The idea that CYFS is all of a sudden an abomination is a joke – what’s the real agenda here?

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The idea that CYFS is all of a sudden an abomination is a joke – it’s been restructured 14 times because it’s always been an abomination.

Children in state care are being abused and their ‘outcomes’ continue to be appalling because we refuse to allow the frontline of CYFS to properly check up on what happens to these kids after they are first brought top CYFs attention because that would cost too much money.

The current round of ‘won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children’ being bleated by National is to generate the momentum for more privatisation as we are seeing in education, prisons, housing and social services.

What is needed to fix CYFS? Better funding and real leadership. What will National try and sneak through under the cover of all the appalling stats? More privatisation of services.

Are we seriously believing National suddenly care about these kids?

After turning down Feed the Kids bill so these kids go hungry?

After privatizating prisons where these kids parents end up?

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After privatising the homes these kids live in?

After privatising the schools these kids go to?

All of a sudden National won’t be idealogical on this issue?

Yeah Right.

We have 305 000 kids in poverty and a Government in total denial about that. I trust this Government about as far as I can throw it.

23 COMMENTS

  1. Yes National think they are being so clever. All the flag bullshit, the loopy Paula Bennett and the village idiot Nick Smith show, but meanwhile take an underfunded poorly legislated government department like CYFS, cry wolf as per Anne Tolley this week and enter stage right Serco. Or at least it was meant to be Serco until they fucked up so badly! So it might have to be another Serco taking over large swathes of CYFS.

    Then mix in all ways known to man to misrepresent the stats, hide their ineptness and bingo, make a LOT of money, you pretend you’ve “fixed” (extreme emphasis on pretend here) a problem that any government who cared enough could have fixed properly themselves.

    Anyway insider traders, got your shareholdings updated?

  2. It’s classic neo-lib practise, the only surprising thing is how obvious it is.

    There’s that quote of Chomsky’s that comes around every so often, about it being standard procedure: defund, insist on better outcomes, watch it fail, wait for the outcry, privatise.

    Riots and upheavals (such as in Haiti) have occurred over that which NZers take quite happily.

    Amazing.

  3. The only reason cyfs is not doing well is because the government want to privatise it. They are just softening up the public to believe private services would improve it. Its an indictment of the government who cant do anything right ,they are incompetent ,previous governments handled cyfs fine.
    Poor children just dumped to suit the governments agenda of handing everything that’s not nailed down over to the purchasers of New Zealand who only want profit ie corporates who see money in everything.

  4. You are correct, CYFS have always been hopeless, but it has nothing to do with money. Political Correctness has destroyed CYFS ability to actually address the real issues our society is facing.

        • Well, that’s simply not true.

          I have some dealings in this sort of thing and I can tell you now that children can (and are) taken off their birth parents and put into care-placement (re-homed) elsewhere. In many instances easy availability of cheap booze is a significant factor – often leading to foetal alcohol syndrome, and inter-generational problems.

          It is not a “default” position, though there are expectations that this may happen. Often, as Minister Tolley has herself admitted, there is not sufficient family-oriented support to address many of the problems facing them.

          Many children are put into the care of other families, but support for them is minimal, leaving a “dump and run” situation.

          That is part of the reality of the problem. It is deep, complex, and requires determination and a lot of money to resolve. We need more CYF staff, including back-room support (which National cut in 2009), as well as professionals such as therapists, psychologists, etc.

          Cliches such as “politically correct” roll off the tongue easily, but does squat to help resolve these problems.

          • The removal of children from their birth families is incredibly rare, permanent removal almost non-existent.

            I am closely involved with a number of organisations who work alongside CYFS, and I have seen many, many cases of children returned into abusive and drug and alcohol addicted homes based solely on the desire to have the child raised by whanau. I have attended untold family group conferences where social workers look into the darkness of dysfunctional families and yet still return children to birth families. This is an ideological position, often one that involves a misplaced deference to Maori.

            I work with one organisation who teach low income families food self sufficiency, another who provide parenting skills to teen mums, I could go on, but the common theme is not a lack of money but a lack of common sense solutions from within CYFS. In my view we should be stripping the influence of CYFS back to bare bones, and contracting out services to the non-for profit organisations I see providing working solutions every day.

            • “In my view we should be stripping the influence of CYFS back to bare bones, and contracting out services to the non-for profit organisations I see providing working solutions every day.”

              And unfortunately, many of those same voluntary organisations are grossly under-funded. The government is using them as a source of cheap labour.

              Relationships Aotearoa is one group that could no longer manage the under-funding. Others have been in the news for similar chronic under-funding problems.

              So your “solution” is not solution. It simply transfers the under-funding from the State to charities. It is based on ideology – similar to that which saw Serco take over running of Mt Eden and Wiri prisons.

          • With respect Frank, Amos is fundamentally correct.

            NZ has an appalling record of child neglect, abuse, murder and general endangerment.

            We just don’t seem to value our children and young people.

            And this has little, if anything to do with partisan politics.

            A volley of cliches is not going help here.

            There is a reality….and Amos is trying to explain some manifestations of that reality.

            Yes, children are returned to seriously risky homes simply because it has been the prevailing culture within cyfs for over two decades.

            I distinctly remember the late Judge Mick Brown stating many years ago that this was not necessarily the best solution.

            But….it still happens.

            And…..children die.

  5. Anything Rebstock is involved in means the reports presented will make a perfect case for outsourcing and privatisation. I am not at all surprised, and the government will most likely have sent a message with their expectations to Rebstock and the panel in charge, to do as they would rather wish them to.

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