Beyond the sycophantic praise of the CYFs report from pundits who have been won over by Anne Tolley’s spin lines, the reality is that this latest CYFs whitewash reform will begin the next stolen generation of Maori and Pacific Island children.
This time however it will be corporations chasing profits rather than religious zeal that powers this next great wave of a stolen generation.
There are so many issues at stake here, it seems wrong to not try and cover them all.
1 – It is the State’s obligation to step in and save these children, not a corporation chasing profit. We can see from the Serco failure how counterproductive such values in social policy are.
2 – The indictment that we have underfunded these child services for such a long time that we now have an environment whereby the children taken into state care get as badly abused as they were with their violent parents should be a nation wide shame that dominates and lead headlines until it’s been properly repaired.
3 – The solution to underfunding and abuse is not increasing budget to give money to more corporations,  the solution is a radical rebuild of CYFs purged of the neoliberal bureaucrats who have twisted social welfare into the mutilated infected wound  it has become.
4 – By incentivising private companies to remove children without the necessary checks on who else in the whanau can take those children, you can see the tsunami of kids about to be taken from Maori and Pacific Island communities.
5 – Many Maori and Pacific Island community organisations already complain about the lack of research the current CYFs go to when trying to find appropriate whanau, how much more lax will it become if cost cutting private contractors are focused on the placement over other considerations?
6 – These private contractors will be making decisions as huge as the removal of children from dangerous environments – shouldn’t that power only ever reside directly with the State?
7 – This report ignores the issue of generational poverty and that the current inequality and poverty is a larger driver of reality than a big data crunch. Using that big data to justify early removal of children misses the wider truths of our neoliberal economy and cultural values.
CYFs is broken. It has been broken for a long time. It must be reformed. No question of that. But you fix this by taking the Government obligations towards properly supporting these children and these families seriously, allowing private contractors to take over isn’t a solution.
This is another failed neoliberal free market experiment in social services but this time, it’s targeting the most vulnerable children. After state tenants, public health users, university students, prisoners and poor children, beaten babies are weak enough to not have their own voice.
Where we need to be moving is towards democratic autonomy. Publicly funded NGOs that guide users through the purposely complex social services, accessing their full benefits, entitlements and rights. These NGOs would know the rules inside out, would know the entitlements and could make public reports on the Ministries they work with.
Rather than empower private contractors, empower the individuals by fully funding their advocates.
We needed radical solutions, what we are going to get is a perfect recipe for assimilated colonialism
I am glad you have drawn attention to this Martyn, as it has been getting slowly seeded into the media for some time – e.g. this from a Dec. 2015 article on Paula Rebstock’s New Year’s gong, previously linked in The Standard: “Rebstock is adamant that what young children need most is a loving and stable home…We know… that there are many families who would like to step up and we have to make to easy for them to do it.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11567800
The idea seems to be that you are limited in your ability to destroy the ex-working class, no longer needed in a financialised society, because people are squeamish about their children. Solution: give the children to nice middle class couples, who can use the funding to pay for the overpriced housing, while some other group makes a killing in agency fees. Then no one who matters will care what happens to the parents. Tick, tick, tick, go the neoliberal boxes. We must be getting very close to the point now where people are ready to cry “No More!” Tick, tick, tick goes the time bomb.
If we saw less of our govt pandering and supporting the plight of the rich then the poor and underprivileged mite get a look in and have more of the govts actual responsibilities working to that which democracy is designed to do
Not this daddy corporate state that this govt is
I’m not sure that CYF is in fact broken. In my view they suffer from the same problem as schools, healthcare providers and the publicly funded section of the justice system, among much other State responsibility.
Namely, those at the coalface are saddled with competing targets and responsibilities, not given sufficient training to adequately fulfill any of their duties, underfunded to the degree that even if they could work out their priorities they could still not achieve them and finally given instructions from political masters, interested in saving money and statistical outcomes but who have no idea how to provide a better service, nor appreciate the reasons that success is so hard to achieve.
