Thursday, November 16, 2006

"Child abuse, 'It's your fault' "

Head of the Ministry of Social Development, Peter Hughes, came out swinging yesterday saying it is the responsibility of NZ adults to stop child abuse. Stop blaming government departments, he says. Of course he is right - to a point.

But look at what the Ministry does. In full knowledge that most abused or neglected children will come out of beneficiary homes where the parent is young, supposedly single, frequently Maori it continues to pay out cash no questions asked. It administers the very system that perpetuates the problem.

And if he looked at his own statistics he would see that there has been a steady rise in under-twenty single parents, a steady rise in the proportion of Maori on benefit, a steady rise in CYF notifications and substantiated findings of abuse or neglect, a steady rise in the number of people who are on a sickness or invalid benefit for drug, alcohol and substance addiction, some of whom have children. Yet his department continues to pay out more whenever a new child is added to a benefit, again, no questions asked.

The day Mr Hughes starts demanding policy change at a select committee is the day I will pay him some respect.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree totally with you, although I don't know what Maori is. I have seen this a lot in my life time. Many women that have more kids just so that they can make more money, or continue getting money from the government and many of these women don't even care about the children that they are having which creates more child abuse and neglect. A lot of times the older children in the household takes on the parenting roles because the mother won't have anything to do with it. But how can we put an end to it? How can we wake up the government to see this and put an end to allowing these mothers to have more kids while being on the system?

Anonymous said...

I am doing research on childcare and would appreciate any information and comments that anyone has on this subject. How do you think children feel about being left overnight with a babysitter, wheather it be another family member or just someone that you choose to babysit. I'm looking for the way that different age levels feel about this also.
You can leave me your comments at L.Salls@yahoo.com
Thank you for your help.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the PANIC (Parents Against Negative Interventions of CYF) webite would help you see the real extent of abuse from Child Youth & Family (CYF) and the majority of persons that write in that forum are non-maori.
Do you practice what you preach?

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Lydia, Not sure what you mean but if you are asking whether I go to select committees and ask for policy change, yes, I do.

Anonymous said...

Select Committees is not like the real Child Abuse Issues?

Who are the little people that you are trying to help and what are your policies in helping them?

Why dont you focus on Maori as the indigenous people and that our culture and beliefs are different to pakeha. Socially that would be the correct way in been politically correct.