Saturday, December 20, 2008

It's not about more money for chrissakes

The Press reports, Parliamentarians will form a group to combat child abuse as a new report shows it costs the country about $2 billion a year.

Well whoopty do.

This is typical modus operandi of the left. A lobby group commissions a report to show how much some form of dysfunction is costing society. Then they use that cost to lobby for more money to be spent trying to reduce it.

Child abuse is apparently costing $2 billion. Infometrics is a credible outfit so I don't doubt the figure they have arrived at.

The report recommends a $1b trust be set up from which private and public groups can apply for money to do innovative child-abuse prevention work.

This assumes that we should simply continue to encourage the creation of at-risk children through unpartnered and, under critical analysis, unwanted childbirth. After which we should pour rescources into intensive monitoring and guidance of mothers who aren't ready to be mothers.

This is how it works. These girls - and older women who started on this pathway years earlier - have all these talking heads coming into their homes telling them 'how' and then going away. But nothing happens. Just as people had previously told them they had to go to school, they didn't and nothing could be done about it.

The best hope for change is that a volunteer goes in, rolls up their sleeves and works alongside them. You can't help get someone's life on track until their physical environment is liveable and healthy for the child. It takes a fair bit of nose-pegging and good humour to get through just that process. Paid social workers , community nurses, plunket nurses, etc don't fulfil this role and neither should they. Hence there is a limit to what paid workers can achieve. A very low limit.

Yet people like Deborah Morris Travers, the lobbyist who commissioned the report, cling to this belief that it's all about a lack of money. That saves them actually confronting the truth. That the only way to help people live better is to get in there and show them how. It's about finding time, having goodwill and hope. That's how to deal with the current crop.

Then we stop growing more. Take away the cash incentive. For goodness sake. The last thing we should do is up it, which is Ms Morris Travers other big idea.

I am so weary of this grand self-deception and grand gesture. Another cross party committee is going to make not a blind bit of difference. It could even make matters worse.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Well said Lindsay

However NZ and most other western societies have been tearing the Whole Natural Biological Family for generations

Money may help

But it needs to be spent reshaping ALL Law and Social Policy effecting Families

Firstly toward Preferencial Equal Shared Parenting inside and outside Marriage, preferably HandsOnEqualParenting from conception

Once these Laws and Social Policies are enshined and our Natural Families begin to heal and strengthen, residing together or not it will take years to get Bureacracy and its hired busy bodies out of Family, including the FC, MSD, WINZ,Prisons and CYFS.

It will probably take as many generations to Re-Build Family as it has to tear them apart.

This is probably tooo threatening to economy as industries fueled by damaging and damaged Families would have huge redundencies and need 1000's (2b)to retrain for honourable tasks outside Bureacracy and its hirelings professions

Sign the **Equal Parenting** petition to help get the recovery of FAMILY under way

Go google ** Kids need Equal Doses of Mum, Dad and ALL 4 Grands **

Onward - Jim

Anonymous said...

Crikey dick! For a share of two billion bucks I'd stop beating myself.

Dirk

Lucy said...

Once again you have hit the nail on the head Lindsay. I live in hope that someone with the authority to do something takes notice.

The definition of a fool is someone who keeps doing the same thing over and over again but expects a different outcome.

Money has been thrown at this problem over and over again so what makes the fools think the outcome will be any different than it has always been. Complete failure.

Anonymous said...

If you want to stop child abuse then you have to stop sub human being's breeding. Its impossible to educate lumps of coal to perform tricks.

Dirk.

Anonymous said...

Quite frankly we are sick to death of the Press and its bad journalism. We are going to cancel our subscription, we have watched it (like all other Fairfax rags) become so left biased and we certainly don't need to pay to read the weekly drivel from the likes of John Minto and the secretary of the EPMU with their anti-government drivel, somebody needs to tell them, they lost, we won. We learn more from selective on line papers and the blogs. We are far more up to date with world news too!

Medusa

Anonymous said...

You're a hypocrite Ms Mitchell. As a card carrying Libertarian, you preach the doctrine of the progressives and constantly express arrogant disdain for the traditional Conservative values that would put a brake on the present social disintergration.

Anonymous said...

That the only way to help people live better is to get in there and show them how. It's about finding time, having goodwill and hope.

Absolutely Lindsay.

I honestly believe this approach works - my son was charged with driving offenses earlier this year (boy racer stuff), and instead of fines and disqualification and so on we had a conference with police and he went on an educational course. The course director maintained fines and car confiscation did not work, but practical education did. And he was right because my son has never looked back since.

Same thing with money/practical help with young mothers and so on.

Anonymous said...

Tis the night before Christmas and another one bites the dust. There is no rest for the wicked.

Dirk

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Quite.

A merciful release most probably.

Anonymous said...

Those traditional values eh Red baiter...? Like confining young girls in mental asylums for 90 yeras for having a baby out of wedlock....yeah real caring and loving that is you creep.