New team to help at-risk youth

CHILDREN FIRST: Social Development Minister Anne Tolley was at Tawhero School yesterday to launch the Whanganui Children's Team.

There is a new way of supporting vulnerable children and it is one the entire community is involved in.

Getting children the support they need is the goal of the Whanganui Children's Team which was launched at Tawhero School yesterday.

The team is made up of professionals from a range of agencies and tasked with helping improve the lives of vulnerable children before state intervention is required.

Once a child has been referred to the Children's Team they are matched with one main professional who will bring the services and support each child needs into one individual plan.

Child Youth and Family (CYF) has about 5000 children in its care but its estimated another 20,000 nationwide need support but are not in a serious enough situation to come to the attention of CYF.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley was in Wanganui to officially launched the team, the eighth of its kind in the country.

"Changing the lives of vulnerable children is not something we can do overnight and no one agency can do it on their own," she said.

Mrs Tolley said it the Children's Team would provide a level of support which was not currently there.

"Some people don't like to ring CYF, they think that's a step to far," she said.

"So the Children's Team sort of fills that gap between a single (agency) working with a family... and statutory intervention.

"It's trying to get anyone who has any concerns about how that family is functioning, whether that child is at-risk or not, making a report of concerns."

She estimated about 400 children in the Wanganui area would be in need of such a service and hoped 170 of those would be be working with the team in the first two years.

"These are children that are already out there and they need to access services that are already there but they're not," she said.

"Agencies have to talk to each other. They have to share information and they have to trust each other."

Wanganui mayor Annette Main spoke at the launch about the importance of children to the community.

"This is a community where we really really need our children to be safe, we want our children to be thriving and our children to be happy," she said.

"We've heard the say over and over again 'it takes a village to raise a child'. We need to put that into action."

Danelle Whakatihi has been appointed the director of the Whanganui Children's Team, coming from a social work background.

She said the team already had 25 professionals ready to go who would hit the ground running.