Community carers to submit ideas on vulnerable children

November 3rd, 2011
[by David Armstrong]

Improving the lives and prospects of our community's most vulnerable children is an issue to be considered by Motueka's Community & Whanau group over the coming months.

Several people attending yesterday's monthly meeting of the group intend to collaborate in making a community submission to the Government's Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. An outline of the discussion document was presented to the meeting by Gavin Cooke, manager of Motueka Community Link.

The Green Paper, a set of proposals and questions aimed at promoting discussion and gaining feedback from individuals and communities, was launched in July and submission to it are open until next February 28th.

The meeting, attended by 24 people, decided to make a joint submission based on comments from regular attenders of the Community & Whanau group. Anyone wanting to contribute to the submission can read the Paper at www.childrensactionplan.govt.nz and email their comments to the Motueka Community House ( or to convenor Rae Dozell at .

Rae and Linda Glew will collate the results into a document to circulate to interested people and community group leaders, and prepare a final draft submission for the February meeting of the Community & Whanau group. Individuals may also make their own personal submissions directly to the Government at www.childrensactionplan.govt.nz.

One of the big issues that any policies on early intervention for children was how vulnerable children and their whanau can be identified and monitored whilst maintaining basic human privacy rights.

Some of the questions that the Green Paper raises are:

When should government get involved in the lives of families to ensure that children get the best start in life?
How can government encourage communities to take more responsibility for the wellbeing of their children?
Should government provide more targeted services for vulnerable children? Where should funding be taken from to do this?
How much personal information should be shared between the people who are working with a particular child or family?
Should vulnerable children and their families be regularly monitored to see how they are going? Who should do this and under what circumstances?

The Green Paper is based on several basic facts. Every child deserves the chance to thrive, belong and achieve, but too many children in New Zealand do not get that opportunity. At any one time more than 160,000 children are considered to be vulnerable - at risk of abuse, neglect, truancy and hospitalisation.

The Government says making changes will involve some tough decisions and could result in changes to what is funded, who gets priority, how professionals interact with each other and how services are delivered.

Gavin pointed out that there is no new money to be provided for any new initiatives, so money will need to come from cuts in other services or programmes.

At the meeting Gavin was also asked about the implications of the National party's new policies related to beneficiaries, and he was able to pass on the pleasing news that the number of people registered as unemployed at Motueka Community Link has dropped in recent months from 260 to 216, showing that the job situation is starting to lick up again, partly because of seasonal work.

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