Friday, March 31, 2017

Focus still on reacting

Apparently the new version of CYF launches today. While it'd be hard to not improve past approaches to family dysfunction, the tenor of the Radio New Zealand article doesn't bode well.

The word 'parent' is absent. The words 'social work' and 'social worker' appear 8 times.

From the Minister herself, again, no mention of parents.

It's all about reacting. Still too little attention is being paid to what comes first. The parental relationships that lead to family violence. And what encourages those relationships to form and falter.

From my report, Child Abuse and Family Structure: What is the evidence telling us, published late last year:

Over three quarters of children born in 2010 who had a substantiated finding of
abuse by age two were born into single-parent families. The likelihood of abuse in
this family type is almost nine times greater than in a non-single parent family.
The risk of abuse for children whose parent / caregiver had spent more than 80%
of the last five years on a benefit was 38 times greater than for those with no
benefit history. Most children included in a benefit appear with a single parent or
caregiver

2 comments:

Kiwiwit said...

Yes, the new agency is based on the same premise of the old one, which is that central government should take responsibility for the welfare of children while ignoring the real risk factors and never holding those who should be responsible for their welfare accountable.

Anonymous said...

An aquaintance is suing them because of alleged defamation. CYF staff are alleged to have committed perjury during a family court trial as well. The staff he's after are still there. Nothing will change by changing the name. From what I've glimpsed over the last couple of years I'd venture a guess that disfunction is not limited to the basket cases CYF interact with.

3:16