Turner Judy: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
Turner Judy: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:618;Page:14433] 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 I just want to touch on a few issues because United Future has a very strong interest in this particular agency. Some very recent research has revealed that 80 percent of children murdered in New Zealand in recent years were not known to child protection agencies prompting child advocates to urge people to dob in abuse. The Canterbury University research to be published next month found that only nine out of the 47 children murdered between 1996 and the year 2000 had been referred to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. “Most people think that when a baby dies CYFS must have known but in four out of five cases that is not the case.” That is a quote from researcher and former chief social worker Mike Doolan. 
So the figures demonstrate that the people best able to help are not professional social workers but neighbours friends and family. A study of 91 child homicides from 1991 to 2000 found that almost two-thirds of the children were under 5 which is too young for them to come to the notice of teachers or social workers in schools. More than a quarter—26 percent—were under the age of 1. Most were killed by their parents and a quarter of them by their mothers or other relatives. 
United Future has put forward a policy platform for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and it is a solution that supports the development of a system that supports families to ask for help early. Departmental officials admit that many notifications they receive are actually about family support needs. So the question that has to be asked is why they are not channelled to family support services. The question has to be asked which agencies genuinely have real contact with families young children and babies. They are obvious: the Plunket Society midwives and general practitioners are more likely to have regular contact with families of extremely young children than any other agency. Yet from talking to those agencies particularly some of the Plunket nurses one finds that they feel that the advice they have to offer about what they are seeing up and down the country in people’s homes as they go in to attend to mothers with young babies is not wanted. They are told: “Stick to your job—we’re not interested in hearing your information.” It makes absolutely no sense at all that very effective agencies that are making real contact and getting real insight into homes where there is genuine risk are then unable to pass that information on or be given some sort of credibility when they ask for help. 
The number of suspected child abuse cases has soared to a new high with 10000 more complaints reported to the Department of Child Youth and Family Services in the past year. In the year ended 30 June the department received 43414 notifications of child abuse. That was an increase—get this—of 10212 cases or 30.8 percent on the same period 12 months earlier. For social agencies the most worrying aspect has been the rise in the number of suspected critical cases—those where the department is required to act within 24 hours. Those numbers were up dramatically in every part of the country. Nationally critical cases were up by 41.1 percent. 
What United Future is proposing and what we implore of the Government based on the fact that there are thousands of cases of children in the in trays of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services waiting to be allocated case managers is that we separate out the two key functions of this organisation so that they can stop competing with each other for the precious resources available. We want child protection handled completely separately from the other important mandate of the Act which is the prevention of child abuse in the first place. If the notifications coming in are largely about low-risk to medium-risk cases where the need is for support let us get those cases out to those agencies that already exist in our communities by the dozen that are well equipped with highly qualified staff and well able and keen as mustard to be given the opportunity and the resourcing to step into the breach.