CYF would have engaged with Kahuis if told of environment, inquest hears

Coroner Garry Evans hearing evidence at the twin's inquest. Photo / NZH

Child, Youth and Family would "almost certainly" have got involved with the Kahui family had it known of the hostile environment the premature twins were living in, the agency's deputy chief executive told a coroner's court today.

Coroner Garry Evans is hearing evidence in an inquest into the deaths of three-month-old Chris and Cru Kahui to see what can be learned from the tragedy.

CYF deputy chief executive Ray Smith told the court the child protection agency would have at least conducted ongoing monitoring of the Kahuis, had they been informed of the family's history of violence.

It was impossible to say what action CYF would have taken, or what affect involvement could have had, he said.

"Sometimes the engagement of CYF changes things, even engagement with a CYF social worker might have changed things just by way of conversation."

Mr Smith also discussed the possibility of making reporting suspected child abuses to the police or CYF mandatory, as is the case in Australia.

While this was "certainly worth thinking about", he said, the country's child protection services could perhaps rather improve the systems already in place.

A downside to mandatory reporting, as experienced in Australia, was that it created a greater number of notifications which meant less attention was paid to more urgent cases.

CYF had seen a "phenomenal" increase in the number of notifications it had received since 2003: in the 2009-2010 financial year, they received over 124,000 notifications, of which nearly half required further attention.

In 2004, there were 3500 children awaiting attention from CYF workers, while there are currently less than 100, he said.

The Kahui family's support worker Manaaki Poto also continued giving evidence at the inquest this morning.

She spoke of feeling partly responsible for the twins' deaths because she did not raise concerns she had about their welfare after she saw their mother being rough with them.

She mimicked for the coroner the rough way she had seen Macsyna King "dump" one of her babies into his cot and aggressively change his nappy.

After the twins' deaths, she requested to be moved to another ward and had since changed her approach to her job, she said.

"If I ever see any aggression now I report it immediately or discuss it with the relevant people."

The doctor who first assessed the twins' fatal injuries, Gopinath Nayar, has also finished giving evidence.

Conducting a brief assesment of the twins, he instructed Macsyna King and father Chris Kahui to urgently take the children to hospital after shining a torch into their glazed, unresponsive eyes and ascertaining they had suffered neurological damage.

- NZPA