We all know those kids where we think something is not quite right. The kids who never seem to have enough to eat. The ones with no shoes and the mums who are really struggling with no family backup, and have not the wherewithal or the time to access outside help.
They're the kids who trail along with a bunch of others who end up staying for lunch and you realise they've never eaten a watermelon before or sat a table to eat a meal. The ones you need to advise before you walk up behind them or tap them on a shoulder.
It's easy to blame. It's much harder to make abuse stop. There's such a lot of it for a start.
Every second day in New Zealand a child ends up in hospital due to assault, neglect or maltreatment ranging from trauma to broken legs.
About half of these kids are under 5 and the number is likely to be under-reported. Every year on average between 10 to 14 children are victims of homicide. If we had 10 children a year die of measles it would be an epidemic and a flood of medical support would go in to wipe it out.
The causes of child abuse are more complex and problematic to address.
While endemic poverty does not contribute positively to anything it cannot be said to be the direct cause of this level of violence against children. If it did then most children in the 1930s Great Depression, like my grandfather and his 13 siblings, who had to run a tab at the local store and then pay the food off by working on the owner's farm, would have been beaten every day. And they just weren't.
There is no doubt that mental health issues caused or compounded by addiction are a contributing factor and that there is very little in the way of free, professional psychological community care.
Often the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is the local school, expected to pick up the tab for at-risk or traumatised kids with scant resources or powers to do so.
It's hard to step in and try to help, and it can be embarrassing, nerve-wracking and dangerous.
No excuses; means it still has to be done.
