Sunday, June 14, 2009

Genuine Abuse Ignored

Here is yet another case of CYF and the police failing to take action when a child is seriously abused.

Teacher's pleas for abused child ignored

4:00AM Sunday Jun 14, 2009

By Rachel Grunwell

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett wants answers after social workers took four months to remove a wheelchair-bound boy from his home following allegations he was was being beaten, burned with cigarettes and starved.

While the mother is facing charges of assault of the wheelchair-bound boy two of the boy’s siblings are still with the mother. CYF workers had commented "poor mum she's not coping". The police took seven months to take a formal statement from the teacher.

These are the same authorities who are meant to use discretion when investigation complaint about parents using reasonable force when physically disciplining their children.

The is not the first case of authorities failing to act appropriately is cases of serious abuse. If the anti-smacking fanatics were seriously concerned about child abuse they would be comment on this case. Would I be unreasonable in thinking there may be considerable sexism the way the law is applied in cases of child abuse? They certainly looked at the situation differently when a father was involved.

Mr Key the law is not working. If you genuinely care about child abuse as opposed to scoring political points with some so called compromise you will change your criteria for having the law amended. If the police and CYF workers are too busy to look at serious genuine child abuse they should not be wasting their time investigating trivial breaches of this anti-parental correction law.

The public have a right to know what excuse police and CYF workers have for not acting sooner.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh come on - you can't have it both ways. On one hand, you lambast CYFS for failure to intervene in a case where serious abuse is occurring, but complain when CYFS go into family homes to check complaints of abuse where it turns out there is no public interest in intervening further.

Out on the front-line of social work, them's the breaks. You make some investigations that turn up nothing and it's stressful fior the family, but more often than not you turn up some issues that definitely need fixing.

In cases like this one, CYFS has actually intervened, and a case of serious abuse stopped. At least give them that. Whether they took too long is the same sort of fraight on-the-ground decision as deciding to act and discovering nothing to act on.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'm just pleased there are still people willing to do this difficult, badly paid and occasionally dangerous job while putting up with this sort of BS as well.

Chuck Bird said...

Anonymous,you miss the point. A smack on the bottom is not abuse. If we have to pay more for CYF officers that understand the difference between a sack on the bottom and genuine abuse that would be better thatn wasting money on those who cannot. The law says a smack on the bottom is assualt so they have to waste time investigating.

If you feel as strongly about child abuse as many of us opposed to this law do why do you not use your name?

Anonymous said...

Like I suddenly know all about you because you use "Chuck"?