CYFS gets 3 out of 10 for child care

Church social services have given the Government a "fail" mark for care and protection of children.

The Christian Council of Social Services, representing the six main churches involved in social work, says the Government has produced "a lot of paper" in the past six years, but has failed to protect children.

In the past four years, substantiated cases of abuse or neglect have risen by 62 per cent to 10,687.

Spokesman Shaun Robinson, who runs Presbyterian Support in Hawkes Bay, said there was a huge amount of frustration among agencies working with families at the lack of effective moves to do anything about it.

"If this was an outbreak of typhoid that was killing and maiming our children, the whole nation would unite behind a plan to end it," he said.

"Why on earth can't we understand this is the same? There is no simple quick fix, but there are solutions."

The council rates the Government:

* One out of 10 for having "a systematic approach". It said Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) had been restructured at least five times since 1992 and politicians were "clutching at straws" for answers.

* Two out of 10 for clarifying who does what about the problem.

* Two out of 10 for co-ordinating all the state and community agencies involved.

* Four out of 10 for funding. CYFS' budget had been increased, but "no serious effort has been made to improve resourcing to non-government preventive services".

* Five out of 10 for "doing the right things", including efforts to give young people permanent placements instead of repeated short-term ones.

* Five out of 10 for training more social workers and paying them adequately.

Overall, the council put the score at three out of 10. It called for devolving more funding to community agencies such as the churches, especially for preventive work with families rather than waiting for a crisis.

"By its nature, this requires trust on the part of the families involved, and this is built by long-term involvement in local communities," it said.

Mr Robinson said CYFS could not develop that trust because of frequent staff turnover. He works as a volunteer with a 16-year-old youth who has had 10 CYFS social workers in four years.

The report also calls for disbanding CYFS' national call centre in Grey Lynn, where about 70 staff take all calls from the public. Instead, it says calls should be handled by local CYFS staff who know local families.

But CYFS' general manager of operations, Lorraine Williams, said calls were already passed on by the call centre to local staff within minutes if necessary. "If you go to local call centres you will get inconsistent threshold management," she said.

Peter Hughes, the head of the Social Development Ministry, said the report was highly selective, unbalanced and unfair. He will meet the council next month.