Dear Editor
Jenny Chisholm, Letters September 17, questions the fact that 1 percent of children have a finding of abuse or neglect against them. She wonders how many more were not reported or investigated. Of all the cases reported last year just over half required further action. Of those investigated, only 37 percent resulted in an established finding of neglect or abuse. There is already a great deal of unnecessary reporting occurring.
Of course 1 percent is not good. Zero percent would be. But 1 percent does not justify mandatory screening of every New Zealand child as is the Children's Commissioner's wish.
Lindsay Mitchell
12 comments:
Gotta be careful getting into numbers games with them.
The important point is that NO level of child abuse would justify govt-appointed "inspectors" coming into your house to judge your parenting.
As various govt and non-govt agencies have been using inflated numbers to persuade us the state should be universally interfering I am drawn to play on their turf.
But you make a very good point Craig.
And Kiro has offered no real discussion on what they propose to do with the results of the screening, the parameters they will operate on and how many 'false positives' will ensue - that is, to 'save' a child will they remove 100 from parents because of the undisclosed 'risk profile'
And the response from some is 'what have you got to hide if you fear a bad assessment from Kiro's network of assessors?
Congratulations Lindsay for your indefatigable effort in keeping the focus on this dreadful subject, by offering ideas on how to solve it, instead of the usual hand-wringing of the illiberal brigade.
I have heard Maori are planning a hiko (walking barefeet) from the top of the North Island to Wellington I don't know exactly what they hope to achieve other than show their disapproval of child abuse.
Gloria
Are you suggesting that because a large percentage of reported abuse does not result in an "established finding of neglect or abuse" that NZ does not have a huge problem with unreported child abuse? Just because you disagree with the measures Kiro is suggesting does not justify dismissing the problem, because NZ does have a problem with child abuse.
And are you suggesting that NZ's child abuse rate requires no action on the part of the government?
Gloria: I think there are considerably 'better ways' to show disapproval than another pointless march, don't you? Insisting that *your* offspring care for *their* offspring would be a really good start. Sore feet, wailing & hand-wringing in front of the TV cameras come a pretty poor second.
Charlie: Don't include me in the "NZ has a huge problem" collective, thanks. I don't abuse children; nor does anyone I know. And if you think the govt's there to solve problems, you'll be waiting a hell of a long time. Whatever it "runs" is an unmitigated disaster.
But if you want it to do something constructive, you might demand, as its taxpaying master, that it stop paying for losers to have babies they neither want nor care for properly.
Charlie, There is a problem. No-one knows precisely the extent of it. But it is fairly concentrated in certain types of families and economic groups. There is no need to go looking for it in every nook and cranny. The best people to deal with the problem are non-govt agencies. Govt attempts to solve the problem with extra cash have tended to exacerbate it. Concentrated govt attempts to solve child abuse date back to the fifties. I have no confidence that more of the same is going to improve the situation. Have you?
Sus -
Who are the marchers trying to reach? People who probably don't just have a few anger problems; they are people with serious issues. People
like hardened drinkers, drug addicts, emotionally screwed up or the extremely emotionally vunerable.
Do I think a march will save an addict from their addiction or resolve issues for someone whose emotionally unbalanced? - no.
Even so, I still think the march idea, so long as they aren't on a quest for more funding.
Gloria
Who are the marchers trying to reach, Gloria? Blowed if I know.
But I doubt indirect action such as a march will do any good whatsoever. Direct action is what's needed - and, I repeat, stopping the funding that encourages no-hopers to breed would be a start.
But then I always was too direct for the hand-wringers. And it seems to me that hand-wringers have little or no intention of solving the problems they are so often party to creating.
Sus -
I guess they are trying to reach the child abusers; people who neglect, abuse, or kill their children.
These are the names of the children killed since 1990 - Kahui twins, Ngatikaura Ngata 3, Harley Wharewera 19 and Jeremy Tawa killed an unidentified two-year-old boy whose home they shared, Tangaroa , Rocky Wano, Coral-Ellen Burrows 6, 12-year-old Kelly Gush, Tamati Pokai 3, Saliel Aplin 12, and her half-sister Olympia Aplin 11, Mereana Edmonds 6, four-year-old James Whakaruru, Tichena Cros-land, Jaydon Perrin, 11-month-old Veronika Takerei-Mahu, Jordan Ashby ( the mother's boyfriend Phillip Rakete, beat him to death), Craig Manukau's mother turned the radio volume up trying to drown the noise when the 11-year-old's father kicked him to death in their home, Two-year-old Delcelia Witika, Nineteen-month-old Robert Harlen.
The overwhelming number of children killed since 1990 are Maori.
I think there's some value in the march because the message - that it's not acceptable to belt your kids - is coming from Maori not Paheka. As I said, it may not stop all the cases of abuse but stop some Maori's bashing their kids.
The more something is discussed in public the more people are aware how to handle it.
Gloria
Gloria, I hear what you're saying and you're obviously as distressed about the horror as I am. As indeed any decent human being is.
But I really think you place too much faith on something like a here-today, gone-tomorrow march. It will achieve precisely nothing in the long run. Short run, even.
I also worry about comments such as it being more powerful 'coming from Maori, not Pakeha'. That sort of blanket thinking belongs in the past. It's dumping people into convenient collectives. Any human being should be free to offer an opinion, whomever they are, on whatever issue.
This is not a "Maori" problem. Individual monsters brutalise children. So target those monsters. Stop funding those monsters. Punish those monsters as hard as you can. They deserve no better. I don't give a bugger who they are, or what their ethnicity.
But a wailing and gnashing of teeth march is not punishment for the monsters. It'd be hijacked by all the usual suspects for five minutes of self-promotion ... while yet another unwanted, unloved child is tortured.
I'm done.
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