The reforms discussed, even if they were meant only to improve outcomes, rather than introduce yet another raft of privatisation by stealth, which appears more likely to the cynic’s eye, are just another assault on symptoms and do nothing to attack the root causes: poverty, hopelessness and sometimes ignorance. The only real solution would focus on the damaged families before the damage is done. In other words something that looks more like a return to some kind of expanded universal and comprehensive pre and post-natal system, integrated with meaningful social network support for all families whether flagged as “in need” or not.
One more thing. It is said that the reforms will cost billions. Hands up those who believe that billions will be provided.
Instead we can expect another round of time-consuming, penny-pinching failure. This time any new money will be ear-marked to excite the profit motive (as with charter schools), followed by another round of victim blaming.
Don’t worry Martyn. To actually achieve a stolen generation would be far too much trouble and far too expensive. Instead look for a few token private schemes, a little organisational disruption in CYF for a few months and pretty much nothing else. Like all the other “reforms” before. “Putting the child at the centre of decision-making” sounds fine but without any real analysis or understanding of why problems occur there can be no improvement at all.
Problems occur because the John Key lead National government has increased administration costs.
And another thing. Are you saying child welfare reform will cost billions or will costs billions more than the billions we already spend?
IMO the CYFs budget is adequate besides the rent seekers that profit off the tax payer.
Face it. Neoliberalism is gassed
Nick, you’ve hit the nail on the head! Nothing to add to that.
The spectre of private corporations having the power to determine the removal of children from families for profit is terrifying.
How far removed from this is the power to detain and incarcerate other sections of society, – the mentally ill, homeless, criminal offenders etc
I agree they are having an 18 month dash to finish the utter destruction of any remaining infrastructure of humane and effective social services, mental/health care, education, local land ownership, autonomous national legislation, individual privacy and general freedom. All the fundamental building blocks that contribute significantly to what many the generally fair and reasonable “Kiwi way of life” – non-existent now for many and increasingly dissolving before the eyes of others. There are so many horrible things this Government is doing to this country I fear it is all to easy for the public to accept the whitewash of this, basically just a pathway to privatisation with no evidence (or evidence to the contrary) that it will work, and everything else. It’s almost surreal and rather ugly.
It’s almost surreal and
rathervery ugly.Tonight the TV One polls report an increase in the popularity of the most dishonest PM in our history.
It’s surreal alright.
Yes, it’s bloody tragic what has been done in NZ over the last few years, also the speed at which these latest and final reforms are being forced on us.
Once the TPPA has gone through we’re sold lock, stock and barrel and most people either don’t care or cant yet see it.
And National is apparently more popular than ever if you believe Colmar Brunton.
Our culture is now a hollowed out shopping mall. If you can’t buy it or sell it we don’t want it. Even the needy children are now to be a potential profit zone.
I feel uneasy time is running out.
Yes, profit motivated contractors that stand an excellent chance of falsifying their statistics to keep their corporate handouts coming.
SERCO proved it, now a whole lot of vulnerable children are about to find out the same.
This has ALWAYS been about money, because, as National have demonstrated, they don’t care about those who a) do not vote for them and b) do not donate large sums to them and c) are poor. This is another exercise in illusion and futility and nothing to do with really trying to do something positive. The bullshit on this “policy” is waist deep.
Two words: Destiny Church.
‘It is the State’s obligation to step in and save these children, not a corporation chasing profit.’
Unfortunately, the facts do not support your argument, Martyn: when the British decided to colonise this land mass, NZ was effectively established as a for-profit corporation, with various colonising companies organising the transport of English ‘peasants’ to NZ to do the actual dirty work.
The corporate nature of government has been quite well concealed until recent times, and a lot of people still think parliament exists to serve the general populace, rather than the true situation, of the general populace existing to serving the corporate state, with parliament being merely the ‘puppet show’ that provides the pretence of democracy.
Whereas in the past the corporate state’s role in extracting profits and remitting them back to ‘the owners’ was rather hush-hush, since the 1980s and the phony ‘Labour’ government, politicians have been quite brazen about looting the commons and promoting greed and destruction on behalf of ‘the owners’, as George Carlin described them.
