Shut CYF down

[James Deuce]

Ok James, you feel passionate about this and are clearly frustrated by a government agency which you believe isn't working.

1. What would you replace the Child, Youth and Family Service with?

2. Australia removed children in the 1960s. It's now called "The Stolen Generation" has cost Australia tens of millions of dollars, court cases, public enquiries. On top of that the children became bewildered adults who lost their parents, wider family, and their culture.

All of which happened with the best of intentions. How would you avoid these problems?

You can't compare near dead, mutilated kids with Australia's lost generation. I am NOT talking about ethnic based forced relocation, repatriation, integration, or any other name you want to put on that mercifully historic and reprehensible practice.

I am talking about easily identifiable children, whom everyone but CYF know are in dire need of a home. There's no "best intentions", simple common sense will suffice.

NZers need to "own" the country's kids. While CYF exist there is no desire or driver to do anything other than report kids at risk to an agency that wastes time investigating kids playing in a park and puts their parents under the microscope. Apparently it is preferable to dob people in, rather than check out for yourself.

[slowpoke]

CYF aren't, so don't start that.

The Courts, The Police, Teachers, Nurses, Doctors, you know, the people who used to do this stuff.

Teachers, Nurses and Doctors have never removed kids. So you are left with our already overloaded and cumbersome policing and judicial systems interferring in family matters, usually many months after whatever triggered their initial interest. Doesn't sound like an improvement to me and overloads our police with tasks far removed from their core brief. All you'd end up with is a specialist service within the police force: CYFS by another name.

Serious question here...how many of the hated social workers actually have 'successfully' reared children of their own, compared with how many are under-30, childless products of PC courses to 'train' them in the black arts?

I don't doubt that most staff are actually well intentioned and well trained. The problem, as in my industry, is that they employ well trained, well motivated staff and then treat them like idiots, forcing them to follow protocols developed in the rarefied atmosphere of the desktop rather than allowing the circumstances to dictate appropriate responses.

[Winston001]

NZers need to "own" the country's kids. While CYF exist there is no desire or driver to do anything other than report kids at risk to an agency that wastes time investigating kids playing in a park and puts their parents under the microscope. Apparently it is preferable to dob people in, rather than check out for yourself.

Not arguing with you, the miserable lives some children lead appalls me. Its one of the few issues I'm passionate about too.

So I'm interested - what do you replace CYP with?

[MSTRS:Me]

I don't doubt that most staff are actually well intentioned and well trained. The problem, as in my industry, is that they employ well trained, well motivated staff and then treat them like idiots, forcing them to follow protocols developed in the rarefied atmosphere of the desktop rather than allowing the circumstances to dictate appropriate responses.

Fair enough. Sounds like something most of us can agree with. BUT the reality is still that good Mums/Dads all over the country are caught up in the bullshit*. And those that should be, as Jim says, are not.

* Case in point....
People I have known for some 38 years were put in the gun by these pricks at CYFs. His grandaughter tripped on a step as a barely-walking toddler. She bumped her head. The parents (son and d-in-law) took bubs to a doctor, just to be safe. Bubs was fine, but the doctor had to write a report that ended up with CYFs, that said the child had suffered a head injury, one that could have been caused by shaking. CYFs grabbed the baby, placed it with the g-father and his wife. The parents were not allowed access for months, and then only with a CYFs nazi in the room. It was nearly 18 months before the parents were allowed their child back.

[James Deuce]

Teachers, Nurses and Doctors have never removed kids. So you are left with our already overloaded and cumbersome policing and judicial systems interferring in family matters, usually many months after whatever triggered their initial interest. Doesn't sound like an improvement to me and overloads our police with tasks far removed from their core brief. All you'd end up with is a specialist service within the police force: CYFS by another name.

Yes they have and they do to this day. It involves calling CYF. Once a Teacher, Nurse or Doctor calls CYF, the likelyhood of the existing family unit surviving the resulting investigation is marginal, at best. There is no need for the unresponsive middle man. What do you call NZ's super secret family court, who dish out rulings with no appeal possible, if not a court?

