Children stolen by the State are worse off in State care than if left with family
I said that in 2016 the neoliberal adoption of big data and a streamlined phone system to uplift children by the Ministry of Vulnerable Children would become a new stolen generation – and it has.
I have zero time for unionised baby thieves defending their draconian future crime regime.
We know the independent oversight isn’t there and the Minister only signed off on some ideas that haven’t been implemented a year ago.
Holding up the bodies of dead brown babies to justify stealing more brown babies surely has to be the sickest form of colonialism around…
Dame Tariana Turia makes the point that, “In the last few years since 1993, we have had 83 non-Māori children killed, we have had 17 Māori children die”, we don’t get wall to wall news media coverage when white babies die, we do when the children are brown. We get all the terrible details, all the awful behaviour, all the unspoken judgments about Māori and that leads people to accepting anything that will prevent those deaths, even if it is a terrible over reach by the State.
What’s most appalling is that those children taken into State Care are statistically in more danger of abuse than if they stayed with their bloody parents!
Don’t take my word for it, take Anne Tolley’s word…
Children in state care are being abused and CYF is failing them – report
Children removed from their family home are being sexually and physically abused in foster homes – and the Social Development Minister says there’s no evidence they’re any better off in state care.
Children’s Commissioner Russell Wills has released his first annual report in to how well Child Youth and Family (CYF) are looking after children in state care. His findings reveal the Government department is failing thousands of children.
Children interviewed for the report spoke of sexual, physical and verbal abuse in foster homes; of being moved around constantly; separated from siblings; depression, drugs and alcohol.
…LOOK AT THEIR OWN STATS…
…so let me see if I’ve got this completely straight.
Using big data and a neoliberal social investment philosophy, we’ve weaponised social policy to steal children from parents without independent oversight while undermining Parental legal powers and denying them legal aid? And we are putting those children into a state care situation that is statistically more dangerous for them?
I mean, what the actual fuck NZ?
If your response to realising how spiteful, repressive and bureaucratic this policy truly is, is a garbled claim of ‘something must be done’ while listing dead children, you’ve run out road comrades.
No one is saying that a child in danger should be kept in danger, of course not, but that’s not what we are seeing with these uplifts, an enormous percentage of these children do NOT need to be taken into care and without appropriate oversight and providing parents with the legal aid necessary to have their rights argued, there can’t be any genuine resolution here.
We need to be far smarter than this blunt inaccurate cudgel that is the current regime.
One of the biggest areas they need to work on is to make the CYF caregivers safer… and to do that they need to support them more and get rid of all the bullshit that turns off better people wanting to become a CYF caregiver!
Also allow longer periods where the caregiver can actually look at adopting the child… I know that is not fashionable but it is extremely difficult for parents to get off Meth, addiction, or have things that they never be able to overcome to look after a child properly…meanwhile the children are left in limbo for years… in between a system waiting for a parent to recover or whatever they need to do… emotionally it is very hard for the care giver you can see why they would not want to continue to do it and so maybe there is a low standard of CYF caregivers available.
It’s a very hard one, and I for one think the complete lack of focus on prevention factors like Meth and social harm coming into NZ for years with little action on it and actually allowing even more people to come here and profit from drugs is a big part of the problem as is the amount of liquor stores, sky city deals, poor state house levels and many other things that cause social harm being driven by profits only.
Also there is little help for parents with small children!
This is a very difficult subject which needs to be worked through carefully and sensibly but in particular why CYF are so statistically likely to have kids abused in care and why NZ has so many abused kids in the first place.
The law needs to think a lot more about stability for the child and not keep moving the kids around. Apparently the state care kids get moved around all the time so no wonder they struggle through life without ever having a stable person to support them. I support early intervention of uplifting the kids early in the right circumstances to longer term carers, not willy nilly.
Saying that, CYPS are a dysfunctional organisation and of course there are sure to be mistakes over taking away children that should not be uplifted, so the process should be treated very seriously and only in clear circumstances where the parent is unable to care for the child, but the process kept short, aka not fighting over the kids for years with the kids in the middle!
Justice in NZ is very poor for the vulnerable, in particular children, and happy to enable abusers in many cases! (both abusive and manipulative CYP’s and abusive and manipulative parents).
I’ve seen a few of these injustices around kids and there does seem to be a slow moving machine of injustice that can not stop or change in this process.
Probably that is the saddest when the kids just keep getting shat on again and again by an uncaring system, because they were unsupported or poorly supported when they had nobody to help them or turn to.
And that is what needs to be addressed, the system needs to stop shitting on vulnerable kids and have justice for the kids.
There are some incredible people out there helping kids and we need more of them.
Social Engineering has happened here and in New Zealand & Australia.
Indigeneous communuities and old Celtic communities have traditionally always adopted or used the process of whangae of children to relatives, whether it be through unplanned children, domestic disruption or childless family members without children who wish to adopt the children.
My grandmother and her sister were placed in an orphanage as children and we could never understand why they were not brought up by their quite large extended family ?
The State should only become involved if all other avenues have been exhausted IMHO ?
It would be interesting to know the adverse mental health, drug abuse and suicide rate (long term statistics even into ages 30s-40s) of those taken away from their whanau and families …also of their Mothers
…especially if the separation is permanent and enduring
….imo there is a biological and genetic and psychic bonding between Mothers and babies and extended family, which begins even before birth
An awful picture.
But read this from a paediatric nurse at the coal face of child abuse, who presumably knows whereof she speaks: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113631920/oranga-tamariki-isnt-to-blame-for-child-uplifts-we-are
The wisdom of Solomon needed; Solly, where the heck are you?
And Savenz is dead right about methamphetamine. Draco is another figure from ancient times who might usefully have a role today.
@TOM GARDNER….thanks for the link….yes the abuse is unimaginable unless you are at the coal face…the problem seems insoluble
…it is a break down of society really…drugs , lack of housing, broken families , broken communities, broken babies and children