Lisa Owen interviews Judge Carolyn Henwood & Dr Russell Wills

Children's Commissioner says New Zealand doesn't have enough social workers or caregivers, "we need more investment" and he expects the government's reform of CYFs will mean more money and training

Judge Henwood says there's not enough money and it's not transparent where the existing funding is being spent or even if it's going to childcare.

Caregivers need more money, training and ongoing support than they're currently getting, says Wills.

Wills: If the government is to introduce more private providers into the care of children, the Serco experience means monitoring has to be "robust" to maintain public confidence.

Henwood: 83% of those in prison have had care and protection orders, calls for division of duties within CYFs between those handling emergency situations and those managing long-term care.

Lisa Owen: This is The Nation, and this week we saw two reports into how well we're doing when it comes to looking after children in state care — one focusing on the past 12 months, the other on the years prior to 1992. But the problems identified were worryingly similar. Today around 5000 kids are in care — victims at a tender age — and if the current trends continue, many of them will go on to become perpetrators by the time they grow up. So let's talk about the nub of the problem and the solutions with the authors of those two reports. Judge Carolyn Henwood is here in the studio with me, and from Hastings I'm joined by Children's Commissioner Russell Wills. If I can come to you first, Mr Wills. Can you just give us the headlines of your report? What were the
take-aways from that?
Russell Wills: There were two major findings from our report, Lisa. The first one was that Child, Youth and Family have focused most of their effort and attention on what we call the front end, ensuring children that are at immediate risk of harm are safe. And they do that well, and we want them to maintain that. After that, though, when we looked at children in the care system, practice was much more variable, so that's where we need to see the improvement.
So follow-through.
Wills: Well, there's three issues, really. One, Child, Youth and Family have had an increase in workload of four times in a decade, so there aren't enough social workers. They don't have the skills to work with kids of this complexity. Then the systems to support that practice just aren't there — quality systems, systems to share good practice. If we can improve those two things and make our system more child-centred, then we'll see improvement.
Judge Henwood, your report looked at problems with state care a number of years ago — from at least 20 years ago. But these reports seem to be eerily similar, don't they?
Carolyn Henwood: Yes, listening to Russell this morning— Good morning, Russell. Nice to have you on the programme. Yes, what he's saying about systems stood out to us as an enormous problem, because there's policy, and there's what happens on the day. And there seemed to be — from the 1100 people that came forward — a huge gap there. And I really think that not even the duty of care is articulated as to what we're actually trying to do — a lack of clarity around what the department's role is and what it looks like and how— what do they need in order to deliver it. That's what we saw.
Mr Wills, do you think it's as bad as it was?
Wills: No. What we've seen is real focus on the sharp end, so over that decade there has been improved attention on the front end, and we're pretty confident that Child, Youth and Family do a good job now at making sure children are safe from immediate risk of harm. What we want to see is that same focus applied across the care system.
I want to ask you both — why do you think we are still struggling with these problems, though, after so many years?
Wills: You go first, Carolyn, and I'll follow you.
Henwood: Well, I think that it is something around this lack of clarity of what they're actually doing and how it could be done well, and you have to realise that Maori are caught up and entangled in the care system. A lot of Maori children have floated into care, and I don't think the engagement with iwi is as strong as it could be to try and get less damaging solutions. Because every time a child goes into care, they get alienated, lose identity, swirl around in many, many placements and don't go to school and then sort of drift on into crime. And so I think— That's an area I've been focusing on for a number of years, and we need to do better.
Russell?
Wills: I completely agree. There's also something in here about what it means to be child-centred. That means we need to listen to children and ask them what they need and make sure they know what's going on too. Many of these young people told us they simply didn't know what their plan was. They asked for simple things like to be able to see their siblings, and that hadn't happened. And when those kinds of things happen, they start to get alienated and they misbehave, not surprisingly. They become stressful for their caregivers, placements break down and that recirculation happens. So when we listen to kids and really put their needs at the centre of our system, then we'll see change.
You mention caseloads there. So, simply, do we have enough social workers in New Zealand? Do we have enough caregivers?
Wills: No, we don't. We do need more staff. We certainly need more caregivers, but equally important, they need to have the right skills. Currently, social workers told us that they graduated without the skills that they need. Child, Youth and Family have good training but the workload is such, that they can't get to that training. And then the supervision; that experienced social worker who can sit down with them and help them to think through a case and make really intelligent decisions, that supervision often wasn't there consistently. When you put all that together, then that's a recipe for inconsistent practice, which is what the kids told us happened.
But if you need more training and you need more people on the ground, then that's more money, isn't it? You need more money.
Wills: Of course it is. That's right, so that's why we need the business case from the Minister's expert panel. She's got that draft report now. There will be a final business case in December. I've never yet seen a business case that recommended spending less money.
But the thing is, the Minister has said she doesn't just want to throw money at this problem, but surely that's what it is about, isn't it? More money.
