CYFS takes kids to show with swearing and sexual references

CYFS took a group of foster parents and 140 kids, the youngest who was six, to a Christmas show at Downstage Theatre. The show had repeated swear words, including the the "f" word , had a reference to someone losing her virginity, and mimed an orgasm. CYF boss Ray Smith said the kids loved the show, despite the sexual references, which Downstage called moments of irreverence.

I watched some of the little faces during the course of the show and the little kids were on the edge of their seats wondering if the wonderful acrobats were going to fall off their chairs and poles.

And when they were going to orgasm next. David Farrar describes the show as funny, cheeky, a bit sensual, and very manic.

I guess that because "some of the little faces" enjoyed it, that makes it alright. CYFS bosses didn't have to answer the questions on orgasms when these little faces got home. And if the kids tell their caregivers to "f off", you know what CYFS will do if they get a smack for doing so.

CYF boss apologies after parents go public - not for wrongdoing, but because those his department hassled were "upset".

A parent tells how he smacked his child

"I grabbed hold of her ankle and smacked her bottom" Two of his fingers went above the line of her belt, leaving red marks on her back.The smack worked. She stopped kicking and was soon apologetic.But the mental health service was about to give her a full medical examination. Lisa told a nurse about the red marks and the smack.A few days later, at 3pm on a Friday, CYFS staff rang. They had received a claim of abuse and they wanted the children out of the house while they investigated.

The question is, was CYFS right in doing that. How did it know the red marks were caused by a smack?

It didn't.

The social worker described the situation at the time as "critical". Family First has this case up on its website - ['case 5] noting that the family were interviewed by the police for for five hours. The kids were removed, even though she was told that the marks were caused by the child falling on a vaccuum cleaner. On the Monday, CYFS spoke to the older daughter at school to find out how abusive her parents were and left her in tears. One wondered why they didn't speak to her on the Friday before she was told to get alternative accomodation.

But it took involvement from the media to get an apology from CYFS bosses. CYFS boss Ray Smith said CYFS could have done a better job of talking through other options". Like hell they could have. He didn't say what those other options might entail.

"I want to stress that removing children from a home is a last resort and that is not what happened in this case... I am sorry that the girls were upset and unsettled by our involvement with their family. I acknowledge that, in this case, we could have given [the parents] better advice on how to explain to their children what was happening." He said the parents were "good parents", but the agency had been "asked to get involved simply to see whether a family that appeared to be struggling needed our help".

What a load of crap. That is an outright lie. The parent said that the agency got involved not to offer help but to investigate the allegation of abuse and kick the children out as a first resort after a complaint, thus interfering with the lives of good Kiwi parents. Then he has the audacity to say in a column today that:

This does not mean that CYFS is interfering in the lives of good Kiwi parents.

But he has admitted CYFS did just that in the above case. The parents had no option but to accede to CYFS demands.

Since when is CYFS there to "help" parents on how to "explain what was happening" when they don't even listen to explanations as to what did happen?

Oops, I did it again

A 14-year-old pregnant girl has for the second time been nabbed for allegedly being over the breath- alcohol limit while driving.

But she is improving - she was only five times the legal limit, whereas last week she was six times over the limit. I wonder what kind of mother she has- and where her father is - and why CYFS have apparently given up on her.

How handy –BIMs in one place

Anyone interested in the briefings to incoming ministers can find and read them all online here. Here's some comment on three: Families Commission, CYFS, and Office of Childrens COmmissioner.

The BIM from the Families Commission notes that 20 years ago, almost nine out of 10 families with children had both parents living in the same household. Today, that number is seven out of 10, with the other three being sole parent households. What it didn’t say that of the seven, many have children that are not living with their father and mother – but one of their parents and their parent’s partner. Given that half all murders are domestic –violence related, with many of these families having a non-European step-parent, I would have thought that would have been relevant. If the Commission hasn’t research this, it is not doing its job, if it has researched it, it should be in the BIM.

It mentioned the (now scrapped) Family Commission Summit. Apparently the summit and its costs made the Minister’s face turn blue, which is an appropriate colour. I note that several commissioners and CTU president Helen Kelly were confirmed to speak, as was Phil O’Rielly from Business New Zealand. Yet those such as Family First’s Bob McCoskrie, and For the Sake of our Children’s Christine Rankin were not even asked and no Pacific Islanders were confirmed to speak. So participants were hardly “drawn from a cross-section of people in terms of age, ethnicity and areas/sectors of knowledge and influence”. Just one Maori was asked to speak and that’s because the Children’s Commissioner is Maori.

Which brings me to the next briefing paper - the briefing from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. No mention at all was made of the smacking advocacy or Section 59 of the Crime’s Act – whatsoever - despite mentioning it in the first paragraph of this year’s Annual Report. It considered Section 59 a “major issue”.

The BIM said that children who do not experience warm loving carers during infancy are less likely to develop empathy and so struggle with future relationships – and NCEA, apparently. We don’t need “ warm loving carers” for children, we need children who are cared for by their father and their mother, not all day carers that provide care out of a home environment while their parents work, get home tired and see their children in weekends only. We need children who are helped by their parents with homework so these kids can get NCEA. And it is Maori children who need this support more as they are over represented in under achievement.

Early intervention is about tilting the balance in favour of children. When we build skyscrapers, we ensure that the foundations are well designed and securely in place. The foundation should be strong families – the OCC answer is a strong state intervention led by task forces and frameworks, along with a “strategic and integrated” approach. Pathetic.

Although the OCC did mention that there was an increase in notifications to CYFS due to family violence, it was the CYFS briefing paper that had the details. No mention was made of the OCC in the CYFS briefing at all. Child abuse notifications had gone up by 30,000 in the past year, because police are required to refer all family violence – including smacking – notifications and investigations to CYFS. But the amount that required further action had actually reduced with no change in the rate of substantiated child abuse. Was this the reason why smacking and Section 59 was not mentioned by the OCC BIM? It is clear that the thousands of notifications are starting to hamstring the effectiveness of CYFS and the BIM says if irrelevant notifications were to increase it will lead to an “inability to cope”.

Organisations like Family First will claim that irrelevant advocacy work of the OCC is leading to notifications that are starting to hamstring the ability of CYFS to do its job.

S59: lets have a whackers charter

The Green Party thinks the proponents of a referendum on smacking intend to create a 'whackers' charter', legally describing how parents can assault their children.

Sue Bradford made the comments after Simon Collin's one man travelling road show found that 86 percent of those surveyed opposed the smacking legislation. Additionally, most people didn't understand how the law worked, and supported the referendum question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?.

It's contradictory," says Bluff cameraman Stuart McCormick, 35, and many others. "How can you not use the other things [such as preventing harm] for correction?"

But Bradford will harp on about now is to claim that "no offence of smacking was created" and so the referendum question is irrelevant.

Smacking has never been a criminal offence, and still isn't......no offence of smacking or spanking was created, and I believe the proponents of the referendum have deliberately confused the issue.

So why, then, are people being investigated for smacking if it is not a criminal offence? And if it is not a criminal offence, as Bradford claims, she's right, we don't need a referendum to change the law because its legally okay to smack your kids.

In fact if light smacking was a criminal offence we wouldn't have passed legislation to change the law, would we.Duh!

The woman is mad. If this is the best she can come up with no wonder the public don't understand the law. But it was always Bradford's intention that the public did not understand the law.

We already have a whackers charter. It's called CYFS caregiving.