Moira Lawler: Finding better ways to help troubled families

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The removal of children from their parents is one of the gravest uses of the power of the State. This decision is never made lightly, and the stakes are high. The consequences of leaving children in high risk environments can be catastrophic.

While our foster care system has been developed with the best of intentions, it rarely results in good outcomes for children. The independent review of Child, Youth and Family notes that children in care are moved an average of seven or eight times and long-term outcomes in terms of education and employment are poor.

The preliminary findings of the CYF review panel are sound. New Zealand's most vulnerable young people are being let down by a system that traumatises them. We have to find a better way. But the debate post the report has focused on blaming families - Maori families, women who 'have too many children' - sometimes going as far as suggesting that some families should not have children.

Blaming families who aren't coping is not going to get us anywhere - we need to shift the focus from how we can keep children safe from their families to how we can make families safer. As one of the largest providers of foster care in Auckland our team at Life wise sees the realities of fractured families up close.

Children generally love their parents, even parents that have grossly inadequate parenting skills and chaotic lives. Parents generally love their children, even if their ability to offer anything resembling effective parenting is minimal. The intervention of CYF and a decision to remove children into care, necessary as it may be, is terrifying. Real grief is experienced by both parents and children. Children lose not only their parents and home.

They are often placed away from their siblings, their friends, and their communities.
For many parents, themselves traumatised by foster care as children, this is a perpetuation of an inter-generational cycle of loss and despair.

There's no question that some people are not capable of being loving parents. But most parents can provide a stable and safe home - if they are given the right support. We saw an inspiring example of this recently when my team at Lifewise piloted an approach that turned the foster care paradigm on its head.

We were working with a family that had all five children removed from them. The expectation was that the children would never return to their parents. Our observation was that this was not what the children wanted. It certainly was not what the parents wanted. Our assessment was that the parents could provide a loving home; they just needed to learn how.

So with CYF support we tested out a different way of doing things. Rather than keeping the children in care we returned them home to their parents but with intensive in home social work support. Over the following months the social worker spent up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the home. Mum and dad were shown how to parent; the ins-and-outs of establishing routines, setting boundaries, and having fun with parenting. The cost was the same as keeping all five children in care.

Today the parents have full custody of their children, and the children are happy and well cared for.

It was an inspiring example for us of what can be achieved if we shift our focus from how we best care for children we have removed from their parents, to how we meet the wishes of children to stay in their homes and with their families. We also saw the profound growth of parents in their capacity to express their love for their children while also being effective parents.

The CYF review panel recommends a child-centred system, "where the voices and needs of children and young people are at the forefront of everything the agency does". We agree with the panel that a better system starts with involving children in all decisions affecting them.

The young people who talked to the Children's Commission for their recent report were unequivocal: they want to stay with their parents.

It's time we listened to them.

Moira Lawler is the general manager of Lifewise, an Auckland-based community organisation looking at new ways to solve social issues and providing services to families in need,