The current iteration of CYF has removed the collective responsibility for the safety of NZ children from parents and the wider community and placed in the hands of an organisation without the resources to do a good job. Putting your hands on your ears and going "lalalala" isn't going to fix the problem. CYF investigating a family for leaving their kids unsupervised at a park is patently ridiculous, when simply asking the kids if Mum and Dad said it was OK and then talking to the parents yourself about your opinion would have sufficed.

Since when was keeping kids safe far from the core job of the Police force? Shouldn't it be one of the primary ones?

[Trudes]

As an everyday citizen, if I saw something I thought was a little "off" I have to say that my own personal safety would have to come into the equation when I weigh up how bad I think the situation is or could be and how I decide to deal with it. I have to be honest and say that I would be very cautious about knocking on a stranger's door and asking if their kids were ok for fear of having my head beaten in for even implying that something might be wrong. There are some very defensive abusive parents out there and I for one would rather ring the police or the school or something if I was concerned about something than take matters into my own hands.

[James Deuce]

Therein lies the problem. Rather than make a judgement and ask a question, people will hide behind an authority figure, who in reality will be incapable of doing anything positive, due to the way in which they MUST apply the law.

[slowpoke]

Yes they have and they do to this day. It involves calling CYF. Once a Teacher, Nurse or Doctor calls CYF, the likelyhood of the existing family unit surviving the resulting investigation is marginal, at best. (Based on what? Newspaper articles? General impression? I reckon you'd find that all we hear is the exception rather than the norm) There is no need for the unresponsive middle man. (How can you call them "unresponsive" and decry them for early intervention in the same paragraph?You can't have it both ways)What do you call NZ's super secret family court, who dish out rulings with no appeal possible, if not a court?

The current iteration of CYF has removed the collective responsibility for the safety of NZ children from parents and the wider community and placed in the hands of an organisation without the resources to do a good job. (What have they taken away? Surely investigating a couple of unattended kids in a park has put the onus squarely on parents to be responsible?) Putting your hands on your ears and going "lalalala" isn't going to fix the problem. (isn't this exactly what you are doing by removing an organisation dedicated to the problem and simply putting it back on the community and saying "Here, you fix it!"? Besides, community (or lack of) and many of the people in it are the problem. Even a well meaning "community" has no power to accomplish anything, are you expecting a well meaning neighbour to step in and save kids from abuse? To put it plainly CYFS was created because our community has a problem it can't handle, to expect a magic cure to have occurred in the intervening years is just dreamin') CYF investigating a family for leaving their kids unsupervised at a park is patently ridiculous, when simply asking the kids if Mum and Dad said it was OK and then talking to the parents yourself about your opinion would have sufficed. (so what if they'd done nothing and there had been a serious problem? You'd be complaining that they'd done nothing. It may be clumsy but surely it's better to err on the side of caution?)

Since when was keeping kids safe far from the core job of the Police force? Shouldn't it be one of the primary ones?

Maybe I'm out of synch with general society but I value everyone equally and expect the coppers to try and keep all of us safe as best they can. To expect the police force to be tied up assessing family environments, educating and/or counselling parents and kids is distracting and diluting them from the similarly urgent problems of robbery, rape, murder etc in the rest of society. Far better in my opinion to have a separate entity that specialises in assistance, education and if necessary intervention rather than law enforcement.

Your frustration is palapable Jim, and may well be justified (who can say without stepping foot in the houses and talking to the people involved?) but I can't see a better way of doing it. Sure it needs some work but I think a specialist organisation is required to address this special problem.

[Winston001]

Jim - seriously, what do you replace CYFs with? The police..? Ask any police officer what they would think of this. I don't think any country in the developed world expects their police to also be child welfare guardians.

[Marmoot]

seriously, what do you replace CYFs with?

Parents, society, us.

