are talking about. At-risk children are the most vulnerable children in society. The Department of Child, Youth and Family Services has tens of thousands of at-risk children to deal with. What all of us want to know in our hearts is that the Government has got its act together so that this sort of situation does not happen again. The really worrying thing about the reports is that they highlight the poor social work practice, the serious practice errors, and the flawed investigations that all contributed to the tragedy. But what comes through more than any of that is the fragmentation of social work in New Zealand, at every level.

The report states: “Many opportunities for appropriate interventions were lost because no single agency had the whole picture or a complete understanding of the risks present in their lives.” No one agency stepped back and asked: “What is going on here? Are these children safe?’ The report goes on to say that New Zealand has a fragmented approach to the well-being of children. While no lead agency is responsible for at-risk children, their rights, interests, and well-being will continue to be compromised. The most important finding in the reports is that we have service groups that try their hardest and do their best. But those services—none of them having the whole picture—do not understand the crisis that is developing and therefore do not act in a way that, after the fact, we wish they had.

The reports go on to confirm the vital role the education sector plays in the care and protection of children. It is the education system that sees these kids for most of the day. It notices whether things are going wrong. It is the first line of defence for children, yet it is not properly tied in with the process of painting the picture of what is happening in the children’s lives. The report also states that social workers failed to recognise the risk that family violence played in respect of those children—that in an environment where warfare was going on between parents, the children were in danger. It also stated that the police called at the house 18 times over a period of years, but, again, because they did not believe that in that environment of quite severe domestic family violence the children were at risk, they did not notify the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

Every time we read such a report, what comes back to us is that so many New Zealand children are born into families where they are loved, supported, and cared for, with parents and grandparents and the rest of the family who just fall head over heels in love with them and love them to bits. Yet other children are not born into such surroundings. It is to the Government that we turn for support and help for those children whose parents are failing them. I want to talk about what we should be doing about the situation we have in New Zealand today where children in tens of thousands of families are at risk every single day of their lives. Some of that is preventable, but I shall come back to that.

Page 16 of the Commissioner for Children’s report paints a picture of the lives Saliel and Olympia were leading. It states that in their short lives they lived in 10 homes, attended six different schools, lived in eight different towns and cities, and lived with grandparents for 2 years, having been removed from their mother’s care. They lived apart from their younger sister for 5 years; lived with their mother and two different partners, both of whom were violent; and lived in a house intermittently with up to 10 children for 4 years. They were exposed to 12 recorded incidents of violence, and at least 35 violent incidents were not reported. There was alleged abuse on at least five occasions. They had attended counselling intermittently since they were 3 and 4 years old. They were psychologically assessed by court order on at least two occasions, and they were monitored by the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services for nearly all their lives.

This is a family where the red alert flag should have been waving, where, when things happened to those kids, somebody should have stepped in. However, people can do that, I suppose, only if they know what else is going on with all of the other organisations also working with the children. The mother was 15 years old when she had her first child. She had Saliel when she was 19, and 20 months later had Olympia. There were five children living with that young mother in an unstable family environment—and we have to wonder why there were tragedies.

The Opposition—and the Government when in Opposition—always calls for fences to be built at the top of the cliff. We have ambulances at the bottom—the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, the police, and so on—but we need to do more to stop child abuse. The Children’s Commissioner has called for new community-based child protection teams. But that will not go far enough. We will have an organisation, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services—and we will have the police and all the other support agencies—and then we will have a brand new agency. The fragmentation will increase.

I believe that we need to do three things in New Zealand if we are to put a stop to the terrible legacy we have in this country of growing child abuse and if we are to take a stand of zero tolerance on that abuse. First, we need to do something about a welfare system that pays people to be irresponsible—to have children they cannot care for; to not realise they cannot rely on the taxpayer to give them a living all their lives, if they are able-bodied; to not realise that they have a responsibility to get out there to earn a living and fend for themselves and their families. We need welfare reform urgently, but not the sort that the Minister of Social Services talks about. We want to address the problem of long-term welfare dependence, and that involves women on the domestic purposes benefit, as well. Many women on the domestic purposes benefit have it as their aim to get off that benefit, because they know they will do better for their children by being out in the workforce. We need to encourage adoption for those families that genuinely cannot look after their children, because there are lots of families out there who can. When we come to child welfare, we need a one-stop shop, community-based agency, with police, welfare, education, and health officials working side by side, and with the police taking a stronger role in the investigation of child abuse and in the catching and sentencing of perpetrators.

