When Ideology Becomes A Cataract

Blindingly Obvious

The Child Youth and Family ("CYF") division of the Ministry of Social Development has a chequered history.  It is despised by many, hated by some.  Here is the latest outrage:

A Child, Youth and Family caregiver beat children in his care, called them ''peasant'' and ''charity kid'', and told them ''whatever happened in the home stayed in the home''. Peter Wayne Purcell was employed by the Heretaunga Maori Executive in Hastings, which was contracted to the CYF Service to care for children and young people from difficult backgrounds and those before the courts. In Napier District Court this morning Purcell, 54, pleaded guilty to three representative charges of assaulting three boys aged between 10 and 14 in 2010 and 2011.

 The specific assaults for which Mr Purcell has been convicted are:

• Lifting a 12-year-old boy by the throat because he was angry the boy was talking while shooting a basketball through a hoop. When the boy cried Purcell told him to ''shut up'' and called him ''a little girl''
• Kicking the same boy in the leg causing him to fall to the ground
• Kicking the boy in his bottom because he claimed the boy was weeding a field of squash too quickly
• Calling the 10-year-old a ''fat boy'' and ''fat c...'' and whipping him with a tea towel while appearing drunk
• Ripping hair from the 10-year-old's head 
• Hitting the 14-year-old on the top of his head if he was not weeding to Purcell's liking
• Kicking and hitting the 14-year-old, who he called a ''little peasant''. When the boy was seen limping the next day Purcell told him to ''harden up, mate'' and to ''stop being a little bitch''
• Grabbing the 14-year-old's hand and twisting it behind his back while calling him a ''charity kid''

Mr Purcell is a bully.  He was a CYF appointed and licensed caregiver.

The enormity of the task facing CYF cannot be overestimated.  The New Zealand underclass includes thousands of children who have had little or no experience of loyal, loving, devoted parents who admonish, train, and teach in an family atmosphere of love and affection.  Rather, these children have experienced a constant parade of transient adults coming into and out of their lives--adults addled with drunkenness and drug abuse: violent, abusive, and degenerate.

Our prevailing ideology is statism.  It is axiomatic that almost to a man people believe that the government not only has the resources to be the nation's parent for such children, but that it can do so pretty much as effectively as faithful birth or adoptive parents.  To many, the state is as god.  Worse still, many politicians and CYF bureaucrats believe that CYF can readily substitute for the nuclear family.   If CYF is failing, it can all be fixed with more taxpayer funds thrown into CYF coffers. 

How to make improvements?  There are some things which can be done at the margins.  But they will not remove or solve the problem.  Why?  It is too big and complex.  Bluntly, the state cannot substitute effectively for the nuclear family.  The worst thing in our present circumstance is that successive governments and their bureaucracies refuse to face up to this simple truth.  They refuse to be honest with voters, probably because voters do no want to hear the truth.  It is not an easy truth to be told that your god (the State) is impotent.

Yet, we believe it is essential if we are to start to move in the right direction.  A confession of constitutional state incompetence is necessary to move in direction that are more likely to help (albeit only at the margins).  

What, then, about at the margins?  Firstly, the state must enunciate clearly that the nuclear family is the superior structured institution in which to raise children.  A male father (natural or adoptive) and a female mother (natural or adoptive) caring for children through to their adult years is far and above the best structure for child welfare and development.  If all approaches to child welfare are not grounded on this basic verity then there is very little hope for long term solutions ever to be found.  

Secondly, the state must reject whanauism--that belief that Maori extended families are a superior alternative to adopting vulnerable Maori children to non-Maori perpetual parents.  This is not to say that adoptions arranged within Maori whanau are not successful--many are.  But the idea that a general whanau commitment to a needy child is preferable to an adoptive commitment by  non-Maori parents is to be rejected.  This represents nothing more than institutionalised racism.  Extended families cannot substitute for nuclear families, where children have one perpetual father and one perpetual mother and a cluster of perpetual siblings who love and care and cherish for the length of mortal life. 

Thirdly, the state must clearly enunciate that adoption is a public good, even approaching a duty.  But--and here is the radical qualification--the state must deny any special funding or service provision to such adoptive parents.  If prospective adoptive parents are not sufficiently financially stable to care for another child and are not willing to make the necessary financial sacrifices then they are likely not well qualified to be parents.  This would also help prevent the "gold-digging" phenomenon where children are viewed as commodities to bring state money into the household.  State welfare money has a powerful corrupting influence when it comes to families--where the very name of the game is long term committed sacrifice. 

Fourthly, the natural communities which regard adoption as a holy, noble, and high calling must be identified and worked with.  The Christian community, for instance, has a theology with adoption at the very centre of its core beliefs.  Every Christian glories in the fact that he or she is an adopted child.  We glory in the fact that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour was (and always will remain) adopted.  Adoption and acts of grace and mercy go together.  Many Maori and Polynesian communities have a cultural commitment to adoption.  In the case of Pacific Islanders this is often coupled with a strong Christian commitment as well. These represent resources lying largely untapped on the ground because they are considered ideologically unpalatable or politically incorrect. 

These measures will not remove the problem of abused and neglected children.  But they will help.  They will help prevent CYF and successive governments making basic and stupid mistakes--the kind that placed vulnerable kids in the hands of a violent bully.   Time to get the cataracts removed.