Headline: Staffing levels impact on vulnerable kids
Despite a massive jump in the number of notifications to Child Youth and Family in the last five years the number of case workers employed in the Waikato-Wellington region has fallen, Labour’s Social Development spokesperson Jacinda Ardern says.
“Paula Bennett has told Parliament that CYF had sufficient resources to care for the needs of vulnerable children.
“If it does have the resources it needs why is it that, despite a 50 per cent rise in the number of notifications that ‘require further action’ in the last five years, the mid-central regions have some 60 fewer fulltime permanent staff than in 2008?
“Those two regions take in the Waikato, Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty and Wairarapa, Porirua and Wellingto
“Meanwhile the southern region, which covers the entire South Island, has seen full-time permanent staff increased by just four in that same period.
“The NZ Association of Social Workers says staffing levels aren’t meeting demand. Its members work on the frontline. They are the ones tasked with dealing with the 150,000 suspected abuse or neglect reports CYF receives each year.
“Under-resourcing is not a new issue within CYFs, but it’s been 10 years since a stocktake of the department was carried out.
“The Minister cannot continue to put cases down to human error, when it is clearly a case of human overload.”
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