Estimates Debate — Vote Child, Youth and Family Services

I just want to touch on a few issues, because United Future has a very strong interest in this particular agency. Some very recent research has revealed that 80 percent of children murdered in New Zealand in recent years were not known to child protection agencies, prompting child advocates to urge people to dob in abuse. The Canterbury University research to be published next month found that only nine out of the 47 children murdered between 1996 and the year 2000 had been referred to the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. “Most people think that when a baby dies CYFS must have known, but in four out of five cases that is not the case.” That is a quote from researcher and former chief social worker Mike Doolan.

So the figures demonstrate that the people best able to help are not professional social workers but neighbours, friends, and family. A study of 91 child homicides from 1991 to 2000 found that almost two-thirds of the children were under 5, which is too young for them to come to the notice of teachers or social workers in schools. More than a quarter—26 percent—were under the age of 1. Most were killed by their parents, and a quarter of them by their mothers or other relatives.

United Future has put forward a policy platform for the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and it is a solution that supports the development of a system that supports families to ask for help early. Departmental officials admit that many notifications they receive are actually about family support needs. So the question that has to be asked is why they are not channelled to family support services. The question has to be asked which agencies genuinely have real contact with families, young children, and babies. They are obvious: the Plunket Society, midwives, and general practitioners are more likely to have regular contact with families of extremely young children than any other agency. Yet, from talking to those agencies, particularly some of the Plunket nurses, one finds that they feel that the advice they have to offer about what they are seeing up and down the country, in people’s homes as they go in to attend to mothers with young babies, is not wanted. They are told: “Stick to your job—we’re not interested in hearing your information.” It makes absolutely no sense at all that very effective agencies that are making real contact, and getting real insight into homes where there is genuine risk, are then unable to pass that information on or be given some sort of credibility when they ask for help.

The number of suspected child abuse cases has soared to a new high, with 10,000 more complaints reported to the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services in the past year. In the year ended 30 June the department received 43,414 notifications of child abuse. That was an increase—get this—of 10,212 cases, or 30.8 percent, on the same period 12 months earlier. For social agencies, the most worrying aspect has been the rise in the number of suspected critical cases—those where the department is required to act within 24 hours. Those numbers were up dramatically in every part of the country. Nationally, critical cases were up by 41.1 percent.

What United Future is proposing, and what we implore of the Government, based on the fact that there are thousands of cases of children in the in trays of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, waiting to be allocated case managers, is that we separate out the two key functions of this organisation, so that they can stop competing with each other for the precious resources available. We want child protection handled completely separately from the other important mandate of the Act, which is the prevention of child abuse in the first place. If the notifications coming in are largely about low-risk to medium-risk cases where the need is for support, let us get those cases out to those agencies that already exist in our communities by the dozen that are well equipped with highly qualified staff, and well able and keen as mustard to be given the opportunity and the resourcing to step into the breach.

I thank the member who has just resumed her seat, not just for that contribution but also for her support for a department that is often the subject of political criticism in a way that is sometimes unfair. I also thank her for the acknowledgment of the hard work that the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services does around the country—work that is often unacknowledged from a political perspective.

At the Social Services Committee, we enjoyed quite a lot of debate about the way that the department has improved over the last little while, primarily as a result of the baseline review. The focus of that review on the core functions of the department has enabled the department to start moving away from the “we are all things to all people” sort of attitude that was really part of the culture of the organisation before. The department is very focused now on meeting its statutory responsibilities, but it has also showed an incredible ability to link in much better with our community organisations, which provide services that link in very well with the department. One of the issues we discussed was how to ensure that the community organisations were able to pick up work at different levels. One of the considerations now being undertaken is the checking of our legislation, to ensure that the statutory requirements that are clearly the work and the responsibility of Department of Child, Youth and Family Services social workers are maintained, but that we ensure we have a process whereby other work that could be done by non-statutory social workers is able to be picked up by the community. That is a really exciting challenge for us in the future, and I look forward to being able to report back to the select committee on that in the next little while.

Obviously, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services has been considerably strengthened by the increase in resources. It has had Dr Russ Ballard as its acting chief executive for the last little while. Dr Ballard finishes that job on this coming Friday, and I would like to place on record my admiration for the tremendous leadership he has undertaken in that position during what has been a very significant period of change. Next Monday we will welcome the new chief executive, Paula Tyler, who is from Alberta. I am sure she will be very warmly welcomed as part of the public service in New Zealand.

Some of the key highlights we discussed at the select committee were the family group conferences. Although those conferences are often not recognised in New Zealand, internationally they are regarded as a leadership model in dealing with family problems, in terms of ensuring there are links in with the different social services agencies, and in terms of ensuring the responsibility of both those agencies and, more important, the family are recognised and supported through to implementation. We have also recruited 17 permanent social workers.

One of the issues Judy Turner raised in her speech in the debate was the fact that a number of children come back into the care of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and that is clearly a problem. It has happened because in the past we have focused far too much on quantity, rather than on quality. We have a much clearer focus now on the quality of the interventions we undertake, and that will reduce the number of children who come back through the system. But in the last 6 months, we have had record numbers of notifications to the department, and that, of course, was discussed with the select committee, as well. For me as the Minister, it is a bit of a rock and a hard place, frankly. Of course we would like to have no child abuse at all in our community; that would be the ideal in the view of all the members of this Committee, I am sure. But where there is child abuse, we want it to be notified. So by encouraging the debate on and zero tolerance for child abuse, we actually increase the pressure on notifications. Our responsibility is to make sure that we are there when it counts—that when the phone rings, we have a total system in place to deliver services that are able to ensure our children are safe, that they are in strong families that are free from abuse, neglect, and offending, and that those families can contribute positively to the wider community.

Since we reported last year on the estimates, I have seen a tremendous lift in the confidence and the competence of the department, driven and supported by the baseline review, and I am certainly very proud to be its Minister.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Senior Citizens agreed to.

Vote Women's Affairs agreed to.

Vote Lands