KEY POINTS:
Merikoura Wiki shares the frustration of parents whose children have been expelled from school. She also knows what to do about it.
The 62-year-old teacher at Te Kao School once asked Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples about problem students in the days when he ran a kura kaupapa Maori (Maori-language school) in West Auckland.
"I noticed that they didn't have any expulsions from kura kaupapa Maori," she says. "He said they found people to mentor them and put them into jobs."
This survey came across numerous teachers, parents and others devoted to doing their best with difficult youngsters.
Howick early childhood teacher Rebecca Rayner, 26, has worked as a youth mentor at health camps and believes more is needed.
"For the people who come out of prison there should be some mentoring or rehabilitation back into society," she says.
Rotorua's Benjamin Way, 24, came out of jail himself this year and is excited about a medium-intensity rehabilitation course he has just finished. It taught him for the first time about his own emotions and how to manage risky situations.
"They need to be teaching this sort of thing in schools," he says. "You need to learn about yourself."
Voters agree. In words used for an attempted referendum that was to have run with next year's vote on the "smacking" law, this survey asked people about the wider causes of, and solutions to, the problems of "family breakdown, family violence and child abuse".
Not surprisingly, voters nominate alcohol (166 mentions), drugs (125), money worries (110) and the inter-generational cycle of violence (90).
Tougher penalties (40 mentions) come up more often than any other "solution".
But as well as a hard line, people also want much more antenatal education for new parents covering budgeting, healthy diet and other practical parenting skills (28 mentions), more practical teaching on similar lines in schools (23) and more education in general (35).
They want more social work support for families, including a clear agency to go to for help (25), more financial support for families (13), more jobs (12), higher wages (11) and more community involvement such as mentoring (10).
