KEY POINTS:
The Office of the Children's Commissioner is bound to come in for its share of attention as the new Government scrutinises public expenditure.
The practical concern for New Zealand children who are not doing well and an understanding of what is needed to enable them to do better is exemplified by the Herald's Our Lost Children series.
>>Read the Our Lost Children series
The role played by the Office of Children's Commissioner in ensuring that our children do better has to be balanced against the cost. There are some straightforward questions to be answered in deciding what should be done.
Has the office done the job it was set up to do? Parliament gave the office two broad roles under the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act in 1989.
The first was advocacy, which was essentially to stand up for children in public and in the forums in which decisions affecting children were made. The second was monitoring to see that children's interests were upheld in the processes under the act.
The role of the office was consolidated in the Children's Commissioner Act 2003 which added the job of helping New Zealand meet its obligations under the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
There have been four commissioners, Ian Hassall, Laurie O'Reilly, Roger McClay and Cindy Kiro, all of whom have tried according to their various abilities to faithfully meet the expectations of Parliament, the public, parents and families, child and family agencies and not least, children.
These expectations are sometimes in competition with one another and what needs to be said on behalf of children can be unpopular with one group or another. Being seen to be politically non-partisan can be difficult. Despite this, broad support for a public champion for children has enabled the office to feel secure in doing its work.
Is the office an essential part of the fabric of our public life? Before the establishment of the office in 1989 there had been calls for a public advocate for children in New Zealand. The National Council of Women, among others, promoted the idea. A Committee for Children was set up in 1979 but after a few years it came to an end for want of funding.
In 1989 New Zealand was one of the earliest countries to appoint a children's commissioner. It drew on a model from Norway which appointed the world's first Children's Commissioner in 1981. Since then many countries have set up similar offices.
In Europe 26 countries now have a Children's Ombudsman or Commissioner. Latin America has 17.
These are offices with sufficient independence and range of functions to meet criteria for recognition of such offices by the European Network of Ombudsmen for Children (ENOC).
ENOC developed these criteria because, worldwide, positions have been established that are called Commissioners or Ombudsmen for Children but sometimes provide no more than a complaints service within a social services department or are mandated only to act on the direction of the Government.
Why do so many countries have an independent voice for children? There is evidence that children's interests have not been well enough represented.
The rise of child poverty and the prevalence of child maltreatment are cases in point. It makes sense to have an office whose business it is to pursue children's interests either directly or through alerting and motivating other agencies. Such offices are unelected and have no powers of policy-making. They have the power to inquire, inform and persuade and this has been effective.
How should the office be configured in the future? The Herald reported that it was likely that the Families Commission will be merged with the Office of the Children's Commissioner "to share administrative resources". This is a worrying move, although it is seems superficially to be a sound idea.
The reason for the very existence of children's commissioners in New Zealand and in many other countries is that the interests of children had become lost among the adult interests competing for Government attention. It is an unfortunate fact of life that in agencies which aim to cater for both adults and children, the children's interests become submerged over time.
In a combined families and children's commission without a singular focus on children, this is likely to happen, no matter what good intentions and apparent safeguards there may be. Administrative mergers rapidly turn into mergers on other fronts.
It would be preferable, if cost saving is the issue, for some of the functions of the Children's Commissioner to be placed elsewhere, if the core function of advocacy is continued in a stand-alone agency.
For example, the function of independently monitoring the work of Child Youth and Family would very likely be better carried out by a specialist monitoring agency such as ERO. This move has recently been made in Britain and the school inspectorate there is now also responsible for inspecting the child protection service.
The reasons for having a children's commissioner in a modern economy are as clear now as they were in 1989 and have since been endorsed by similar appointments in many other countries. To be effective such an office must have the public's respect, by acting without fear or favour, and rely on the public's continued understanding of its role.
It is essential that it be a stand-alone office and that its sole focus should be children's interests.
* Dr Ian Hassall teaches and researches children and public policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT. He was New Zealand's first Children's Commissioner.
