Put parents into care, says educator

Louise Belcher, of Papakura's Kelvin Rd Whanau Centre, takes a class in effective parenting. Picture / Richard Robinson

A frontline parent educator says parents and not their children should be removed from their homes when things go wrong.

Louise Belcher, manager of Papakura's Kelvin Rd Whanau Centre, says the current practice of taking children into the care of Child, Youth and Family Services when they are at risk through violence or neglect too often leaves the parents unscathed.

"Say there are five children in a family, which is not uncommon. Those five children are put out to various homes, and the parents stay home with the same drug and alcohol problems," she says.

"They get a slap on the hand. They are told to go to a parenting programme. But there is no follow-up.

"I personally believe the children should not be uplifted from their home.

:The parents should be uplifted and put in a place where they undergo a compulsory parenting programme and where if they are on drugs they are detoxified, and that we put in place a family worker who monitors those parents very closely while they are reunited with their family."

In earlier times, when people lived in extended families in the same village, such problems were not public issues. Young people learned how to live with partners and look after children from observing their own parents and looking after their younger siblings and cousins.

But they have become political issues because families are breaking up. By the age of 20, 35 per cent of Pakeha children, 49 per cent of Pacific children and 57 per cent of Maori children have lived in homes with only one parent. Grandparents and other extended family may be in another town or another country.

"How do we, at that beginning point, talk to people about being family, what does family look like, really teach people to be families?" asks Ruby Duncan, chief executive of Baptist Action Community Services in Auckland.

"They have kind of lost the art. They don't know what it is any more.

"We need to teach people to live together faithfully, what to do when the hard times come. It's basic relationship stuff that young people don't have."

She says many parents no longer know how to talk to their children.

"How many families sit around the dinner table and have a conversation?" she asks.

"I see all these problems when I look at my kids and their friends - young people who just don't talk to their parents and their parents don't talk to them. These kids are going through huge stuff, but really don't have anyone to talk to."

She supports a Government scheme called "Strategies with Kids - Information for Parents" (Skip) which funds community groups to run parenting programmes, and says schools need more focus on parenting and careers.

Parents Centres chief executive Viv Gurrey says education on childbirth and parenting needs to be available everywhere, not just in the 54 towns that have Parents Centres.

This is one area where all political parties agree that more resources are needed.

Without even waiting for a pilot study due to start next year, Labour's Social Development Minister Steve Maharey announced yesterday that Labour would fund "one-stop-shop" family centres based on existing services such as Plunket around the country.

National spokeswoman Judith Collins takes a harder line, arguing that parents of children involved in offending, antisocial behaviour or truancy should have to attend parenting courses by court order.