I stand on behalf of United Future to express our huge regret that we even have to be speaking on this matter today. I commend the Office of the Commissioner for Children and Shannon Pakura from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services for the very honest reports they have written about the tragedies we are talking about today. The circumstances of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson prior to their deaths were nothing short of diabolic. Let us not for a minute assume that families of this level of dysfunction are rare. I appreciate that the Commissioner for Children has today in the newspaper challenged us as communities to ask ourselves questions about why we hesitate to report, why we hesitate to act, and why we stumble over the question of children in our neighbourhood about whose safety we are unsure of. I have been a classroom teacher, and I have known times of having serious doubts in my mind about what was going on in some children’s homes, and of being unclear as to when to act and when not to. We need to start to empower people who work directly with children to have the confidence to take the steps that need to be taken.

I am interested in why some groups I have spoken to in community schools and community groups have been reticent about approaching the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services with some of their concerns. The reason is the double-edged issues that have gone on with the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. In this situation, we look at what has obviously been a huge under-reaction to the situation of Olympia and Saliel and cases like James Whakaruru. But what has made people resistant to approaching the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and referring children to it, is the huge number of cases where there has been an enormous over-reaction.

I have recently met with social workers that knew of a family of eight children. The mum was not coping very well. There had been some concerns, and the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services went around to investigate. The house was a mess. The children were removed on the basis of neglect, and 18 months later they are still not back with their family, despite the fact that the principles in the Children, Young Persons, and their Families Act state that children should be returned to their families, where possible.

I am concerned about the pressure on the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services being the final stop and place of last resort. I am also concerned about the huge expectations on social workers who work for that organisation on a wide range of cases, and about the levels of criticality they have to respond to. We believe that child protection should be investigated by a team that has, at the end of an investigation, two clear options. One is that they should uplift the children for their protection, if that is deemed necessary. We also believe that when children are uplifted, the families from whom those children have been uplifted should be supported and encouraged to become a safe place to which those children can be returned, where possible. The other option is that families can be referred to one of the many fine community-based organisations that serve our local communities: to Family Start; to Family Help and the amazing work it does with high-risk families in Christchurch; to Te Aroha Nui in Palmerston North; to the Nest, run by the Salvation Army in Hamilton; and to the many branches of the James Family, supplied by Presbyterian Support Services. For social workers at the end of the line, it is hugely important to have that option of being able to refer cases that they do not think are serious enough for children to be uplifted.

When we look at Olympia and Saliel’s case, we find that there were social workers who had a long-term involvement with the family—and we applaud the fact that social workers should be able to work long term with families, but they should not be the same people who are called on to investigate when there is a worry about children’s safety. We look at the involvement of police in this case and find that they focused too much on the safety of adults during the 6 years of call-outs to domestic violence incidents. When we look at the school the two children attended, we find that one child was suspended, and a request was made at that time by the mother for counselling for the child. There was disclosure by the other child of violence, and a reluctance, noted by the school, by that child to go home, and we find that the neighbours were acutely aware of the level of domestic violence that was going on next door. A specialised investigative team, with a clear mandate to find all the pieces of the jigsaw, would have been able to assemble the picture very easily.

Instead, we have social workers who, in responding to a vast array of cases with a wide range of criticality rating from the call centre, are easily able to overlook or misread the facts. We have busy schoolteachers who cater for a large number of children and their diverse needs but who do not have all the information at their disposal. What is of most concern about these findings? Yes, there are policies and procedures in place to deal with complex cases, but they were not followed. The department said that the normal checks and balances of care and protection systems did not operate in this case, and we need to be assured that those checks and balances are properly in place. There is the problem with familiarity, and United Future believes that if we were to have a specialised team that focused just on those high criticality cases, with an investigative role to bring together all the pieces of the jigsaw that are often out there, we might not be facing the situation we have today. The police, who completed 12 family violence reports and referred the girls’ mum to the Women’s Refuge, would have referred the children to the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services if they had for a minute considered the children to be in immediate danger. The problem is that the Masterton office of the department believes itself to be under-resourced. However, the department is not able to evaluate even whether it was underfunded, because there is no workload assessment tool to see whether social workers are overworked. We believe that the need for that assessment is urgent.

