Turner Judy: General Debates 
Turner Judy: General Debates 
[Volume:616;Page:12452] 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 Mr Power talked about war chests and cans of worms. I would like to talk about another can of worms that exists in this country at present in the form of 4580 children on the books of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services who are unallocated. Last week United Future launched a policy initiative to address the many concerns relating to the Government’s agency the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. The project for us has been more than 6 months in the making and reflects wide consultation with individuals and with community groups plus an extensive look at international examples of child protection and family services. The beauty of being part of a centrist common-sense party is that one is not constrained by unworkable ideologies. We believe that we have been able to chart a pragmatic path through the many obstacles facing this agency. 
The problems are very real. The scale of demand is enormous with the number of notifications increasing at a rate of 15 percent a year. That means that social workers are able to deal with only the most pressing and critical cases. Less urgent cases wait and wait. Many have been re-notified for a second and a third time and often they deteriorate during the waiting process. The statutory requirements are very clear. This agency is meant both to provide child protection services and to work preventively with families to keep homes a safe place for all New Zealand children. 
United Future is convinced that if the work continues to be handled by a single agency the system will continue to fall victim to the tyranny of the urgent. We propose a dual-intake approach that separates out child protection work from the prevention work that is at present largely left undone. The essential investigative work that must take place when allegations of abuse are made will continue using competent statutory social workers who are unmuddied by being over-familiar with the families they have to investigate which happened with the Aplin-Jetson girls. Notifications of children deemed to be living in medium to low risk circumstances where abuse has not yet occurred would be referred for assessment to a family support coordination agency which would either provide appropriate help and support directly or would be able to refer cases to appropriate existing community agencies that are equipped now to do the work. It almost seems like stating the obvious to point out that the $109.9 million of additional funding promised by the Government to address the concerns of the baseline review could be distributed to extend the capacity of existing community non-profit organisations to clear the in-box of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services of the current 4580 unallocated cases. 
The existing bottleneck created by a single national call centre needs addressing. It is not uncommon for cases to have expired in terms of their required response time by the time they are passed on to the appropriate Department of Child Youth and Family Services office. While United Future sees an ongoing need for a centralised record of calls so that transient cases can be tracked we also believe that staff at more regionally based call centres could make much more pragmatic assessments with the benefit of local knowledge about the services available to families in their regions. That would speed up the referral process. United Future wants to see the problem of children’s safety laid at the feet of those who are ultimately responsible—that is the parents the families and the local communities which provide the context in which children lead their lives. Local non-governmental organisations and family networks should be the first port of call when prevention is required. 
We want to see resources spent on public education campaigns to facilitate the attitudinal change that Mick Brown called for a few years ago. United Future’s approach is not just a mirroring of the baseline review recommendation; it places a much greater share of the responsibility back on to communities but on to communities working in partnership with State-appointed family support coordinators. This proposal represents radical change but it is radical change that is working overseas.