Abuse register vital, says report

By JOSIE CLARKE and FRAN MOLD

A central register is the key to social agencies effectively sharing information about abused children, says former Commissioner for Children Ian Hassall.

New protocols to ensure that Child, Youth and Family Services, the Department of Corrections and a child's doctors and Plunket nurses share information about suspected abuse are outlined in a report on recommendations made after the death of abused toddler James Whakaruru.

While Dr Hassall supported the new protocols, he said a central register was more important if social agencies were to build a complete picture of a child's welfare.

"Episodic visits by one service or another are really not going to do the job without reference to some central database, with all the safeguards, that the different services have access to and can build on."

The report, by a panel chaired by Dame Margaret Bazley, was released yesterday. It found 46 of the 59 recommendations made by Commissioner for Children Roger McClay after his investigation into James' death have been completed or are well advanced.

Work on six others is due to start soon, and seven have been superseded by related work.

Social Services Minister Steve Maharey said the report was the Government's response to the community's desire to find ways to make sure what happened to James would not happen to other children.

But he said it must also be remembered that it was most importantly about a little boy who was murdered.

"It is very important to remember there was a little boy who lost his life."

He said that now most of the recommendations had been implemented he was confident another child would not slip through the gaps, as James had.

"One child's death is too many. But I can't give guarantees there isn't someone out there who will hurt a child."

The Government would also look at whether to amend present legislation or create a Care of Children Bill.

Mr Maharey said CYFS had been run down by the previous Government and the Coalition was rebuilding it.

Social workers numbers had risen by 50 to 60 since the Government took over and staff were staying longer.

Mr Maharey said two options needed to be considered.

One was an at-risk register, which would raise questions about the difficulties of reliability, and the other a national register for all children from birth, which would require considerable work.

He said the Government was not keen to make reporting of suspected child abuse mandatory because there was no research showing that this improved detection rates.