[James Deuce]

The current CYF model has failed. I've heard the tip of the iceberg argument before and from personal experience it doesn't hold up. There are horrific things going on in our "community" all the time and the stuff that gets reported are the things that CYF gets caught out on, rather than being unfortunate isolated incidents.

The focus on maintaining family and ethnic integrity is failing children. The focus should be on their long term safety.

I do NOT think a single agency should be responsible for monitoring and "fixing" family issues. The Police are but one tool in what should be an arsenal of tools, but instead CYF are given an impossible task of fixing what is a community and social issue. Replacing CYF? Absolutely not. Remove the concept altogether. They've siloed an important social issue and between them and the Family Court there is little transparency except for the obvious cock ups, and it appears that the genuine concerns of people who deal with disaster every day are being ignored.

A systemic review is required. A single deptartment model does not work.

[carver]

Fucken joke alright Jim. HAving been on the receiving end of a CYF investigation I have some serious concerns over the processes they employ.

Being investigated for your kids playing in a park is unbelievable.

do they have any jobs going?
me and skiddy may join

[slowpoke]

Parents, society, us.

The failure of "parents, society, us" is what necessitated CYFS (or something similar) in the first place. None of the aforementioned are in a better position to rectify the shortcomings now than when CYFS was created.

The current CYF model has failed. I've heard the tip of the iceberg argument before and from personal experience it doesn't hold up. There are horrific things going on in our "community" all the time and the stuff that gets reported are the things that CYF gets caught out on, rather than being unfortunate isolated incidents.

The focus on maintaining family and ethnic integrity is failing children. The focus should be on their long term safety.

I do NOT think a single agency should be responsible for monitoring and "fixing" family issues. The Police are but one tool in what should be an arsenal of tools, but instead CYF are given an impossible task of fixing what is a community and social issue. Replacing CYF? Absolutely not. Remove the concept altogether. They've siloed an important social issue and between them and the Family Court there is little transparency except for the obvious cock ups, and it appears that the genuine concerns of people who deal with disaster every day are being ignored.

A systemic review is required. A single deptartment model does not work.

Bureaucracy breeds bureacracy, I don't see having more departments involved as helping the situation, more than likely just the opposite.

I don't even see CYF as being the problem, they are just symptomatic of society's ills. As you put it so succinctly earlier, they are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Fixing the ambulance (or whatever arrangement/institution is in place) doesn't lessen the tragedy of them being required in the first place. And as much as people say "we've got to take more care as a community" etc it doesn't solve a thing. It's a pie in the sky statement that achieves nothing and has no hope of being implemented. How exactly do you do that? I have yet to hear a single concrete do-able thing that is going to improve things for the families at ground zero....but I live in hope.

[98tls]

The failure of "parents, society, us" is what necessitated CYFS (or something similar) in the first place. None of the aforementioned are in a better position to rectify the shortcomings now than when CYFS was created.



Bureaucracy breeds bureacracy, I don't see having more departments involved as helping the situation, more than likely just the opposite.

I don't even see CYF as being the problem, they are just symptomatic of society's ills. As you put it so succinctly earlier, they are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Fixing the ambulance (or whatever arrangement/institution is in place) doesn't lessen the tragedy of them being required in the first place. And as much as people say "we've got to take more care as a community" etc it doesn't solve a thing. It's a pie in the sky statement that achieves nothing and has no hope of being implemented. How exactly do you do that? I have yet to hear a single concrete do-able thing that is going to improve things for the families at ground zero....but I live in hope.

Sadly thats nail on the head stuff.I for one cant see an answer and firmly believe it will never come from any government run dept,sadder still the only realistic option is to look after your own and ignore the rest which seems to be the way of the world.

[Ocean1]

How exactly do you do that? I have yet to hear a single concrete do-able thing that is going to improve things for the families at ground zero....but I live in hope.

I got that.

Simple, really. Reduce the size of your village.

If you don't know their name they're not "us", they're "them".

You're not designed to care about "them".