CYFS

The Structural Faultline

The CYFS service has been given a reprieve so that the budgets for servicing the needs of 2000 kids on the waiting list can be organised and processed.

Indications are that pumping money into the service may or may not help it survive in its current form. It has to address key issues so that it evolves with society rather than against it.

A service that engages with an intimate level of personal intrusion as that that has to take children from the multicultural families of Auckland. These are the children who are being abused in the home, the children who are going off the rails, the kids who sell P to other kids, the kids who break into people's homes, the kids that re-enact the violence witnessed in nappies between warring parents.

These are the kids that require a Nanny State to step in and give a chance to break the cycle of violence or the cycle of drug abuse or criminality that has some families by the short and curlies.

The CYFS is there to step in on behalf of the child. Every case is urgent.

If such a body is established with a funding budget, on good old socialist ideals, and that budget includes a consideration for staff training and development. Like any Government funded scheme it is subject to razor gang ruthless budget cuts, even when the Government is in surplus, and this means that the kids take priority over the staff development programme and pretty soon society out evolves the dept that is supposed to be leading it.

Government funding lands up being a cake that makes everyone hungry. The motives are not to invest and expand as there are no competitors vying for the business. Social workers are trained but the organisation needs to learn how to evolve itself. It needs to be able to link its productivity to its results.