State Facilitated Child Abuse

No More Pixie Dust

In New Zealand we have a disturbing problem with the abuse of children. Children are being "raised" in dysfunctional homes where the "caregivers" are perpetually drunk or drugged.  The adults, many of whom are mere transients in the "home", are so dissolute that outbursts of rage and violence against children are everyday occurrences.

Years ago New Zealand set up a state agency (Child Youth and Family--"CYF") to intervene in cases of child neglect or abuse.  Its failures are now everywhere apparent.  We do not mean to imply that its failures are universal.  CYF has success stories--for which we are thankful--but these are exceptions to the general rule.

The agency itself is dysfunctional. A recent investigation by an independent panel of reviewers has discovered some startling facts.  CYF employs 3,000 odd social workers.  But how are they deployed?

But as I say, we’ve got 3000 social workers who work for us now in CYF. Only 25% of those are working with children.  And of that 25%, they’re only spending 15% of their time actually with children. Surely we need to release some of those supervisors and administrators and whatever they’re doing filling in forms and bits of paper to be out there working with children. That’s what we want – a system that’s focused on the needs of those children. [Anne Tolley, Social Development Minister.]

Read the paragraph above again.  This is the government "parent" at work.  No wonder CYF is being described as dysfunctional.  This stage agency has been through numerous reviews and recommendations for reform.  Always, however, the recommended outcome has been a demand for more taxpayers money, which, if sprinkled upon CYF like pixie dust, all pumpkins would be transformed into gilded coaches, and midnight would never come.  Sadly, money is not pixie dust.  It can transform nothing, except to turn an agency life CYF into what it is today--a vast bureaucracy of compliance-form-filling functionaries.

A disproportionate amount of child abuse in New Zealand occurs in Maori homes.  In many there is a culture of dissipated violence.  But Maori leaders have stood firm.  They have insisted that connection with whanau (extended family) is the most vital ingredient in child raising. When Maori children are removed from abusive and neglectful Maori homes, official CYF policy is to return them to those homes or the homes of relatives so the child can keep contact with whanau--which is deemed to be important and essential in raising Maori children.  We regard this as one of the most evil and destructive policies imaginable.  There is nothing sacred about Maori culture.  It is just as fallen, evil, twisted, and depraved as every other culture once removed from the reforming, redeeming power of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Modern Maori have turned their alleged cultured into a propaganda tool.  In a religious sense, they have adopted the perspective of the idolater towards Maori culture.  

The policy has been an abysmal failure--it has perpetuated abuse.  But fast following is the excuse that when Maori children are returned to abusive and neglectful whanau, the government does not provide (wait for it, you guessed . . . ) more pixie dust.  More money.  If the government poured forth more money upon the dysfunctional Maori homes to which vulnerable children are returned by deliberate state policy, suddenly all evil in those homes would disappear.  Violence would vanish.  Drugs would no longer be found.  Alcohol would be no more. 

How naive.  Let's disclose a secret.  It turns out that a fundamental economic law is you get more of what you pay for.   If the state started pouring more tax payers money into dysfunctional Maori homes as children were returned, the only outcome would be more abuse.  Abusing children, having them taken by CYF's, only to be returned due to "whanau first" policies, followed by more money would produce more of what?  Deliberate child neglect and abuse in order to get more money.

Of course child abuse is not restricted to Maori homes.  It is not a racial issue at all.  It is an issue of human beings lost in sin and enslaved to habitual patterns of evil.  But it gets worse.  The State is no redeemer.  It can only pass rules, make regulations, and build bureaucratic empires.  At these irrelevancies, it excels and does exceedingly well.  But the State cannot sit at the evening dinner table with beloved children, partake of a delicious meal, and engage in warm, encouraging, fun-filled conversation.  It cannot play after dinner games with children.  It cannot hug children as they are put to bed.  It cannot close the day in prayer, thanking our Heavenly Father for the day just past, and pray for the day to come.

These are things at which the State and its agencies are thoroughly incompetent.  When politicians and bureaucrats and officials face up to the reality of the impotence of the State in this area, only then may they open their minds to a better way ahead.  We believe that this indictment upon New Zealand society can be addressed.  It can be substantially reversed.  But, whilst the State has a role to play--albeit a very limited and focused role--it is otherwise thoroughly incompetent and not fit-for-purpose.

Until the State and its agencies, politicians, and the Commentariat face up to these realities, CYF will continue to blunder its way into a dark night.