I finish by making the point that the case of these two girls and the appalling manner in which they died is, I believe, the tip of the iceberg. There are literally thousands of children in this country who have been shifted from school to school, from house to house, and from home to home—as we heard the previous speaker read out from the report. They are probably as at risk as those two girls were. We must do everything in our power as members of Parliament to change the environment in which social workers, teachers, and the police work. We must also be party to the Commissioner for Children’s call for community responsiveness, in order that neighbours will take the courageous step of making the reports they need to make. We need to look very seriously at the way we are delivering our services, and United Future will support any initiative to that end.

It gives me no pleasure to speak in this debate. As a previous Minister of Social Welfare, I want to start by saying how disappointed I am that the Minister has not seen fit to stay in the Chamber to listen to the debate. I cannot believe that the Minister would not stay here and take the medicine and the responsibility for that which he is paid to take. Instead, he has decided to go and hide in his office.

I was the Minister of Social Welfare in November 1998 when a young girl, a child of 8, was seriously sexually abused, after the department in south Auckland had been notified that she was seriously at risk but had not taken the notification seriously. I remember full well that the responsibility for that came home to me as the Minister, and we instituted a couple of things. Firstly, an independent inquiry was instituted, which has not happened in this case. The office of the Commissioner for Children is having a look at it, but we had an independent barrister come and have a look. We made recommendations to change the way that office operated—I will come back to those changes in a minute—and I apologised to the family. Yet here we are today debating not the rape of an 8-year-old, which is hugely serious, but the deaths of two young girls—and the Minister has not apologised. He has not seen fit—

💬 David Benson-Pope: This is pathetic.

Oh, Mr Benson-Pope thinks that is pathetic. He might think the death of two small children is pathetic, but some of us take it seriously. I had the courage to sit in this House during the debate on that earlier case, and I had the courage to apologise. The Minister should do the same, and Mr Benson-Pope should stop laughing. Two young girls died—

💬 David Benson-Pope: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Sowry just put a deliberate untruth into the Hansard. I ask him to withdraw and apologise. I was certainly not laughing.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member said he was not laughing. The member speaking will withdraw that comment, and carry on.

I withdraw. The member should stop smiling. Two young girls died—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No. We have ruled on that point of order. I want nothing further about it, please.

Two young girls died, and the Minister should be here to listen to the debate and make sure he understands the outrage that this Parliament feels. I will not go through all the details of this case, because others have done that, but I want to say a few things. Firstly, the notification went to the roopu team from the Masterton office. That is the exact replica of what happened in the south Auckland office. There are racially based teams of social workers who are unable to cope with a huge workload, so a notification that comes into the office is classified not on need, or danger, but on race.

We know that in this country we have an over-representation of Māori and Pacific Island children coming to notification in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. We do not like it, but it is a fact, and we have an under-representation of Māori and Pacific Island staff in the department. That is a fact. I know that the department is trying to solve it, but it will take time. So when political correctness overtakes common sense, social workers end up being overworked. I am not blaming social workers. There are teams of them out there ripping their hearts out because of this case. It has probably ruined and ended some careers. But I am blaming a Government that is so hell-bent on instituting political correctness right through the State sector that when a young Māori kid gets notified to the department, he or she has to be dealt with by the Māori social work team—not by the social worker who has the time and expertise to deal with the child.

That is a nonsense; it is an outrage—and it may have cost those girls their lives. We must stop it. We must be big enough to say that we are not going to have social workers deciding in their offices to set themselves up in racially based teams. That is what they did in South Auckland, and that is what, as Minister, I stopped. I apologised to the family concerned—but the Minister today has done neither. I would hope that the one thing that can come out of this—probably the only thing—is that the Minister will say: “I’m going to make sure we do not have racially based teams, any more.”

We instituted a red light system in south Auckland—some members will remember it—so that when the phone call came into the office, was a serious notification, and needed to be dealt with immediately, the person who took the phone call switched on a red light. It was as simple as that. There was a great big red light on the wall, and no one went home until it was switched off. That meant the case was being dealt with. It was pretty basic, but it was recommended by the barrister who looked into the office and tried to make sure that we did not have cases such as this that fell through the cracks. Now we have another one.