Wills: No, it's... Yes, we need more investment in those children and in those caregivers. That's true. We also need more investment in that training and support for caregivers and for professionals. But then we need to see those systems. Lisa, the systems to improve quality and measure outcomes and share good practice, they're not strong enough yet. We do all of those things, not just spending money, but all of those things, then we'll see change.
Judge Henwood, what about caregivers? Because both reports talk about violence and abuse from caregivers and foster parents. Do we take on some people, some caregivers, out of desperation, because there’s not enough people who can take these children?
Henwood: Yes, well, I don’t know what the process is now, but I know that we heard 877 complain about their placement. They felt completely in the wrong place. If it was a Maori person, they were in the wrong tribal focus or—but I can’t comment on how they work it out now, but it seemed to be very random, ad hoc, back in earlier times. But about the money, I think the money is incredibly important. You need the right amount of money to do the job, and I don’t know whether money is being used to manage the department, or whether money is being used to put into the children. And that’s a hard question. It’s not transparent. We do not know how that money’s being spent.
So do you think there’s not enough money now?
Henwood: Of course. There doesn’t seem to be enough money. Well, not the right amount of money to deliver what is needed. That’s where, I’m hoping, Paula Rebstock will make it more transparent. Because you’ve got a big department that’s been going for decades and costs a lot, but, you know, where are they spending it?
Russell Wills, we were told, sources have told us that at a particular point this week in Auckland, there was nowhere to place a child, no caregivers available to take a child in, and that social workers were in tears because they just didn’t know where to turn. So do we need to pay caregivers substantially more, do you think, to encourage people into this field?
Wills: Caregiving’s a tough job, Lisa. These are very damaged kids, often. But what caregivers told us is when they’ve got good training and good support, they hang in there. They make—The social workers make good decisions. They wrap supports like child and adolescent mental health services around those caregivers, and when that happens, the kids come right. They heal, and they’re transformed, and caregiving can be a wonderful, satisfying thing to do, which is why caregivers keep coming back. And then they tell their friends, and their friends give it a go as well. But when that support’s not there, the site doesn’t have those relationships with those NGOs and services that can wrap around caregivers, when the kid’s behaviour escalates, and it gets a bit wobbly, then they get pulled, and placements change unnecessarily. So it’s not… It is about financial support. Of course it is. It’s also about the other support that is there for those caregivers.
So, do you need to bump up that financial support, though?
Wills: We need to bump up all of those supports – the financial support, but also the skilled, professional support that’s there with the caregivers so they can hang in there, use good skills to help those kids to heal, and to, you know, get better.
I just want to ask you about this. The political talk is that your critical report will be used by the Government to bring in more private providers. Do you think that that’s a good idea?
Wills: I read that this morning. I don’t actually have a view about whether it’s private or public. I do have a view about the monitoring of that system. I think what you’ve seen with the Serco experience is that monitoring of providers needs to be really good. So Paula Rebstock’s panel is going to recommend big changes, I suspect, to the care and protection system. What I would say is that the system to monitor those changes needs to be robust so that the Government and the public can have the confidence that it’s doing the right thing.
But do we need these big changes? Because talking to people within Child, Youth and Family, they tell us they know best practice. They know where they’re failing. They just need the little tweaks – more people, more resources.
Wills: And more training, and more support, and better quality systems and sharing of innovations. All of those things.
All right. Judge Henwood, I want to ask you what is the price of all of this? Because how many of them end up in front of you?
Henwood: Well, we know that at the moment, of those that are 20 and under in jail at the moment, about 83% have had care and protection issues. So it’s huge. We call them the crossover children, the children that have drifted from their care placements and have been churning around in the system; their needs not met, and they go into criminal justice for a lifetime. And it is something that I really think we need to be more clear about; a deeper understanding of what is going on, so we can— We only have four-plus million people in this country, and to me, I feel passionate, and I think it’s alarming, that we haven’t done this better.
Well, that statistic indicates that the majority of people are in prison because the state didn’t care for them properly.
Henwood: Well, no, it’s a mix of things, isn’t it, but we hope that when the children are taken by the state that the state articulates a duty of care and delivers on that so that their life is improved, not that it deteriorates to such an extent, you know what I mean? I’m not saying the state alone is a factor, because obviously the background and context of that child is impacting, but the state is certainly impacting. They’ve had a chance.
So you think that there is— you need a separate system for these kids? Veteran care?
Henwood: Well, I was just reflecting on the issues that Russell raised. You’ve all your emergency notifications, and you’ve got a care system. At the moment, I believe the two things are all one thing, and the social workers that we have now are trying to manage the whole thing. What I think would be better is to move— have a separate care system where it’s got its own management and its own accountability. I mean, accountability is something that stood out for us. No one’s accountable. You can’t sue. If you try and sue— millions of dollars is being spent on stopping the cases in the court. So, yes, separate care system that can then report to the government. And monitoring is the biggest thing of all.
All right. Thank you both for joining me this morning. That’s Russell Wills in Hastings—
Wills: Thank you, Lisa.
…and thank you to Judge Henwood. Thank you.
Henwood: Thank you.

Transcript provided by Able. www.able.co.nz

ENDS

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