A CYFS story
Bruce SImpson at Aardvark has a CYFS story which is well worth a read. It’s about his dealings with them when his teenage daughter wanted to adopt out her baby. What is especially interesting is how CYFS policy can almost have the weight of law, but without the normal checks and balances of law making.
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Tags: New Zealand
January 25th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
It’s not the story I get. What I get is a commentary about how the govt has made a major blunder trying to remove the Cyfswatch blog. Just think about all the money the govt will be spending trying to remove a blog when it could be helping, well, children and families, the very people that the blog is trying to draw attention to.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
The original story is at http://www.aardvark.co.nz/daily/2007/0124.shtml
January 25th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Great story. Just ridiculous the mindless pursuit of policy with no questioning of whether it actually achieved anything. Policy is just an invention of the management, it is not written in stone.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Socialist policy is an evil that meddles in the lives of the good people whilst studiously avoiding doing so in the lives of the bad people.
Perhaps the best outcome for those of us on the Right is that many of the people posting on the blog will have been Labour supporters up until now. I suspect the Socialists are shitting themselves that they risk bleeding a significant level of support. The next polls will tell us.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
But aren’t CYFS on a hiding to nothing here? If they allow people to exercise discretion in the application of policy, the very next time something bad happens and policy was waived, people will complain that their staff are ignoring policy. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
In this case Bruce seems clearly to have the right of it, but I can understand how a culture of “it’s policy” evolves. CYFS is under such intense and continual scrutiny that it’s inevitable they will become highly rule-bound in an effort to avoid blame.
How would you create an agency that can intervene where needed, with competent people who can be trusted to exercise their discretion well?
January 25th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
The arrogance of CYFS really shines through in that story. It’s the sort of arrogance that seems to thrive in government departments.
Like most of governement, they have forgotten why they exist in the first place and become a law unto themselves.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
> How would you create an agency that can intervene where needed, with competent people who can be trusted to exercise their discretion well?
It’s pretty easy actually. You treat each case on it’s merits. If you have a one-size-fits-all policy, then it is doomed to fail. Flexibility is the key.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
What’s interesting is that here we have yet another story broken by the bloggers and entering the mainstream media as a story about a story, which has to be some kind of measure of how incompetent and slack newspaper and electronic media journalists have become today.
All they contribute to the this event is to allow themselves to be used as a platform for CYF’s chief bureaucrat to call for the government and or the Police to close the site down.
Gone are the days when newspaper editors and journalists wearing green eye shades worked far into the night to expose corruption at city hall. Nowadays, the media exist mainly as a megaphone for big government socialism and all of the corruption sloth and inefficiency that goes with it.
The fact is there are a hundred stories out there similar to this, but you won’t read them in the NZ Herald or hear about it on TV One or TV Three. They’re far too busy re-printing or rebroadcasting press releases straight from the PM’s 300 person publicity department.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
“It’s pretty easy actually. You treat each case on it’s merits.”
Nya ha! If you do that, then you don’t have any rules at all, but arbitrary adhocracy. And then people will complain that they are not treated as others in apparently similar circumstances were.
The hard bits are a) making rules which are a reasonable fit for most cases and b) finding people who are wise enough and brave enough to recognise which cases are a bad fit.
January 25th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Where is the logic in barring the adoptive parents from the child for two weeks so that the birth mother may have time to change her mind, even though the birth mother may place the child in the care of anybody else during that time? Crazy stuff.
January 25th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Two words Common Sense. Government policy has been bereft of this for several decades.Instead we have had to suffer mindless policy wonks with little or no real world experience telling grandmas how to suck eggs.We should reflect on the definition of an expert. X is the unknown quantity and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
January 25th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
What is clear is the CYFS clearly operate on the understanding that their policy supercedes New Zealand law.
You might have heard of the law, its that thing we have to help protect us and our rights.
January 25th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
If they allow people to exercise discretion in the application of policy, the very next time something bad happens and policy was waived, people will complain that their staff are ignoring policy. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
I don’t think so. In this case, consenting adults had come to an agreement and would have been happy to be bound by written contract and statement accepting the adoption plan.
CYFS could consider that adults are capable of taking responsibility for their actions, demonstrated by their efforts to determine a plan and stick to it.
CYFS role could have been to verify that the mother was of sound mind in agreeing to the parents suggestions, provide any counseling or other appropriate resource and then stepped the hell away.
