Mike Williams: Bold system offers hope for kids in care

Mike Williams

READERS of Hawke's Bay Today will know that I have been following the development of a new government attitude to social spending. This was first known as the "forward liability approach", focusing on social spending which averts future government expense. A simple example of this is making sure all school-leavers can read and write so they won't eventually go to jail for repeated unlicensed driving.

Forward Liability has now morphed into "social investment", but the central idea remains unchanged.

This week a very promising set of developments, at the core of this concept was announced by the Minister of Social Development, Anne Tolley.

These announcements amount to a radically new way of handling children who become wards of the state and have been managed, up till now, by the Child Youth and Family Agency (CYF).

Via its prisoner literacy programme, The Howard League interfaces with dozens of former CYF people annually as many end up illiterate and serving jail sentences.

As this experience indicates, the outcomes for kids who end up in this position are abominable and unacceptable. Statistics tell us that 90 per cent will be on a benefit at the age of 21, 80 per cent will not have passed NCEA at level two and 20 per cent will be jailed.

A major report proposes that a new agency is formed to replace CYF and undertake many of the tasks currently delegated to a range of agencies. This agency will have the child as its central focus, extend the age of supervision in all cases from 17 years old to 18 and allow, in some cases, for supervision to extend to the age of 25.

The report on which the new model will be based envisages five child-centred phases of prevention, intervention, care and support, youth justice and transition.

Government funding will follow the child and although significant new expenditure is planned, as Bill English points out, just one failure of the system can cost the taxpayer $1 million by the time that failure reaches age 35.

Anne Tolley has indicated that the new system will leverage off the great torrents of information now available to the state to identify at-risk children (poverty, parents with a prison record, truancy etc).

Reverse modelling has repeatedly demonstrated the precision of such analysis and Minister Tolley, with a rare diploma in computer programming, is well-placed to assure its accuracy.

Some development of the new system and some necessary legislation will occur this year, but the whole ambitious project will take five years to roll out in its entirety.

Much of the success of this endeavour will depend on Minister Tolley, but she clearly has the support of Bill English and has demonstrated the capacity for heavy lifting in previous portfolios.

I was delighted to see our Prime Minister John Key, on behalf of the New Zealand Government, nominate Helen Clark for the position of United Nations Secretary-General, a position which becomes vacant on the retirement of Korean Ban Ki-moon later this year.

I have known Helen for the best part of half a century and believe that she could bring some very real and very new strength to the task. Helen has been fascinated by what is loosely called foreign affairs all of her life, and will be well-known to a large proportion of world leaders.

The hurdles she will face are high, but her track record is one of intelligent determination, hard work and diligence, and she might just surprise the pundits and win the race.

The major barrier would seem to be an unwritten convention known as "regional rotation". This "principle" if taken seriously, would mean that it would be the turn of a candidate from the Eastern European Group or EEG.

Members of the EEG do seem to be taking the rotational principle seriously as six of the eight currently announced runners are from this group including candidates from Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Moldova and Bulgaria. Obviously picking up on the "time for a woman" feeling, three of these EEG candidates are women.

The UN has taken steps to towards making the selection process more transparent and open and in 2016 sent a letter to member states asking them to nominate candidates for the position.

It will still be a sole nominee from the Security Council whose name goes to the General Assembly and the five permanent members of the Security Council, the US, Britain, Russia, China and France carry the power of veto.

New Zealand sits on the Security Council at present, Helen will have support on the spot, but should Russia chose to insist on an EEG candidate, then the veto that this country wields may come into play. Win or lose, Helen has gone further on the international stage than any other Kiwi. We can all be proud.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.