With the first ‘tranche’ of proposed legislative changes associated with the Child Youth and Family review comes the opportunity to make submissions to the Social Services Committee. We have made one in regards to the final proposed change – to delegate fairly substantial powers beyond the state organisation (name as yet unknown) to third party professionals/organisations. They don’t have to be social workers (in fact the point is exactly to extend certain powers beyond social workers to other professionals) and the organisations remain unknown. If passed, this Bill will have two main results we should be concerned about. Firstly, it is a direct challenge to the expertise of social workers – specifically – to be able to receive notifications and make the most intrusive types of orders – without leave. Even more concerning is the move to enable those outside the state (whoever it is) to be able to perform all the functions currently held by the CE of CYF. This includes every coercive power of the state you can think of, and with a direct reference to requiring the appropriate ‘contracting’ to be in place, seems clearly to set the scene for the privatisation not only of less contentious services such as foster care or preventive services (already contracted to a number of NGOS), but of direct front-line decision-making and practice such as taking notifications of concern, applying for declarations, and applying for custody orders. We think it’s a bad idea, for reasons given below.
Author: RSW Collective
By guest writer Mike O’Brien
Mike is an Associate Professor at the School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work at the University of Auckland. In this post he raises concerns about the current rewrite of the Social Security Act . He is a Board member at Te Waipuna Puawai and of the Auckland City Mission and is a member of the Impacts of Poverty and Exclusion policy group for the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services. He is also the social security spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Working Group.
In the second of a two-part guest blog post Hannah Blumhardt (with input from Anna Gupta) builds on the suggestion in Part One that parents should have a greater voice in the CYF system. The Expert Panel Report, which makes wide-ranging proposals for reforming CYF, offers virtually no recommendations for boosting parents’ inclusion. Drawing on recommendations from an English research project, this post considers possible options for rectifying this omission.
This guest blog post (and a second to be published on Friday) comes to us from Hannah Blumhardt, with additional input from Anna Gupta (Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Royal Holloway University of London) and ATD Fourth World. Many thanks to you all.
Hannah holds Honours degrees in law and international relations and has worked in an incoherent array of institutions, including Parliament, social justice NGOs, academia, and legal and judicial outfits. Her primary research interests lie in critical theory, intersectionality and indigenous law. In 2014 she worked alongside families living in poverty in London, as part of ATD Fourth World UK’s Policy, Participation and Training team.
A guest post by David Kenkel
David Kenkel is a lecturer in Social Work and Community Development in the Department of Social Practice at Unitec Auckland. He has an extensive background in working with family violence and children and families involved with CYFS. He has been an advocate for children in national and regional roles with UNICEF and the New Zealand Office of the Children’s Commissioner.
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a new policy document or report is not what is present in the document but what is absent.