Register plan to keep kids safe

By JOSIE CLARKE and ANGELA GREGORY

The Government is considering setting up a national register of children in an effort to cut child abuse.

The Herald has learned that a system to track all children from birth is the key recommendation of a report compiled by the former Principal Youth Court Judge Mick Brown into the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS).

The report is due to be released in two weeks.

Judge Brown has suggested that options to track and share information about children at risk be investigated.

He said yesterday that a register of all children in New Zealand seemed the best method.

He favoured one national system of reporting possible abuse or neglect instead of various agencies running their own registers independently.

"The ideal is that we build on the register of births, so that a child's visits to Plunket, doctors, accident compensation or CYFS is placed on one database."

In Britain, concerned doctors and other health professionals involved in a child's welfare could check with a central child protection register managed by each local authority, he said.

The Minister of Social Services, Steve Maharey, said the Government was considering the proposal.

The register was a good idea, he said, as long as it was practical.

Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane said a national register raised considerable privacy issues and would need to be publicly debated.

"I think great care has to be taken that we don't try and achieve a technological fix to complex problems."

Judge Brown acknowledged that a national register would raise privacy issues.

"I recognise the importance of privacy legislation, but children's rights are only as good as what adults are going to accord to them," he said. "I think a child's safety is of greater concern."

There was potential for the Privacy Act to be used as a smokescreen, he said.

Judge Brown's report was commissioned in response to a spate of deaths last year of children who had come to CYFS' attention.

Already this year two children have died in circumstances that have prompted murder investigations.

On January 7, Daniel Marshall Loveridge, aged 1, was found dead in a car boot in Stratford. His mother, Evelyn Kaye Marshall, is accused of his murder.

Just over a fortnight later, 2-year-old Masterton boy Thomas Lance Darshay was found dead in his bed. A 23-year-old male relative has been charged with murder.

Interim name suppression was lifted on former middleweight boxing champion Hugh Gordon Bryant, 23, of Eketahuna, on Friday.

Herald records show that at least eight children were killed last year.

Mr Maharey said the patterns of child homicides had not changed over the past 30 years, averaging seven or eight a year.

Just over half the children killed in the past decade were Maori.

While recent improvements were already having some effect, it could be years before statistics would tell a new story, he said.

Robust public and community services needed to work alongside one another and take responsibility for child safety. "Our job is to support those communities so when we spot a child under threat they can get alongside the family."

CYFS chief social worker Mike Doolan said the key to improved child safety was better collating and sharing of information and public education to help to identify at-risk children early.