They could have documented their decision to support the parties who had *agreed* to this, which should cover their arses. Arranging some financial support and social services to help out in the intervening period would have been a bonus.
Instead, their attitude was to put their “policy” ahead of (a) the law and (b) an agrement between consenting parties.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
The calibre of “social workers” seems very diverse and the turnover rate is apparently high.My impression is that “leftie prosaic idealogues” remain in the job longest.The more intelligent thinkers move along when they realize that what they are “required to do” often makes no bloody sense in the real world.
I have no personal experience with Cyfs,nor do I expect to,but if my hideously hormonal daughter tells anyone that she sunbathes in a bikini IN FRONT OF HER FATHER,I fear a knock on the door. Meanwhile hundreds,if not thousands of little kids are being raised by people who you and I would not trust to walk our dogs.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
A lot of the problems that plague the country can be laid at the feet of this disfunctional government. We have many in the government, including Dear Leader that would have no idea of what a family is. They spend most of their waking hours planning a society that does more to break up the family unit then promote it. How will we ever fix the problems that ordinary everyday families face while we have politicians that live in a world far removed from anything resembling a family.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Stephen – CYFA should encourage best practice as they define it in policy. They should explain why it is best.
But when they start threatening to take away children unless you bow to their wishes, that is when they go too far.
Only when the parents involved have been shown to be incapable of caring for children, should CYFS demand its view trumps the family. In Bruce’s case they were obviously a caring well grounded family who were campable of making such decisions.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
> Nya ha! If you do that, then you don’t have any rules at all.
You miss the point. Rules and policies are simply guidelines. They are not natural laws imposed by God. In some circumstances, it will be appropriate to follow policy and in others it won’t. It means that social workers will sometimes have to think for themselves!
I had to laugh when I heard the CEO of CYFS (or MSD) say that staff at CYFS were simply carrying out government policy. Since when has it been government policy to leave kids in the care of paedophiles and to break up families that have done no wrong?
January 25th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
” if my hideously hormonal daughter tells anyone that she sunbathes in a bikini”
Photos or it didn’t happen…
January 25th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I wonder what credentials elevates a judge, a CFY’s worker, a psychologist, a psychiatrist (or, any other human being for that matter),to be better ‘equipped’ to intervene and pass judgement against the primeval instincts of a mother and father, (vs any other member of society), in their desire to protect and secure the love of their offspring?
January 26th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Don’t get me wrong. I think that this was a classic case of bone-headed intransigence. All I’m saying is that I can see how CYFS staff come to regard policy as law, because it protects them from other accusations. It seems pretty obvious that CYFS is embattled and paranoid, and insistence on strict adherence to policy comes out of that.
I also think it will be hard to replace that situation with anything better. Not very constructive of me, I know.
January 26th, 2007 at 10:21 am
> All I’m saying is that I can see how CYFS staff come to regard policy as law, because it protects them from other accusations.
I don’t agree. What “other accusations” could there have been in this case? All the adults involved consented to the child being adopted. It probably would have involved less work and less hassle for CYFS to have let these adults make their own decisions. CYFS staff have to realise that there will be occasions when they don’t have to follow policy and indeed it would be better if they didn’t.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Policies should be there to SUPPORT the overall objectives/prinicples of the organisation. THis policy Bruce was quoted has a disconnect with them. Here is an extract from CYF’s guiding principles:
“When problems arise with children or young people, their families, whanau and family groups are encouraged and supported to find their own solutions. … In the past, social workers made the decisions on their own. Now they work together with the family group to reach agreement on how to keep the child or young person safe.”
I think Stephen is correct in his appraisal. It appears that the policy has become the b-all and end-all for bureaucratic reasons. An official with brains would have viewed the policy in the context of, does it support and reflect the guiding principles? I can understand the reason for the policy to prevent hasty decisions, but if it didn’t apply there should have been the ability to go outside policy when circumstances meant the policy was absurd.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
What I would like to know is how can CYFs take children from 1 parent that does look after them and give them to another that doesnt. This has happened to me 1 week before xmas and they have given me supervised access once a month. As for the Lawyers that the Department employ that think they can just walk into your home with out knocking. Jumping to the wrong conclustions and taping the “talk” but only when the parent is speaking. I would love it if us parent could do the same and just walk into there home to see how prefect they are. The Department say they are there to help families but all they do is destory them to the point that you just want to give up on life.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
What I would like to know is how can CYFs take children from 1 parent that does look after them and give them to another that doesnt. This has happened to me 1 week before xmas and they have given me supervised access once a month. As for the Lawyers that the Department employ that think they can just walk into your home with out knocking. Jumping to the wrong conclustions and taping the “talk” but only when the parent is speaking. I would love it if us parent could do the same and just walk into there home to see how prefect they are. The Department say they are there to help families but all they do is destory them to the point that you just want to give up on life.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Just came across this story (“CYFS, you can’t beat the net”) today.
