KEY POINTS:
Both major political leaders made youth crime - and ways of combating it - a major focus of their initial speeches this year. Their proposals amount to what I would call "secondary intervention".
But why are we ignoring primary involvement, when seemingly unquestioned research indicates that it is the first three years that are critically important?
The research indicates (from brain scanning and imaging) that the human brain develops very rapidly in infancy. That is when the brain is effectively "wired", for learning and for socialisation.
It is considered that up to 85 per cent of brain development occurs in the first three years. That is when the brain's neurons get connected. There are "windows of opportunity" in those first three years that, if not opened up for a child, delimit the development of the brain.
The adult brain of a disadvantaged, neglected and abused infant can be limited to the basic reactions - fight, flight or freeze. The worst of these from a societal perspective is obviously "fight".
Recently Colin James in his Tuesday column suggested that "when it comes to memorialise Labour's fifth spell in office, it may be remembered most lastingly for early childhood education" - whilst also observing that "a great deal more [still] needs to be done to find and rescue the 0-3s at risk".
Even by the time of the proposed pre-school checks, between ages 3 and 5, the damage can have been done. We need to start from the beginning, from birth, indeed even with greater pre-natal involvement.
The greater level of support proposed by the Government for the community organisations that work for parents and the under-3s is most welcome. We are getting there. But what are the additional steps that still need to be taken?
It is my firm belief that without universal assessment, at or proximate to birth, to identify children considered to be at significant risk, there will still be those who miss out - children not primed for learning or socialisation, many of them destined to form part of a disaffected and very costly "underclass".
Not necessarily in the same street or the same area. Scattered throughout the country, but inevitably more concentrated in the lower socio-economic areas.
At the same time, we cannot afford to assume that power and control issues, domestic violence, drug and alcohol addictions and mental ill health - all of which can impact detrimentally on children - do not also occur in more affluent areas.
To my mind, the assessment should be neither the significant nor the expensive element. It can readily form part of the standard work of health professionals - midwives, obstetricians, maternity and Plunket nurses and general practitioners. It should not be greatly different from the domestic violence assessment for hospitalised women.
Anything less than a universal assessment is both hit and miss and socially discriminatory - albeit that the prime objective will be targeted supplementary practical assistance.
So why might the Government not be prepared to go down this road? Perhaps because it does not wish to be accused of more "social engineering", particularly after its support of the inappropriately designated "anti-smacking legislation".
However important in principle, to restore the balance in favour of significantly abused children, it was perceived as telling parents how they must parent and that this must be smack-free. It was also perceived by some as only tinkering with the situation and I have to confess to being largely in this camp.
Practical support and assistance, on the other hand, is not telling parents how they must parent. It is providing in the home support and assistance, based on the best up-dated research available as to what generally works and what does not.
Most of us can do with supplementary support and assistance for one of the hardest jobs of all: good parenting. We have been providing just money - the domestic purposes benefit - to the parents of many children at significant risk.
Admittedly some of these parents will not be the easiest to assist. But it should not be impossible to find and support the community organisations to do so, particularly when better funded and resourced.
Most parents want to parent their children and to parent them well. Some, because of their own background need more support than others.
If they, in fact, don't really want their children we need to know as soon as possible before the damage is done and the children have become very difficult to foster, whether by family, whanau or independently.
I should add that in addition to the initial assessment proximate to birth I favour subsequent universal health and welfare assessments at specified ages to pick up earlier on changed circumstances and the earliest possible signs of psychopathic or other criminological tendencies.
We need to know who are our children at risk, where they are, who is looking after them and with what success. To prevent just one child becoming a William Bell, Taffy Hotene, Peter Howse or Bruce Howse (whose respective childhoods have been shown on Nigel Latta's TV One programme, Real Crime: Into the Darklands) is to save hundreds of thousands of dollars - in financial cost alone, without taking any account of the horrendous social and emotional costs to victims, their families and indeed to the local community.
So why isn't John Key promoting a better start for children at risk? He talks of the "underclass" and our need to eliminate it. His party opted out of the all-party committee to consider the needs of infant children following the deaths of the Kahui twins.
That was on the grounds that insufficient progress was being made. Is he being held back by members of his own caucus? Do they think he's doing well enough as it is?
In his state of the nation address on January 29, Mr Key stated that there is a group of about 1000 serious persistent youth offenders and "we don't need a pre-school check to see who they are. We already know their names".
Surely we know their names because of their persistent offending. But shouldn't we be doing all we can to prevent young children becoming persistent offenders in the first place?
I accept that we need secondary intervention for what I would describe as our "lost generation" of youth born at risk, and in all too many cases abusively parented, but do we need to allow and accept a further generation of them?
Mr Key also referred to 6000 children under 15 not enrolled at any school - perhaps a better indication of children currently at risk.
If age 3 can be too late, how late is 14, 15, 16?
It is my contention that we will not move towards a more decent society until we give each of our children a positive start. A society in which we can feel safe not only on our streets but in our own homes, one in which our children are free not only from neglect but from physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
And one in which domestic violence is a thing of the past, one in which tourists can feel safe in our midst, a society of which we can all be rightly proud,
For they are children of the community as well as of their birth parents. They are our future adults. All the economic well-being in the world will profit us little unless and until we have what can fairly be described as a decent and law-abiding society.
So why are we ignoring the research? More particularly why are our politicians ignoring it?
Perhaps because the research is not sufficiently well known.
Perhaps because many journalists and the media generally are insufficiently aware of it to promote the logical steps that we need to take, or it's not headline-grabbing material.
Perhaps because of a fear of infringing adult parental "rights", albeit at the expense of simple social justice - the right of every child to a safe and positive start in life.
Perhaps apathy. Perhaps we are not yet sufficiently affected - regardless of the burglaries, the graffiti on our fences and in many of our public places, the court, prison and hospital costs and the consequential tax burden of seemingly burgeoning youth crime and violent crime.
Individual concerns need to become group concerns. We need not only to watch out for those at risk amongst us - the weak, the powerless and the vulnerable.
Those unable to assist more directly need to join and support those community organisations promoting the research and promoting the needs and interests of children, such as The Brainwave Trust (www.brainwave.org.nz) and Every Child Counts (www.everychildcounts.org.nz); or one or more of the several community organisations assisting directly, particularly those assisting the parents of children most at risk.
* Graeme MacCormick is a former Human Rights Commissioner and a retired Family Court judge.
