As part of our election coverage of shaming the neoliberal welfare state who treat the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us with contempt, here is Ann Johns* experience of how CYFs killed her son
My name is Ann Johns* and I want to get my story out. In 1997 CYF intruded into my life, on the say so of “family” members, to take control of my baby son. Whatever I say here can be proved, I have kept all the records dating back to 1997 – because I wanted to show them to him one day, I had no idea I would be using them to try and get some justice for his death. It was good management on my part as CYF have completely “lost” one set of files and they have deleted another lot. I thought that was illegal – deleting official files.
My son was treated very badly in that household, I had to fight all the time just to see him, the parents practiced extreme parental alienation and we spend a lot of time in Family court. In 2012 things came to a head with him and he ended up in CYF care. I wasn’t informed by any of the agencies involved, nor the parents, it was a text from him that alerted me to the fact he was in a residential home. I am a guardian of my son, along with the cousin and her husband, it is a 3 way guardianship and I should have been informed, by law, but I wasn’t.
I fought long and hard, involving many govt agencies to get an inquest into his death. I was lucky enough to secure the pro-bono services of QC, Simon Jefferson. Over the 5 days it was held on, Mr Jefferson proved how incompetent and tragically useless they all are. His life could easily have been saved, if they had done their jobs properly, or not involved themselves in our lives at all. Right now I am waiting on the adverse findings from the Coroner. They were due out mid-Feb but she has already put them back once, now it is mid-March. The adverse findings are when the Coroner finds that there were “mistakes” made, whoever made these mistakes gets the chance to state their case, then the real findings are delivered some time later, at the rate they are moving, it could be a long time yet. In the meantime I am starting another case against CYF, I already had two pending and they had reached the top of the review panel, when I was told they would have to wait until after the Inquest. Now, they are saying they didn’t know anything about the other cases.
I have always wanted to get my story out there, as a warning to others, these people are still working in our communities. The Turkish doctor who never took any notes until my son Deen was dead, who failed to notify anyone about a script he wrote for him, for Seroquel, a drug that lists suicide as one of it’s side effects. That doctor left the country and wasn’t available for the inquest. The Whirinaki social worker that was assigned to his case wrote in all his notes, “therapy sessions”, which one would assume required the services of a therapist but, no, Simon got him to admit that he considered himself to be the therapist and that these sessions were nothing more than general talk. That man is now employed as a high school counsellor, he is a liar. The CYF workers did absolutely nothing right, I blame them the most for the death of my son. They refused to engage with me on any level and I was, not only his mother, but a guardian. They ignored all that. I have pages and pages of their incompetence and uselessness. There was an email sent from Whirinaki telling the CEO of the Otara branch of CYF, plus another one to his boss, stating this ” His chances of suicide are considerably increased in the Gillard household”.
They took no notice and sent him back there, then ignored him.
After being let down by CYF and Whirinaki mental health services, he hanged himself on his 16th birthday.
Ann Johns* is a pseudonym to protect her identity so CYFs can’t punish her for going public.
Have you been treated poorly by our neoliberal welfare state and wish to bring attention to your experience anonymously so that they can’t punish you? Check out our 2017 election campaign to do just that.
What a sad story. I a don’t hold much faith that justice will be done and things will change for the better – but I hope I am wrong.
Delay tactics on reporting seem to part of the new government we have. They don’t want to do proper investigations, the reports hide the truth in many cases or are very subjective – let alone learn and change the system to prevent mistakes happening to someone else.
Government departments and their investigators, seem incapable of taking a moment to mourn in real terms the loss of life from those collective mistakes or the damage they do to people.
Even if they do make recommendations, they are seldom taken on board or fed back to provide changes.
My sons inquest was one of the last, if not the last, inquests to be held for the death of a child under the care of CYF. The law has been changed in order for them to sweep these deaths under the rug, with no recourse, at all, for the families. There is NO justice in New Zealand, and if you are one of the workers for the govt, or rich, or powerful, the rules are entirely different anyway, it is only the MAJORITY of us that have to live by the rule of law.
Ann I can’t say how sorry I am to hear your story. Mostly for your son who paid for the incompetence and arrogance of CYF with his life at age 16 when he could have begun to make his own choices.
Respect for your struggle, and your determination to continue until you are vindicated.
Too late for your son but not for 1000s of other youth who are being abused by the system to the point of suicide.
This NACT regime needs to be thrown out along with their institutional abuse of young and old.
Most state systems are dysfunctional (they function but generate bad outcomes).
It is standard practice to blame the victim.
That said, there are some individuals within the system who do their best to provide help where it is needed.
I cannot speak for in present times but know from personal experience that the Family Court used to be worse than useless: put my children into a situation of abuse and did noting whatsoever to protect them. It’s all about the money, of course -layer’s fees.
‘Andrew’ is a stupid, selfish, greedy arsehole, and comes across as someone who has had a life of privilege which he expects to be maintianed -which is why he supports National.
Unfortunately there are a lot of ‘Andrews’ in NZ.
If all that Ann says is true then it is a very sad story – and yes CYF were very much in the wrong … but – I find it very hard to reconcile with what I know about the operational processes at CYF. Certainly, there are some incompetent people working with this organisation but to say they are “all useless” is total bullshit. I would like to get the other side of this story for some semblance of ‘balance’.
PS: To the individual who said CYF should be disbanded – well, you got your wish … CYF will end to exist on 31.3.2017. On 1.4.2017 (No April Fool here) a new entity to replace CYF will come into existence – The Ministry for Vulnerable Children Oranga Tamariki (MVCOT).
CYF is not ending Erik they are just changing their name so they can get up to more evil practices have you had any dealings with CYF or any state agencies because too many people make stupid comments when they have never had to use the service of any of the state agencies. They are contracting out the services to foreign corporations Erik now is this right. Really they don’t want to take any social responsibility for any struggling NZers because to them it is there own fault. ( victim blaming) What about all the damage that is done to the children while under CYF care is this there fault to. The state are trying to get out of any responsibility to the poor and vulnerable so they contract out the services and then say when the shit hits the fan ‘ it wasn’t us’. The same thing happened when they made our utility companies SOEs and they were warned but they actually don’t care.
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