This Government has huge surpluses. It pats itself on the back every day in the House about all the money it has, but none of it has been invested in Strengthening Families. The report says that Strengthening Families was not even notified of those two kids. Why not? Because this Government does not like Strengthening Families. It is not politically correct to strengthen families, and Strengthening Families teams get no resources. Does Strengthening Families get one dollar in the Wairarapa? No, it does not, and I have checked—not a dollar. Not one dollar anywhere in the region goes to Strengthening Families. No new Family Starts, no new social workers in schools, and not a thing to pick up cases early on—nothing. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace.

Those programmes might not have saved those two young girls. The tragedy is that family violence in this country is not the responsibility of an agency, and I do not want to blame the agency, because it is something we all have to take responsibility for. When we hear the neighbour losing it with the children, how many of us walk inside and shut the doors, when what we should be doing is seeing if things are OK? It is not a matter of being nosey parkers, but there is stuff we can do. It is time we changed our attitudes about family violence in this country. All parties believe that. More important, it is time the Minister at least apologised to the family concerned, and it is time the Minister took some responsibility, instead of hiding in his office.

It is with some relief that these two reports into the deaths of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson have now been publicly released into the public arena. The release has been long awaited, certainly by myself. With regard to the reports directly, I think eloquent words have been spoken today by most members who have contributed to this debate. Having read through the reports, I would like to congratulate the authors of both of them on the information contained inside. I concur with their findings, with their views, and with the recommendations they have made. More than most members in this House, I have been closely associated not only with this particular tragic event, but also with several others that have occurred in the Wairarapa over the past decade. One other member of this House has had a close association with those matters, and is Edwin Perry of New Zealand First. He and I have concurred on a number of occasions about what we can do about this problem.

What I would like to offer the House is this: after politicians and other public commentators have vented their spleens and tried to point the fickle finger of fate at whoever they believe should take the most blame or responsibility for it, one thing is certain, and it is that the entire nation has to take responsibility for the domestic violence dealt out to the children of our society. I believe that this country, and not just my own community, would like to endeavour to do that, and so I ask my colleagues to put the politics aside. It does not move the matter forward if we stand here bitching and—excuse me, I will withdraw and apologise for that—whingeing, at least, over what is the best way to do it.

We need to support input from all our various and diverse communities on the best way to deal with these matters in our own localities and what suits us best, because one size will not fit all. The overarching departments that have the substantive responsibilities, such as the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and other social agencies, also need to look and review—as the baseline review for that service did. Many other reports that have come out subsequently have alluded to the improvements that must be made, and we can do it.

After the deaths of Saliel and Olympia, and because of the outrage of the Masterton and Wairarapa community, the House may recall that I reported—on the infrequent occasions I had the opportunity to speak in general debates—on what that community was doing, and, in particular, on the “Rise Above It” campaign. I dispute Mr Sowry’s statement that nothing has been put into our area since that particular time. In fact, a meeting is occurring in Masterton today, facilitated by the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, to extend the role of everyday communities. What we did after those deaths in starting the “Rise Above It” campaign in the Wairarapa was the beginning of the community taking greater responsibility.

As mentioned in the Commissioner for Children’s report, the community had a role to play in the breakdown of that family. That community in its anger reacted and said: “Come on, leadership. Get it together and show us the way!” The community first approached the Mayor of Masterton, and then I became involved, and we tried to do that. I am no expert in these things, nor necessarily is the Mayor of Masterton, but we took the best advice we could. I did bang on the doors of the Minister for Social Development and Employment and others responsible, and I have to say to Mr Sowry that we were somewhat comforted by the immediate reaction. Too little, too late, would be the counter-argument that somebody might make, but I do not care about that. Better late than never! Let us move on and improve what we are doing.

I would like to pay my respects to this particular family, who, as these reports make clear, endured for many years the hellish life that ended up in this tragic event. I would like also to acknowledge the extended whānau, the immediate community, and the wider community of New Zealand, whose hearts have been torn by these experiences—not just by this particular event, but by numerous well-documented others that have occurred in the Wairarapa and elsewhere around the country.

In conclusion, I want to make the point again to my colleagues: let us make politics minimal in this debate, and let us look for resolution, solution, and the collaboration of ideas. Picking the best out of that may be where we can, as a country, move forward on this matter.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.