'We need a better system' say CYF

Minister of Social Development, Anne Tolley. Photo / Mark Mitchell, New Zealand Herald

After a string of restructures of Child Youth and Family, Minister of Social Development Anne Tolley says she will fully implement the recommendations of an expert panel looking into children in state care.

Mrs Tolley appointed the panel, led by Paula Rebstock, and it's final recommendations are expected in December.

An interim report has called for an overhaul to the way CYF is run.

"We've had 14 different restructures of CYF over the years and the reality is not much has changed for the children who have come through that system," Mrs Tolley told TV3's The Nation today.

"What we're going to do is take the system completely apart and put it back together, but this time it's going to be completely focused on the needs of the children....

"When we look at the results that the system is getting for those children we take into our care, we should be ashamed of those results and all of us have a role to play in that."

Previous changes had often been made in response to crises and had added extra layers of process, Mrs Tolley said.

"What's clear is that no-one has ever gone back and monitored and checked and evaluated if what they were doing is actually working. You know the old adage, if you keep doing the same things the same way you get the same results."

Mrs Tolley said of the 3000 CYF social workers, only 25 per cent worked with children and of that 25 per cent, they only spent 15 per cent of their time with children.

"What we need is a system that's designed to look after those children when they first come to our attention.

"We need to get interventions with them and their families and we need to free up the frontline social workers to do the work they come in every day to do, which is to work with children, not a system that's based on layers and layers of risk management and bureaucracy and administration, which is what we've got now."

Mrs Tolley said she didn't want to pre-empt the final report by talking specific numbers, but she was clear state care for children would not be outsourced.

"There's no talk in government at all of outsourcing that responsibility."