Tapu Misa: Well done Sir Bob, but the kids at home need help too

It's not that I don't feel for the starving children of Africa or appreciate Bob Geldof's efforts to Make Poverty History. I applaud the sentiment, I do, even if reports I've read of the extravaganza that was Live 8 seem a tad churlish, focused as they were on the bemusement of many Africans towards the event that set out to save them.

Apparently, it all seemed too removed for them to take more than a passing interest. Which is how I felt. I confess I was more interested in the children here at home.

Of course, I realise that many people - including those clamouring for tax cuts to relieve their suffering - don't believe we have poverty in this country. How can you compare the swollen bellies of hungry African children to the rampant obesity we see in South Auckland? Poverty? Give me a break. Better still, give those lazy bludgers a job and see how they like having to work for a change.

Some time we could go into the reasons relative poverty, as opposed to absolute poverty, matters in a society such as ours, why we're still paying (in health, education and crime-prevention dollars) for the yawning gaps in wealth which the monetarist policies we know as Rogernomics brought us. But right now I'd rather talk about the children - the victims of those policies.

Last week, for example, I sat on a high-school disciplinary committee that decided to exclude (the new word for expel) a 13-year-old. His behavioural problems began in primary school, yet there he was, quietly spoken and contrite, already beyond any help the school could give him.

We asked him where he thought his actions would take him. To prison, he said. I feared he was right, though I don't think he really knew what that meant.

We could have blamed his exhausted and defeated single mother, who could trace her path in life to a similar educational experience, and cried when she was told. But it was clear that she was a victim, too.

A couple of days later I read in the Weekend Herald the comments of Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft about criminal offenders being identifiable at the age of 3. It made for a dramatic headline, but it is not as far-fetched as it might seem.

When child psychologist Dr Bruce Perry visited New Zealand earlier this year he showed brain scans of two 3-year-olds, one of whom had suffered "extreme neglect". The brain of the "normal" child was around a third larger than the neglected child.

We are not all that sympathetic towards those who exhibit a "victim mentality", yet it is clear that those who suffer extreme trauma, especially when young, undergo physiological changes.

As Dr Perry says: "The family, community, or society that understands and values its children thrives - the society that does not isdestined to fail." No one in their right minds would disagree. But if societies are judged by the way they care for their most vulnerable members, would we measure up?

I have to wonder when a Herald Digipoll finds more than 71 per cent of us think it's okay to keep legislation that allows parents to get away with a "reasonable" degree of abuse.

If some people judge an electric cord to be reasonable, is that okay with the rest of us? But, hey, we mustn't interfere with the way other people raise their children.

Speaking at a child summit last week, the former Children's Commissioner, Dr Ian Hassall, was critical of Government and Opposition policy, which focused on mothers returning to work. He is part of the Every Child Counts drive, which seeks to put children at the centre of party policy.

Personally, I don't care what the political parties think. It's what the voters think that drives policy.

Judge Becroft and Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro think early intervention is the key. I do too, especially after being confronted by a 13-year-old I couldn't help - and still can't get out of my mind.

Let me take you to a one-stop early intervention programme that has been running for more than a decade, but still isn't replicated in communities that need it.

A few months ago, the family services workers at the Kelvin Rd Whanau Centre in Papakura had a call from the principal of the school next door. He had a father who was in tears, angry and distraught after learning that his children were being abused by his ex-wife's boyfriend.

His eldest told him how the boyfriend had picked up the 3-year-old and pushed his head against the wall, how the boyfriend had thrown a beer bottle at them, how they'd been left alone at nights while mum and the boyfriend had gone to the pub.

On one of those cold nights, they had turned on the electric fire and the boyfriend, on arriving home, had hauled them out of their beds and thrown them across the room. The 3-year-old was no longer talking, and the 8-year-old had begun wetting her bed. "Here comes pisspot," the boyfriend would say.

An outsider might have concluded the solution was simple. Clearly, the children weren't safe with their mother and should live with their father, Tama. But as they know only too well at the whanau centre, it's never that easy. Unravelling Tama's problems was like peeling an onion. Imagine how you would have coped with a bipolar mother who said you were a waste of time, or a father who was never there.

Imagine somehow getting a job, despite the stealing and the gang involvement, then getting a wife you were in love with and kids - only to discover your wife with the man who would become her boyfriend.

Imagine becoming suicidal and ending up in a halfway house, so heavily medicated that you pull a knife and threaten others.

What would you prescribe for Tama, after he had heard that his children weren't being looked after, that they had sores and were going to school without lunch?

Talk to the social workers and you will hear about a multiplicity of problems which defy easy solutions. In Tama's case, they spent months getting him out of the caravan park where he was staying, and arranging counselling for his anger problems.

Then there were the Family Court hearings so he could have custody of his children, and then helping him to find a house, scrounge furniture and shift in.

There's a happy ending - at least for now. Tama got the kids and got on the DPB. He is a great father, the family centre workers tell me, and the children are well cared for.