Alexander Marc: Urgent Debates — Department of Child Youth and Family Services 
Alexander Marc: Urgent Debates — Department of Child Youth and Family Services 
[Volume:613;Page:9649] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to talk about this rather sad issue and what I have been seeing is a lot of finger-pointing and point-scoring. What seems to be lost in all of this is that we are actually talking about people and we are talking about victims. Just 2½ years ago the chief social worker Shannon Pakura when asked how she would judge her reign at the Department of Child Youth and Family Services suggested that there would be no more child deaths. Clearly that has not happened. We have had the case of sisters Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson who were stabbed to death by their stepfather Bruce Howse when he found out that the department was investigating allegations that he was abusing Olympia. We have had the case of foster-father Michael Waterhouse who beat 3-year-old Tamati Pokaia and is pleading manslaughter as a defence against charges that he murdered Tamati. He was entrusted with the care of the 3-year-old by the Department of Child Youth and Family Services and he was quoted as saying in reference to the child: “He was making a groaning sound and I could see he was in a tonne of pain. You could see the veins on either side of his neck bulging out.” We had the case of Coral Burrows and as has already been stated her father Ron called the Department of Child Youth and Family Services months before she was killed. We all know what happened. 
The department has a history of not doing what it should be doing. The answer from what I gather seems to be to throw more money at it. Is that really going to solve the problem? I doubt it. Let us look at the size of the department and the resources it sucks up. It is the Government’s fourth-largest department with a full-time staff of 2149; with 989 in the field doing social work 412 in other core functions such as adoptions and residences contracting and coordinating and 748 in management and professional support—such as it is—and psychologists and lawyers. Its current budget is $435.3 million. That is a sizable chunk of change yet let me recount the story of Sade. She was 2 in July 2000 when the Department of Child Youth and Family Services took her from her parents and placed her in the care of her grandmother Patricia Bissett—despite knowing she had a history of violence and was an alcoholic. Bissett beat Sade about the head and body stubbed cigarettes out on her and finally took the little girl to hospital after she had collapsed into a coma. Sade nearly died and has been left physically and intellectually disabled. Bissett was jailed. The departmental office that dealt with Sade was grossly understaffed at the time and the social worker concerned—get this—had just 9 days’ experience. 
With those kinds of resources and with four Ministers who are supposedly in charge and responsible for the department it does a very poor job. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. If the Government agrees that the problems with this department are deep and systemic and partly attitudinal why would it not agree with Mick Brown’s comments on radio this morning that some of the staff are drongos and need to go? How will this be reconciled with one of the major problems of the department—that is recruiting and retaining experienced social workers? I suggest that one of the most important aspects is to allow those social workers to get on with the job and not burden them with onerous paperwork duties and outcomes that are actually meaningless. 
In the light of the Labour Government’s commitment to increase funding to community-based services how can it be confident that the department will improve its coordination with these agencies as required by the care and protection blueprint given that the strategies and systems for coordination and collaboration will not be established until June 2004? That is 4 years after Mick Brown highlighted this deficiency. With that kind of resourcing and with the number of Ministers associated with it one would think that we could get things moving a little quicker. 
A lot of these children are dying and the sad thing is that families do not trust the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. Time and time again we hear of stories where families are coming under strain and pressure. They want to hold up their hands and say “Help!” but they are scared that if they do they will be punished: their children will be removed from them and their families destroyed. Time and time again that has happened and what benefit is that to the children? In quite a few cases they go to homes that are worse than the homes they were taken from. With four Ministers responsible and so much money embedded in this organisation that is the outcome! Is it the social workers’ fault? No it is not. It is not the social workers we should be attacking but the onerous bureaucracy that the Government imposes upon them because that is what Governments do. They kill the passion of the people who run those sorts of programmes. 
Jackie Pivac we note is leaving without a golden handshake and quite frankly she should not get one—not with the track record she leaves behind. Despite a more than 50 percent increase in funding from 1999 the problems remain. In fact the problems have probably grown by 50 percent and probably 50 percent more taxpayer money is now being wasted. It is not a matter of throwing more money at the problem because the problems are deep and systemic. There is an overly broad set of strategic directions that are impossibly unclear with outcome priorities. That has set up the Department of Child Youth and Family Services to fail from the beginning. 
There has been a vicious circle of problems such as increased notifications and due to resourcing constraints not enough early interventions. The department is able to handle only the most urgent cases so other less critical ones are not dealt with which gradually become even more critical. Staff morale is low and with high stress levels and caseloads they cannot do the job they are tasked to do. As a result of negative publicity social workers are defensive in practice. That hardly sets them up to produce the best possible outcomes for the children and families they are supposed to work for and with. 
The notification system is obviously in trouble and the Burrows case highlights that. There are the findings that 75 percent of physical and sexual abuse cases are classed in less urgent categories and that should be a crime. There is a disturbing lack of information and critical information gaps—for example key aspects of the department’s operations the number of children in care and a trend in financial information. They are just a few examples. Put simply social workers do not see the Department of Child Youth and Family Services as an employer of choice. The department must then recruit new graduates who lack experience. I highlighted that somewhat earlier. 
What is the answer to some of these problems? Clearly we need to re-evaluate where the Department of Child Youth and Family Services can be of the greatest possible benefit. Why do we not ask the harder questions? Why do we have the Department of Child Youth and Family Services at all? Clearly we need a 24-hour emergency service but what more than that? There are organisations trusts and charities out there staffed with passionate people who do give a damn and can do the job entrusted to them. They are under-resourced. Look at the Family Help Trust in Christchurch which is doing a fantastic job for the citizens of Christchurch but continually has its hand out asking for more resources. Its staff do not sit behind desks day in day out answering telephone calls—they are out there doing the work that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services should already be doing. There are the Presbyterian Support Services the Salvation Army and Parentline. There are plenty of organisations staffed with people who can and are willing to do the job but do not have the resources. Most of them are staffed with disgruntled social workers from the Department of Child Youth and Family Services who find that the culture of that department is just not conducive to doing the job they were trained to do and want to do. 
Local solutions for local problems seem to be a sensible approach. Why do we have to have a head office in Auckland Wellington or wherever when the problems are far more regionalised? Break it up and let us staff it with people who care about what they do and do not have to bow and scrape to a Government bureaucracy that inhibits them from being as constructive as they possibly can be. The money being asked to increase resources for the Department of Child Youth and Family Services is ridiculous. If we throw money at it we are throwing more down the gurgler. Taxpayer money should be given to the charities and trusts that already do the job—they can do the job better and that is where the resources should go. Let us cut back on the Department of Child Youth and Family Services—it screws up.