National Hui for Child Advocates

E nga mana, e nga reo, e te iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

It’s a pleasure to be here today.

I know this hui marks an important milestone in your role as child advocates – this is, of course, the first time you’ve all been gathered together.

I hope over the next two days you can make the most of the opportunity to connect, work and be challenged together.

By sharing your experiences and expertise, I know you will leave this conference stronger, more knowledgeable, inspired and with enduring support networks.

This is will be extremely beneficial for the children and communities you support.

The underlying theme of this conference is how we get communities to respond to our children. In so many ways it’s incredible this is even a topic for discussion in this country.

I am sure there is not a single person in this room who doesn’t believe that our children deserve nothing but the deepest love and the strongest support.

We all dream of that perfect world where every child in this country is raised in a happy home – safe and secure, healthy and loved. 

A country where culture is a pivotal part of who these children are – but doesn’t determine whether their childhood is positive or not.

A country where their childhoods equip them to develop into well-adjusted adults. 

Sadly, you know better than most that this is simply not the case for a staggering proportion of our smallest citizens.

I want to talk to you today about how we all need to work to change that. What’s worked – or hasn’t worked - in the past, and how I believe it could work in future.

There is absolutely no escaping the very real financial and social pressures being felt right now by New Zealand families. 

More people are seeking professional guidance on how to manage the family budget.

Last month I opened the new Mangere Budgeting Services premises.

Demand for their services meant they simply outgrew their building.

And many of the people coming to see them now are first time visitors. Kiwis who in the past would never have given a second thought to ask for their advice, because they simply didn’t need it.

The nature of their clientele has changed. 

Food banks are finding their shelves are emptying faster and I know within my own Ministry there’s been a doubling in requests for Special Needs Grants for food.

More people are seeking hardship assistance to get themselves and their families through the economic rough times.

When families are under pressure and stretched to the limit, as you well know it’s very easy for situations to get out of control.

Children are perceptive and pick up when their parents are stressed.

Stressed parents are not happy parents.

And I understand that totally. As many of us here know it’s difficult to be supportive and loving when you’re worried about putting food on the table.

But when households are tense, it’s the children that suffer the most.

We know that children living in homes with family violence, whether or not they are directly hurt, suffer.

They suffer when they see their parents fight and argue and yell and throw things.

They suffer when they see Dad beating up Mum.

They suffer when the tension is so thick the child is scared to move or say anything for fear of igniting violence.

This is why your roles are so vital.

People like you are often the glue that helps keep these families from literally breaking apart.

The work you do with in advocating for children and young people who witness family violence can help bring and bind local agencies and services to these families, and wrap those crucial support networks around them.

Many social sector groups in this country share a similar objective.

This Government continues to support the excellent work that these groups do.

This financial year alone the Ministry of Social Development through Child Youth and Family, and Family and Community Services will contract out $190 million to external providers to help run programmes which support and strengthen families.

We expect many of these groups will be feeling the painful pinch of a tighter economy.

This recession has hit everyone in some way. But it will continue to hit some of our people particularly hard.

Two months ago I launched the Community Response Fund to recognise the financial realities facing critical social service providers working with the most vulnerable New Zealanders among us.

Targeted and short term, the Fund will support those agencies finding more people on their doorstep or in dire financial straits.

We’ve also made sure there’s significant community input into the decision about exactly which groups in our communities need the Fund’s support the most.

This is not the time for bureaucrats in Wellington to decide which groups are the most worthy, and who’s truly in need.

Those decisions must come from within community boundaries, from those dealing everyday with people asking for help, from those that they know and trust.

In many ways this is a break away from the tradition of how government funds the social services sector.

But to me, it seems the most practical. How is it that in Gore, a community of just 12,000, at one stage had more than 84 agencies trying to work with its families?

All funded from the same pot. That just doesn’t make sense to me.

If government is pouring money into the same groups which are trying to work with the same people to achieve the same results – I’m just not convinced it’s the best use of your money.

Over the past decade some in the sector – with what I’m sure are the best of intentions – have become adept at second guessing government priorities and adapting to suit, securing funding in the process.

They learned to write perfect applications and jump through the necessary hoops.

They learned that if they ticked all the right boxes, they were guaranteed government funding year after year.

The model of Pathway to Partnership ran the risk of government becoming a crutch without which providers couldn’t walk down the path at all.

In many ways it raised more questions than it answered. The biggest, was how will full funding work in practice? And how beholden are you then to the government of the day?

Limiting this to “essential services” also cut out the ability for community-led innovation.

I know of a social service provider in a small town which has run an exceptional programme for young adults with disabilities for the past two years. It saw a need that wasn’t quite being met in the local community and filled it.

It’s been funded through a mix of philanthropy and local government money and wants a bit of help from central government to help it expand.

The organisation isn’t asking to be fully funded by central government, but under the Pathway to Partnership model, that’s what it could reasonably have expected. 

Now it may be exactly what the provider deserves, but in today’s world it will mean cutting funding somewhere else.

I know I’m digressing a bit here, but I’d like to explain the long-term thinking that’s needed – the challenges this government faces and the conversation we need to have.

A move to full funding, with no real assessment of what’s actually needed on the ground in our communities, creates a risk of dependency – which is hard to move away from.

And who could blame those groups? If you’re providing a service which people benefit from, and getting the funding year after year, where’s the backwards look to check you haven’t deviated from your course and you’re still going in the right direction?

Where’s the check the work being done is still benefiting the right group of people, the right families, the right children?

Full funding creates expectations, and expectations can actually be restrictive and stifle innovation.

This is simply not the time for complacency, particularly when the money available needs to be spent on a greater number of people to the greatest benefit.

As we entered into Budget negotiations this year the scale of the economic crisis facing us was beginning to be more fully understood.

