Vulnerable kids lacking support
We must not tell ourselves that the state is failing New Zealand’s troubled kids.
They are being failed, all right, but even though the decisions and mechanisms of government are clearly implicated in what is now a raft of savagely critical independent reports, the fact remains that the taxpaying, votecasting, hard-pressed-and-busy public have been letting them get away with it for so long. And this is hardly because, geeze, we really had no idea that things were going wrong. The panel led by economist Paula Rebstock essentially says the system is desperately shortsighted. It’s so focused on casting about for short-term solutions to the pressures of immediate problems that there’s scant attention and resourcing for the longer-term outcomes. Which have been disgraceful. The figures highlight that by the time children placed in care in the year to mid-1991 nearly 90 per cent were on a benefit, more than 25 per cent of them with a child, barely one in five had NCEA level 2, nearly 40 per cent had a community sentence and nearly 20 per cent a custodial sentence.
Bad, bad state, then. If only we knew, eh? All these years we thought it was going swimmingly, did we? Had we only suspected, we would have long ago rallied our political clout and required, and resourced, the state to do better?
Social Development Minister Anne Tolley says she’s horrified by the figures in the latest findings. Which is not exactly the same as saying she’s hugely surprised. The CYF recommendations don’t directly address privatisation, even in the case of the nine youth residences some of which are witheringly described in the report as cold, sterile facilities that run the risk of re-traumatising children and young people.
For its part the Government isn’t emphatically ruling out private sector deals, and rather embarrassingly has had to acknowledge that, in spite of Tolley’s earlier assurance to the contrary, the private corporation Serco had indeed visited sites. That’s the company which has lately been covering itself in something other than glory in its prison management services.
In any case, the really substantive changes needed must include much, much better functional support for the kids who are living with the state’s 3500 caregivers, many of whom are themselves on Struggle St and, however good-hearted they may be, don’t necessarily have the ability to transform the lives of so many troubled kids for the better.