Tolley Anne: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Tolley Anne: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10502] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I want to raise a number of issues with the Child Youth and Family estimate too and I echo my colleague Judy Turner. I felt that the Government and the Ministry of Social Development perverted the process of this estimate around Child Youth and Family. First of all the Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF) appeared before the Social Services Committee before we had an audit report. So we were unable to have any prior briefing from the Audit Office on the performance of Child Youth and Family—and in fact the office later raised some quite significant issues. The Associate Minister did come back a second time to the select committee but even the answers to the questions that we had asked of the Associate Minister and her officials were not available to us by the time the Associate Minister appeared before the select committee on the second occasion. 
That really is a perversion of the process. That is not how it is supposed to work. Even to date we have not received the internal budgets from Child Youth and Family so we have no idea—even as we are discussing the estimates here today—what its internal budgets are. Now that hardly gives us confidence that this ministry which handles the most vulnerable people in our community is doing an adequate job or that it is a good manager because it cannot even manage this very simple process which is supposed to be transparent. 
The other issue that I raised with the Associate Minister was Child Youth and Family’s permanency policy. There are lots of fine words in the statement of intent and the ministry itself and the Associate Minister say that they understand how important it is to a child’s life that he or she has stability and a secure environment and that they understand the damage that can be done to a child by being constantly moved from pillar to post. Yet the figures that the Associate Minister released to me for last year show that over 1000 children in Child Youth and Family care last year were moved more than three times. In the life of a child who is in a vulnerable state that can have catastrophic effects on the future of that child. 
The Associate Minister said to me that social workers are doing their best and I believe they are. Most of those front-line social workers are doing the very best that they can within a system that is not supporting them. But the figures show quite clearly that a 6-year-old Manawatu boy was moved 11 times last year a 5-year-old girl from Hastings—my colleague Craig Foss’ electorate—was moved nine times in one year and a 2-year-old girl in Whenuapai was moved seven times. What does that do to the life of that child? The worst case that Child Youth and Family has is a boy now 14 years old who while he has been in Child Youth and Family care has been moved 43 times. How can that child ever hope for a normal happy fulfilled life when he has had no opportunity to have a secure home environment? This is destroying lives. 
I heard Tariana Turia talking before about making the children pay for the fault of their family and punishing the children twice—once because their family is dysfunctional and the second time because the State has stepped in and is supposedly making things better for them. Well the State is not making things better if it has not got that permanency sorted out. It is actually destroying the lives of these children and condemning them to a life that will probably be related to drug and alcohol dependency and that could well be a life of crime. 
The Associate Minister fobbed me off a bit because she said that these figures include respite care and that respite care does children no harm. I disagree. Any movement of a child from one environment to another causes problems for children; any parent knows that. Even a child that has a warm loving secure home environment will suffer when moved into a strange environment. It can be very upsetting for some children. These children do not come from that environment in the first place and the Associate Minister could show no research that has been done to show that respite care does no harm. 
Vote agreed to.