One thing I find interesting is what CYFS said about what is the best thing for the child;
To quote: —
Was this in the best interests of the child?
Indeed, I asked just that question — and got this rather stunning response:
“The United Nations has declared that the best place for a child is with its parents and if that’s not possible, with family. If that’s not possible then it’s with someone of their own race in their own country and if that’s not possible, it’s adoption to a foreign country”.
So how come CYFS are so keen to remove children from their parents as often as they can find some “suitable” reason? How come THEY don’t have to fall in line with this UN decision?
Yep, just another thing that CYFS have to answer for.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Just came across this story (“CYFS, you can’t beat the net”) today.
One thing I find interesting is what CYFS said about what is the best thing for the child;
To quote: —
Was this in the best interests of the child?
Indeed, I asked just that question — and got this rather stunning response:
“The United Nations has declared that the best place for a child is with its parents and if that’s not possible, with family. If that’s not possible then it’s with someone of their own race in their own country and if that’s not possible, it’s adoption to a foreign country”.
So how come CYFS are so keen to remove children from their parents as often as they can find some “suitable” reason? How come THEY don’t have to fall in line with this UN decision?
Yep, just another thing that CYFS have to answer for.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Just came across this story (“CYFS, you can’t beat the net”) today.
One thing I find interesting is what CYFS said about what is the best thing for the child;
To quote: —
Was this in the best interests of the child?
Indeed, I asked just that question — and got this rather stunning response:
“The United Nations has declared that the best place for a child is with its parents and if that’s not possible, with family. If that’s not possible then it’s with someone of their own race in their own country and if that’s not possible, it’s adoption to a foreign country”.
So how come CYFS are so keen to remove children from their parents as often as they can find some “suitable” reason? How come THEY don’t have to fall in line with this UN decision?
Yep, just another thing that CYFS have to answer for.
March 31st, 2007 at 6:55 am
I feel it is time to spend more time counseling and group counseling kids and spending less time on “coking them to the gills”. And I`m doing fine after my surgery. WBR LeoP
April 11th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
gntold ixydsbmnt lfdsxm kczrbxsaq muvtyeog eikcm jgxk
April 11th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
gntold ixydsbmnt lfdsxm kczrbxsaq muvtyeog eikcm jgxk
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
NZ Govt aiding and abetting the destruction of our **Whole Natural Biological FAMILIES** continues wholesale under National
MP – NZ – the Hon. Paula Bennett – National – Waitakere – Minister for MSD
Minister Bennett,
Time to listen to your VOTERS
NZ Govt aiding and abetting the destruction of our **Whole Natural Biological FAMILIES** continues wholesale under National.
According to;
• http://www.cyfstalk.org
• http://ration-shed.blogspot.com
• http://www.panic.org.nz
• http://rationshed2.blogspot.com
• http://watchingcyfs.wordpress.com
• http://dad4justice.blogspot.com/2009/01/357-children-die-after-cyfs-notified.html
• http://www.petitiononline.com/cyfsnz/petition.html
• http://tvnz.co.nz/content/31107
• http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/01/a_cyfs_story.html
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/watchingcyfs
• Many, many more have spoken against MSD – CYFS – WINZ etc
Has the new Minister for MSD got what it will take to fire Peter Hughs and get rid of the other HELENGrad appointees?
Onward – Ration Shed – Jim
At this time our main focus is to Build the **Equal Parenting **Petition to Strengthen **Equal Parenting** Orgs World-Wide and to Build new ones where there are none. Please consider hosting the petition on your websites and of course signing it.
Go – http://petitionthem .com/default. asp?sect= detail&pet=4275
As we move toward Easter – Do something extra for lent – Be of mind that 2000+ years ago Jesus was in the desert at this time being tempted by the Devil himself which lasted 40 days – Yet he chose to walk in obedience all the way to the cross for you and me – WOW what a saviour!!!