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Tolley- Social services shakeup could introduce privatisation

 

From Q&A this morning- Interview with Anne Tolley 

Corin  Dann ….could we see the likes of a company that runs a private prison, Serco, which in the UK is looking at child services, involved in an area like that?

Anne Tolley If they can deliver good results for people, why not? I mean, I’m very involved in the development of the Wiri contract. That’s a service-based contract. It’s not just running a facility; that’s delivering 10% better than the public service in rehabilitation. That’s going to make an enormous difference to the families of those prisoners. So if private enterprise can deliver those sorts of results, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them. But there will still be in communities the desire and the people who want to be involved at the NGO level, many in the volunteer sector, because we’re good people, and they want to contribute.

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A comprehensive preventative approach is needed

A briefing paper by Mike O’Brien ….”The government has signalled that its main approach to child poverty is to concentrate on a small subset of poor children who live in ‘complex’ families with multiple needs. By contrast, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) believes that a comprehensive preventative approach is needed, not one that concentrates on responding to the worst outcomes of child poverty and deprivation and then only once these conditions have become patently obvious with families living in cars or casualties of our health and welfare systems that they can no longer be ignored”.

Read more here 

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A surfeit of inexpert opinion and the legacy of failure to invest in social work?

On April 1 the Minister of Social Development Anne Tolley announced that an independent review, led by Paula Rebstock, would develop a business case for a “new operating model to modernise CYF, enhance its governance and assurance, and will have a wide-ranging brief to consider all aspects of CYF operations”. With not one shred of evidence presented, as is frequently the case in this current regime, Minister Tolley opined: “New Zealand used to be a world leader in the field of child protection, but I believe we are now eight to ten years behind in our thinking”. In the follow up the next day, the mainstream media failed to find any expert opinion other than the usual suspects.

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Not independent and not expert- so what is the agenda?

Last Wednesday the Minister of Social Development Anne Tolley announced the formation of an ‘independent expert panel’ to lead a ‘complete overhaul ‘ of Child, Youth and Family. This is the first of a series of posts by social workers who wish to challenge aspects of the panel’s role and composition and call for a much more open process of discussion to influence the way forward.