More children are safe

There is still more to do to ensure fewer babies, children and young people are harmed. We have implemented new ways to support all caregivers who help us look after the health and wellbeing of the children and young people in our care.

We want to see more children in a ‘home for life’.

Teens and babies

Supported housing for teen parents and their children

Some teen parents do not have adequate support and their children are at risk of poor social outcomes. This year we have established supported housing for teen parents in Auckland, Manukau, Christchurch, Rotorua, Hastings, Whangarei and Gisborne. More houses are planned in 2011/2012.

Trained staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in these houses to support teen parents and their children. Teen parents are helped to adjust to parenting and linked to other community-based services. They are also supported to develop knowledge and skills for independent living.

Internationally, New Zealand has a very high teen pregnancy rate.

Supporting teen parents

The Ministry funded 19 intensive case workers to help the most vulnerable teen parents stay in education and prepare for future employment. In the 2010/2011 year, intensive case workers supported around 200 teen parent families.

For teen parents with less serious needs, we have established volunteer neighbourhood supporters to work alongside the intensive case workers.

Support from intensive case workers included arranging antenatal care, ensuring teen parents had safe housing, and ensuring children were up to date with Well Child checks.

Parenting support for teen fathers

This year we launched a service for teen fathers in Rotorua, Christchurch, Gisborne, Hastings and Whangarei. There are also four services covering Auckland. This service includes using volunteer fathers to mentor teen fathers, providing group support by threading parenting methods into activities, and having a male worker working alongside the teen parent intensive case worker.

In December 2010, we published a booklet ‘Supporting Teen Fathers’ for service providers. Over 800 hits have been recorded on the Ministry’s teen father website since the booklet was published in December 2010. More than 1,600 printed copies have been sent to providers.

Children in care

As at 30 June 2011, Child, Youth and Family had 3,410 approved caregivers who were able to have children placed in their care. A small number of children spend time in a Child, Youth and Family residence.

Child, Youth and Family is continuing to improve its support for caregivers and its systems for assessing and approving caregivers. This includes:

• Our new Ways to Care programme which provides information and preparation seminars to people who are interested in offering care for children or young people, from short-term foster care to adoption.
• Strengthened support for caregivers with regular eight-weekly contact by social workers.
• Implementation of a new curriculum of training for caregivers in partnership with Fostering Kids. This is offered at different locations around the country to any family or non-family carer.

This year we started to report nationally on children in care who have been abused. This is an important step to ensure the safety and quality of our care is monitored on a regular and ongoing basis.

In 2010/2011, 30 children and young people in care were found to have been abused by their Child, Youth and Family caregiver. Twenty-six Child, Youth and Family approved caregivers were involved in these cases.

Gateway assessments

Over the last two years we have worked with the district health boards and the Ministries of Health and Education, to pilot health and education assessments of the children in care in 14 Child, Youth and Family sites. A review of the pilots showed that 88 per cent of the children in the pilots had problems that had gone unidentified, or untreated before the children had come into our care.

Planning is now underway to roll out the Gateway Assessment programme to all Child, Youth and Family sites nationally over the next 18 months. The outcomes of these assessments will help social workers develop care plans and help families and caregivers to look after children and young people in our care.

The Gateway Assessment programme has two aims. These are to:

• identify, as soon as possible, the health, education and care needs of children and young people who come to the attention of Child, Youth and Family
• develop an Interagency Child Development Agreement that will guide the collaborative delivery of services to improve the outcomes for these children and young people.

Many of the children and young people who come into our care have a combination of health and education problems.

Home for Life

The Home for Life initiative began on 1 October 2010. It has provided a safe and stable home for life for 329 children over the year. Just over half of these children were under five years of age.

A ‘home for life’ is when whänau or foster carers make a lifelong commitment to a child, and the child is no longer in Child, Youth and Family care.

Family Violence Taskforce

The Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families was established in 2005 to respond to growing concerns about the high level of family violence within New Zealand.

The Taskforce is made-up of key decision makers from government, non-government, the judiciary and Crown entities. Its focus is to promote the elimination of family violence in New Zealand. The Ministry provides secretariat services to the Taskforce.

Key achievements over 2010/2011 include:

• continuing to promote the “It’s not OK” message and releasing the third phase of the campaign which included two new TV advertisements focusing on receiving help
• developing a dashboard of indicators to monitor the levels of family violence in New Zealand
• establishing a dedicated Unit to give focus and urgency to the elimination of family violence.

Our results from the “It’s not OK” campaign show that 31% of people who have seen the campaign are now taking action, up from 22% in 2008.

Child, Youth and Family social workers in hospitals

During 2010/2011 we increased the number of dedicated hospital social workers working for the Ministry in major hospitals across all district health boards. There are now 21 of our social workers in hospitals.

On-site social workers ensure that when a child presents with injuries that could be non-accidental, services are linked and co-ordinated between the hospital midwives, New Zealand Police, Child, Youth and Family, other professionals and the child’s family.

By developing relationships with key hospital staff, social workers can share information and expertise in identifying at-risk children and young people.

