Dialogue: Singular Auckland effort to keep kids from harm

The money raised by the Starship's Safe & Sound appeal will, contrary to criticism, directly benefit the drive to combat child abuse, writes PATRICK KELLY*.

Columnist John Roughan in the Weekend Herald raised important questions about the credibility of the Starship Safe & Sound appeal.

That same weekend I was holding a bucket at the Sky City Starlight Symphony and was grateful for the many who put money in it. I might even have been the one who received Roughan's something.

I thank him for it and welcome this opportunity to justify it because I, too, believe that we should spend our money only to make a difference. Unlike Roughan, I have confidence that this project meets that criterion.

First, I should make it clear that Starship already has a child abuse unit, and it has a name. In the past 10 years we have cared for 5000 young Aucklanders who have endured abuse or neglect.

If the Safe & Sound appeal succeeds, we will move out of Starship and into a facility run jointly with the Auckland child abuse team (police) and specialist psychologists of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services.

All these services exist, and work every day with abused children. All are fully funded and supported by the agencies to which they belong, and will continue to be.

Secondly, the new facility is not a purpose-built suite for professionals to meet in. It is, above all, a working facility where abused children and young people will be interviewed and examined and families in crisis supported in a far more coordinated way than has ever been possible in the past.

Locating these three teams together is not cheap. A commercial building needs to become an environment welcoming to children and young people, housing medical rooms (suitable for forensic examination for rape), interviewing rooms with video facilities for evidential purposes, play facilities for children and adolescents, therapy rooms, whanau rooms and private areas for the distressed.

It is obviously, therefore, cheaper for all of us to stay right where we are.

Unfortunately, Auckland research has confirmed that the way our agencies work together leaves much to be desired. Research on child abuse suggests repeatedly that multi-disciplinary practice works better.

Many of the families I see have extensive experience of what it means to have fallen through the cracks.

The fact is that however well an individual professional might colour in his part of the jigsaw, the picture will never be complete until all those involved work together. In child abuse, many professionals work in separate agencies with different philosophies, different funding structures and a legacy of mutual misunderstanding.

Our proposal is one attempt, suitable to the size and complexity of Auckland, to create a new cooperative model with direct and immediate benefit to the families we are all seeing daily.

Immediate benefits will result from the concentration of resources in one place. The interviewing and examination process will occur in one location, with better sharing of information and, therefore, a reduction in delays and misinformation for families.

As each team understands better how the others work, we will reduce pointless duplication and better identify the real gaps that exist for each young person seen.

The combined expertise will increase our ability to link families to crisis support and other appropriate resources in their own communities. In the medium and long term the centre will inevitably become a focus for education, training and research.

It is common sense that regional resources that share a common task should share a common facility and that, in the end, the goal of appropriate intervention in the cycle of abuse should matter more than the agency of origin.

Roughan asks why the project did not start by agreement between the agencies. It did - at the level of the regional teams within each agency and their Auckland head offices.

We have had nothing but praise from Wellington for the concept and did receive six months' funding for a project manager as a token of its support.

However, Wellington frames this as an Auckland project which must be funded from within the regional budgets of each agency and in this sense must be zero-cost.

All three agencies are trying hard to meet this requirement.

All three agencies have been promoting this project, rationally and responsibly, for more than three years.

The Safe & Sound appeal is simply a pragmatic attempt to give all Aucklanders the opportunity to help to make this project happen sooner rather than later. The appeal continues into early March.

I hope that Aucklanders will continue to see it as worthy of their support, and take this opportunity to make a difference.

* Dr Patrick Kelly is clinical director of the Starship child abuse team.