Of course, the loot-and-pollute agenda of corporations and opportunists does imply present-day children will have their lives prematurely terminated as a consequence of the activities of corporations, both here and elsewhere in the world.
Atmospheric CO2 is at an all-time high (not far off 410ppm), and is rising around 200 times faster than during any of the previous mass extinction events.
Politicians will do nothing about this dire predicament, other than make the predicament worse faster by promoting the burning of even more fossil fuels and use of even more concrete.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png
Pity the children -all of them- because they will pay the price for all the greed-driven insanity that has characterised NZ (and much of the developed world) over recent decades.
Hell, when will the public at large wake up to their bullshit. They are doing the same thing they have started with Housing NZ – underfund it, run it down, claim that it’s broken then sell it off.
I guarantee the health system is on their agenda too, it’s well into the “run it down” phase.
I read an article today about how “human sacrifice serves to cement power structures — that is, it signifies who sits at the top of the social hierarchy”. To me it seems like the most logical reason for the attacks on low-income people.
I think the right wing are guilty of stealthy human sacrifice through their policy choices, right back to the days of Ruth Richardson, who saw unemployment as a tool to instill fear in the working class, and joked about the pain she caused.
I wish there was a progressive party ready to take the bold choices it will take to change all this. Perhaps Labour can do it the way National has – incrementally and stealthily.
“to remove children without the necessary checks on who else in the whanau can take those children, you can see the tsunami of kids about to be taken from Maori and Pacific Island communities”
I don’t think you understand how the act actually works and functions in reality.
The main failing with the current act is that it prioritises placement within Whanau’s, over the actual welfare of the children. For example you will typically see children removed from an abusive, drug dependent mother, and placed in the care of the grandparents who of course raised the abusive drug dependent Mother in the first place.
It creates a self perpetuating cycle of abuse. The children need to be completely removed from that environment, not simply displaced within it.
My thoughts exactly…this reform has a stench about it. If CYF worked as it should then there would not be any need for wholesale reform. When you dig deep it is just the same old story…give the responsibility to someone else who will rape the money and not achieve the lofty aims in the detail of the report. Just another excuse to really do nothing as the excuse for the next few years will be that the system hasn’t bedded in yet and in the meantime lot’s of money thrown at companies rather than on the workers who know what is required.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that, Deane.
A source has told me that a CYF office where s/he works lost twelve social workers in one year. None of whom were replaced. But the workload remained the same, or increased, on remaining staffmembers. The person concerned will be leaving soon as well; s/he can’t cope.
I need to follow this up, but my deep suspicion is that any “failure” of CYF can be sheeted home to National’s usual tricks; underfund; short-staff; wait for inevitable failures; then “reform” by contracting out to private providers (which Anne Tolley alluded to on ‘The Nation’).
There is more to this than the headlines we’ve been fed.
I really hope you do follow this up Frank, because I share your suspicions.
I’ll try to make it my next priority, Waz. I have a story ready for publication and once I’ve tidied it up, I’ll will follow up this one.
The source for the information is reliable, apolitical, and no agenda. What s/he provides could be indicative of CYF throughout the country.
+100 Martyn, where are Labour on this?
The idea that the moving of social workers from CYFS to private service providers, where they will likely be asked to do even more with even less, is so counterintuitive it makes this commenter want to scream.
But as usual, no critical analysis from the MSM (or even Jacinda Ardern). Spin spin spin and transfer money to Serco to run juvenile detention centres.. because they do so well with the adult ones…
Nga Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (c) Sovereign government is in the making. Affidavits, Common law Copyrights, Notices by Written Communication have been forwarded to zGovernor General, Attorney General, Min for Maori Developement, Min for Trade. Even the Reserve Bank Governor has been given Notice. Neither Gov Gen or Attorney Gen have rebutted my affidavit therefore as per maxims of Commerce- an unrebutted affidavit becomes the truth, and the judgement in Commerce. Also- he who leaves the field of battle loses by default.
Watch for Nga Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (c). We are the guardians of the lands and territories of Aotearoa and the sovereignty of its people-substantive for tangata whenua of Aotearoa, and nominal sovereignty of New Zealand citizens
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