Other ways we can protect children and support families

Care and Protection Notifications

In 2010/2011, we received 150,747 Care and Protection notifications. This is an increase of 20.7 per cent from 2009/2010. The increase was due, in part, to the number of family violence referrals from the New Zealand Police and the greater visibility of child abuse in the community.

Despite the increase, we continued to reduce the number of cases waiting for allocation to a social worker. On 30 June 2006, there were 1,089 unallocated cases. Five years later, on 30 June 2011, 71 cases had not been allocated to a social worker.

• A correction has been made - please refer to the Erratum

Care and Protection family group conferences

In 2010/2011, we held 7,870 family group conferences. This is a way of formally bringing whänau together to talk about the concerns held for a child’s or young person’s safety or wellbeing.

A family group conference will be held when a social worker believes a child or young person is in need of care and protection.

• A correction has been made - please refer to the Erratum

Improving our services

In 2010/2011, we also strengthened our capability to use longitudinal data to identify factors that may indicate susceptibility to entering State care or the youth justice system. This allows us to target our efforts earlier.

The Family Start programme

The Ministry of Social Development appointed a Director of Family Start in April 2011. There are 32 Family Start providers across the country who provide intensive, home-based support services for families with high needs to give their children the best possible start in life.

The Director is strengthening the governance of the Family Start programme and improving its effectiveness by:

• tightening the referral criteria to ensure the programme works with families most in need
• tightening contract management and monitoring processes
• developing best practice guidelines for Family Start providers
• working more closely with providers.

During 2010/2011, we completed an evaluation of Family Start which focused on identifying and describing the families in the programme and the successful factors for finding and engaging those families. This evaluation and previous evaluation work, as well as data extracted from Family Start’s web-based case management tool has informed improvements to the programme. There will be continued evaluation of the modified programme.

Family Start is the largest early intervention programme funded by the Ministry.

SKIP – Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents

In 2010/2011, we distributed over 750,000 resources to provide parents with a range of practical solutions to support positive parenting. All nine SKIP parenting pamphlets were translated into Te Reo, Samoan and Tongan.

SKIP also funds local initiatives which deliver innovative projects to increase the use of positive parenting. In 2010/2011, SKIP supported 44 community projects through its Local Initiatives Fund. These projects are based throughout New Zealand and help families to learn more about positive parenting.

Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents develops and provides resources containing practical parenting information.

Parents as First Teachers

The Parents as First Teachers programme is a home-visiting education and support programme. It helps parents understand how their infant develops and learns, and how best they can help their children to reach their full potential. In 2010/2011, our providers made 50,000 home visits to over 6,200 families.

Child Matters – working together workshops

Alongside the agency Child Matters, we delivered one-day child protection training workshops to approximately 1,600 health, education and social service professionals nationwide in 2010/2011. At the end of the workshops participants were better able to:

• recognise child abuse and children at risk
• understand the range of actions that can be taken
• be confident they know how to respond and seek help.

Vulnerable Children Research and Evaluation programme

In February 2011, the Minister for Social Development and Employment agreed to a strategy for research and evaluation relating to vulnerable children. This strategy draws together a broad work programme of short and medium-term projects with deliverables from April 2011 to the end of 2013. These projects fill gaps identified in New Zealand’s knowledge about issues, programmes and interventions aimed at improving the outcomes for children at risk.

The work programme includes:

• evaluations of home visiting programmes (Parents as First Teachers and Family Start) and programmes for children with behavioural difficulties (Incredible Years)
• new research aimed at more detailed information about outcomes for children in care
• the identification of key indicators of child maltreatment for tracking over time.

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

On 19 January 2011, we led the delegation to the United Nations to discuss New Zealand’s ongoing implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is a regular part of the reporting cycle for countries who have signed up to the Convention.

The United Nations Committee examining the delegation, complimented New Zealand on its efforts to promote and protect the rights of children. They also asked that we continue to work on improving the situation of New Zealand’s most vulnerable children. Work is already underway on some of the Committee’s recommendations. New Zealand’s next report back is in 2015.

New Zealand has been a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child since 1983.

2010–2013 Statement of Intent Performance Indicators

More children are safe

Erratum

The Ministry of Social Development has identified data errors in Child, Youth and Family’s official data that require correcting in the Annual Report. Whilst the errors are not material, the Ministry considers it prudent to release corrected versions of the relevant sections and these are set out below.

Other ways we can protect children and support families

Care and Protection Notifications

In 2010/2011, we received 151,109 Care and Protection notifications. This is an increase of 21 per cent from 2009/2010. The increase was due, in part, to the number of family violence referrals from the New Zealand Police and the greater visibility of child abuse in the community.

Despite the increase, we continued to reduce the number of cases waiting for allocation to a social worker. On 30 June 2006, there were 1,089 unallocated cases. Five years later, on 30 June 2011, 53 cases had not been allocated to a social worker.

Care and Protection family group confrences

In 2010/2011, we held 8,087 family group conferences. This is a way of formally bringing whänau together to talk about the concerns held for a child’s or young person’s safety or wellbeing.

2010-2013 Statement of Intent Performance Indicators

More children are safe