As the year progresses, it’s becoming clearer that as a country we have an uphill battle ahead.

We need to do more with less. We’re not even looking at being in surplus for at least another decade.

There are currently 310,000 people receiving a benefit in this country. The number of people requiring an Unemployment Benefit is forecast to rise to over 80,000 by this summer. The amount spent on benefits is expected to increase by over a billion dollars a year over the next three years.

But despite the very real pressures being put on the government’s resources, I’ve been pleased to be able to deliver a commitment that the money allocated to Pathway to Partnership would not be lost – it will remain in the sector. That’s a huge win in this economic environment.

But as previously signalled, how we use that money will have to change.

I know many of you will be thinking “So what does that mean?”

Well it means that we need to think harder and smarter about how best to deliver these services to the people who need it most.

And there is no doubt in my mind, that there are people who need our support more than ever right now.

However I don’t feel it’s up to this Government to say which organisations should be supporting them.

When I announced the Community Response Fund, I said I hoped it would generate a great deal of self-examination by those working in the sector.

That I hoped they would take a look at the services available within various communities, work out where there was a duplication of services or a cross-over and work together to fix it – to the benefit of the people they serve.

I was quite serious about that.

Make no mistake, New Zealand faces a crisis – and this is not the time to get cute or play politics with funding.

What works deserves to – and will be – backed to the hilt by myself and this Government.

But if I’m going to make a case for the sector in future Budgets in recessionary times, I need to – hand on heart – tell the Finance Minister the sector is doing the best possible job it can to make its funding go further.

Because we need to start thinking about how government and the sector can work together once this crisis has passed.

I know we can work together very efficiently – this was demonstrated ahead of the announcement of the Community Response Fund. I’m keen to maintain that working relationship in future.

But equally I want to be very clear that I don’t believe it’s the job of government to decide what works best and what needs to change – that must come from within the sector and with our communities, although that doesn’t mean I won’t challenge you from time to time (as I know you will me, as well).

I will also acknowledge that Government could be more efficient in how it administers its contracts with third party providers of social services. I’m hoping to give you greater detail of this later in the year.

If we can get this right, we will have effected enormous change.

Believe me, I’m fully aware of what I’m asking.

I’m laying down a challenge to you to start thinking past permanent government top ups to a world where communities drive their own solutions.

In some communities, I know this is already happening.

Now it’s time to put the pedal to the metal and accelerate that process.

I’d ask those who work in the sector to think about how beneficial it will be to the people they’re actually working with.

By working together, by aligning and combining resources, by identifying those families who need the most help – I believe the best possible service will be delivered.

And you know better than the rest of New Zealand how vital it is to get it right.

That’s because you’re called in to sort out the mess when things go wrong.

You know - sometimes there are figures which literally stop me in my tracks in this job. Here’s one of them:

Police estimate they see 65,000 children at domestic violence incidents each year. 65,000.

Once I got my head around how truly horrific that figure is, something worse occurred to me: how many more children are actually experiencing domestic violence incidents the Police don’t see?

How many children are going uncounted?

I’ve talked at length so far about the vital work being done out there by social service groups in dealing with vulnerable families who are at breaking point.

But to me that’s not enough. I think society has become very good at pulling down the shutters. 

How many people out there truly know what’s happening in their neighbourhood, what’s happening two doors down from where they live?

We’re all responsible for the children in our communities. As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

Every single person who comes in contact with a child has an effect, good or bad.

Each person who comes into contact with a child has an opportunity to listen, to observe, to notice, and if necessary, to take action on behalf of that child.

Saliel and Olympia Aplin, Delcelia Whittaker, James Whakaruru, Nia Glassie…sadly the names change, but the disturbing themes of traumatic lives remain the same.

While many are clearly let down by their caregivers, I often wonder how many other adults in their lives turned a blind eye. 

When we hold the belief that other people’s children are “none of our business” – because we’re afraid, because we don’t want to get involved, because we’re not sure even though our gut tells us something is wrong – it is the child who suffers most.

Other people’s children are our business, and the children of New Zealand belong to the whole country.

The theme you’ve selected for this conference is a powerful one – you’re brainstorming ideas that will inspire and connect people within communities to think as a village raising a child.

And even better, you’re undertaking this work from a solid foundation of experience out there in the community working with children, families and organisations.

In the past I’ve made the comment that all children are our children – the healthy, the unhealthy, the poor and the rich.

I’ve been criticised by some for wanting to interfere.

Actually those critics miss the point completely.

I’m not interested in going into the homes of New Zealanders and telling them how to parent.

But I will not sit back while thousands of our children are abused and neglected.

What upsets me, is the only time we become outraged enough about this, is when it hits the media.

It is a sad reflection on our society that a child will be severely abused or even die in the next few weeks at the hands of someone who is supposed to care for and love them.

The only difference between the horrific life led by that child, and those led by some of the children you know, is whether the full scale of that horror is played out in media headlines.

As you well know, for every case that hits the headlines, there are many more  living the same lives of quiet desperation.

There is no question that it happens.

But you can’t stop this all on your own, and neither should you.

Right now there are just over 40 child advocates working up and down the country.

If we truly believe as a country that it takes a village to raise a child, then that means that every single one of us becomes a child advocate.

Each and every one of us listens to what children say, and we respond to this with the appropriate action.

As child advocates within the community, you are modelling this way to be and behave, and therefore encouraging other people to be child advocates as well.

I have great respect and admiration for the work you are doing, and I’m excited to see what ideas and concepts come out of this conference. I believe you’ve made a powerful choice of theme.

It is our job as adults, as organisations, as people in positions of comparative power, to look after the needs of our children. All of our children.

I wish you well, and I thank you again for all the hard work that you do for our communities.