Vulnerable is the very word
title, and by extension its reason for being.
Usually it’s the promised solution; the desired outcome. So it’s the Department of Corrections, not Department of Imprisonment. The Ministry of Defence, not the Ministry for When We’re Under Attack. Consumer Protection, not - as it previously was - Consumer Affairs.
Yet our newest ministry, which will replace the embattled Child, Youth & Family in April, is being impelled into being because of rampant dissatisfaction not only with the existing high levels of child neglect, abuse, violence and even murder, but also with how horribly long it’s been going on.
It seems acknowledging the problem is regarded as a better option than taking the more common option and accentuating the positive by using a word like ‘‘protection’’.
It’s not that there hasn’t already been a great deal of corrective activity in the CYF story. Just a lack of corrective achievement.
CYF’s own name has been changed three times before and it has been restructured ‘‘at least’’ [because, seriously, who can keep count?] 14 times since 1992. The amount of money it receives has increased spectacularly. But this has failed not only to stem the hideous headline cases that shame the nation time and time again, but also the awareness of huge numbers of our young enduring truly rotten, horribly damaging childhoods with miserable consequences for them and us.
At times it did come down to inefficient bumbling on CYF’s part. More often, improvements to resourcing were overwhelmed by the rising scale, complexity and sometimes wrongheadedness of the tasks being placed upon them. Crucially, it was too functionally isolated from other Government agencies.
Now we have the Children’s Action Plan requiring coherent and synced-up child protection policies from Government agencies themselves and from those outfits that the state funds to provide services. Other organisations will be free to join in. And of course we have this new ministry with the widest brief yet, including buying particular health, education, trauma, counselling and psychiatric services from whatever public or private outfits it chooses. Should be better. Needs to be. - Fairfax NZ