CYFS has lost track of children, says report

The Department of Child, Youth and Family Services cannot reliably report on the number and status of children in its care and does not know what works when dealing with at-risk children and youths, says a Cabinet paper prepared by the State Services Commission.

The Cabinet has also ordered a review of the effectiveness of the family group conference, the cornerstone of the legislation that has underpinned social work with families for the past 15 years.

The paper was the basis of the Cabinet decision on Monday to merge CYFS with the Ministry of Social Development and was posted on the commission's website last night (link below).

It paints a picture of a dysfunctional service that has made no significant progress despite two major reviews and funding boosts.

"There is an urgent need to manage the number of notifications and referrals, improve the effectiveness of the family group conference ... and improving [sic] the management of children in care," the paper says.

There was no evidence of an approach to simultaneously manage those three areas, it says.

"For example, CYFS has reduced unallocated cases, but this seems to be at the cost of taking its eye off the amount of time children spend in temporary care."

The paper acknowledges the large volume of difficult work done by social workers. It says CYFS manages about 5000 children in care, conducts 35,000 investigations and receives 50,000 notifications a year. But commenting on the lack of performance and management information, it says, "CYFS cannot reliably report on the number and current status of children in care and their related costs; and there is a lack of information about the effectiveness of interventions, ie, family group conference."

CYFS' basic operations funding had "repeatedly experienced unexpected and unplanned pressure", in part the result of an over-reliance on counting telephone calls (notifications) as the sole cost driver.

Since 1999 CYFS has had two major reviews and two chief executives resigned prematurely. After a major funding review in 2003, its basic funding increased by 50 per cent to $386 million this financial year.

The Cabinet paper says the frequency of review of the department and changes in chief executive had meant insufficient time to implement the findings of each review.

When the merger was announced on Monday, neither the minister in charge of the department, Ruth Dyson, nor Prime Minister Helen Clark, nor State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble would criticise the social workers.

But the paper points to what it calls "a culture of 'resistance' among some frontline CYFS staff".

"In the SSC's view, this reflects 'professional disregard' for management."

The judiciary was also concerned that youth justice plans were not given priority or were not implemented by social workers.

"In the SSC's view, this could be another example of the 'resistance' culture that puts priority on the views of the social worker over procedures and, in this case, legal systems and administration of justice."