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”.
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Native Affairs on the CYF review
Ann Tolley demonstrates an utter failure to grasp indigenous issues whist being interviewed by Mihingarangi Forbes on Native Affairs.
This guest blog post is by Peter Matthewson. Peter is a lecturer in the Department of Social Practice at Unitec. He has previously worked as a social worker in the former Department of Social Welfare, in the Probation Service, and in mental health.
The ‘Expert Panel’ tasked, in obscure corporate-speak, with producing ‘a programme level business case’ for modernising Child Youth and Family is clearly driven by a political agenda, and a predetermined message is likely to be delivered to Anne Tolley. Further, the terms of reference presented to the ‘Expert Panel’ suggest a thinly disguised attack on our profession.
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Questions for the Minister
Questions from Jacinda Ardern MP to the Minister for Social Development. We’ll publish the answers on the blog when they arrive.
The Social Development Ministry is stopping short of implementing a predictive risk assessment tool that can identify children at risk of abuse. MSD commissioned Auckland economist Professor Rhema Vaithianathan to develop the model which uses data about children and their families to identify those at risk of physical, sexual or emotional abuse before the age of two. Professor Vaithianathan says MSD has decided against implementing the tool in the way it was intended, and says it is unethical. Dorothy Adams is Acting Deputy CEO of Organisational Solutions for the Ministry of Social Development.
See also Emily Keddell’s article on The ethics of predictive risk modelling in the Aotearoa/New Zealand child welfare context: Child abuse prevention or neo-liberal tool?