Dialogue: Far too many children falling through cracks

By CATRIONA MACLENNAN*

Why do we do so little in New Zealand to protect at-risk children?

Why is Child Youth and Family Services persistently and grossly underfunded?

Why is there no public groundswell for action to protect children from abuse and neglect?

Why was there no urgent additional funding in the Budget?

More than 150 judges, social workers, family lawyers, school principals, domestic violence workers, police and local authority workers met in Auckland last week to discuss ways to work together better to protect children.

Auckland CYFS area manager John Holt presented the sobering statistic that more than 7000 referrals of children in this region were made in the past year. About 6000 required follow-up work, and 1400 were deemed urgent and needing intervention within 48 hours.

That means four children at risk in the Auckland region every day of the year.

Starship paediatrician Patrick Kelly noted that his team received 600 to 800 referrals a year involving allegations of child abuse. Starship each year sees two to four children die from abuse.

Medical students spend two hours in their five-year degrees dealing with child abuse and neglect. Only 1 per cent of referrals to CYFS come from GPs, despite doctors seeing abused children regularly.

Westmere Primary School principal Peter Kerr said a proliferation of agencies, agencies protecting their patches and a tendency to hide behind the Privacy Act had increased the chances of children falling through the cracks.

And Auckland region police commander Howard Broad noted that offending by young people in the past decade had remained relatively stable: a small number of young people committed a large number of dishonesty offences.

There is a high correlation between youth offending and physical and sexual abuse, witnessing of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, and not being brought up in the young person's own family.

Lawyer Paul Treadwell said CYFS was grossly and bewilderingly underfunded. The result was that social workers were overworked and depressed, and had blunted perceptions. CYFS had fallen into blatant disregard of some of its legal obligations, with increasing delays in reporting to the Family Court about children.

Key concerns identified by the forum were the lack of coordination and cooperation between agencies, underfunding, the lack of a national register of children at risk, constant changes in agencies and the community over the past 15 years, few turnaround programmes for young people, inadequate training and a lack of research about at-risk and dying children.

So what can be done ?

More funding for CYFS is urgently required. The agency is simply unable to protect children properly because it has the resources to act only on the most urgent matters. Up to 200 cases may be unallocated at a time in the Auckland region because the agency lacks the staff to deal with them.

Staff shortages place increased pressure on social workers, contributing to staff turnover and the transfer of cases through several hands. Criticism of the agency without associated action to provide it with additional resources demoralises staff and has a corrosive effect.

New Zealand needs to seriously consider whether mandatory reporting of child abuse should be introduced. The last time this was proposed, it was not implemented because there were fears it would exacerbate the risk of child abuse being driven underground and children not being taken to doctors.

However, mandatory reporting is law in many other jurisdictions and the time has come to look at it again.

A national register of at-risk children should be established, so that they can be tracked. As recent publicity has highlighted, abused children often disappear from sight as they move around and are dealt with by a number of different doctors and other professionals, who, typically, are unaware of their history.

Other parts of New Zealand should follow the Auckland initiative of developing a one-stop shop for dealing with child abuse. CYFS and other agencies have for the past 18 months been working on developing a multi-agency centre which would see police, doctors, social workers, Crown Law Office staff and community groups located at one venue to provide a comprehensive approach.

The Auckland centre will open early next year.

Other moves to increase cooperation between groups dealing with children are urgently needed.

Examples include the appointment of key workers to deal with cases, and regular weekly meetings to review progress.

This means that one person is responsible for taking action, and that others monitor implementation. Similarly, full-service clusters involving eight to 10 schools with Plunket nurses, public health nurses and youth-aid workers located on one site mean that professionals can interact with one another and get to know families, schools and teachers.

A legal requirement for mandatory review of every child's death would mean that systems could be improved and measures taken to ensure that mistakes were not repeated.

Mandatory review would also mean that research could be undertaken to provide an accurate picture of child abuse and neglect.

More support is required for families at risk, and from a very early stage. Parental education is needed. Families with abused children are in stressful and traumatic situations which cannot be speedily cured.

Additional programmes for at-risk young people are also needed. One programme operates in Auckland and another in South Auckland to work intensively with 13 to 15-year-olds in a bid to turn their lives around. The courses are expensive but successful.

Mr Treadwell called on those attending last week's forum to create a new national passion about child protection. He said public interest needed to be awakened, and more lobbying was required for children at risk.

He advocated mandatory reporting of child abuse across the board, and asked why a next-door neighbour should be able to draw the curtains and turn up the radio because he did not want to be involved.

Former chief Youth Court Judge Mick Brown, who is conducting a review of CYFS for the Government, said the problems were intergenerational and could not be quickly remedied.

The first question is one to be addressed to the mirror: "What can I do?"

* Catriona MacLennan is a lawyer for Nga Ture Kaitiaki Ki Waikato Community Law Centre in Otahuhu.