This government talks tough about tackling crime. It talks about stopping violence towards children. It makes out it’s doing a lot. It’s big on punishment. Not so much on prevention. I was always taught that prevention was better than cure.
Behind the scenes it’s appears it could be planning to axe 45 child advocates put in place after some horrific child abuse cases in the mid 2000s in NZ to make sure that children impacted in any way by violence in their neighbourhood or community could have their needs effectively met.
A piece in the ODT today by UNICEF spells it out:
If we are serious about breaking the cycle of family violence and moving towards a generation that does not accept violence as a normalised part of family life, we must have informed advocates for children.
I guess preventing violence towards kids might be one of those non-essential “nice to have” services that Bill English says we can do without. After all you can’t really measure the acts of violence that don’t happen.
As Annette King said in her release yesterday: What’s the real story?
I’ve just posted some thoughts in the tony twaddle thread.
These people are help at the top of the cliff not the ambulance at the bottom. I am aware of a few programmes, showing good results which have been cut back of canned by this government.
The Chief Family Court Judge has a lot of time, experience and himself invested int he area of children, he keeps giving government reports, perhaps they should read them.
Children need voices. Abusers threaten children, usually with awful things happening to brothers or sisters or other loved ones if they tell. ACC too is assuming that a child, even with a few years distance between them and the abuse will tell all in time to get support from ACC. ACC needs to produce convincing proof that people lie about being abused to get free counselling.
It is possible that our violent society is partly because of the way in which some families think it is OK to hit their kids. That belief may connect to bullying, as kids living in non-violent homes don’t normally use force on others. So keep the successful programs going Bill. And leave those 45 child advocates alone.
Perhaps the salaries of the many Associate Ministers that this Administration seems to need and according to John Key don’t add up to much cash could be diverted to save these jobs.
It’s also possible that it’s partly because traditional, tried and tested methods of discipline have been outlawed (against the wishes of the vast majority of parents) and replaced with costly initiatives which so far appear to be inaedqute substitutes.
The idea that kids living in non-violent homes don’t bully is laughable.
The idea that kids living in non-violent homes are unlikely to bully is born out by the evidence.
Personal experience (based on our own children’s contemporaries at the many schools they attended in both the UK and NZ) is that many of the worst bullies came from very right-on, trendy, state-of-the-art parenting homes.
Or perhaps they were just ‘expressing’ themselves…
George. The definitions are so hard to agree on that general arguments are difficult. Who knows what “very right-on, trendy, state-of-the-art parenting homes” are. Having watched some children from very wealthy well endowed homes, I find many are bereft of ordinary human family relationships.
The non-violent homes that I have in mind are ordinary friendly places where no one is cornered or bullied, but respected. Unlikely to get bullies from this compared to a home where a clip round the ear and denigration are present.
But George, we probably wouldn’t agree would we?
Totally agree. Which is why I think that the rejection of something that has worked well for generations shouldn’t be outlawed merely because of the preferences of a small but vocal minority.
I don’t support child abuse. But I don’t see the application of a timely and well deserved smacked bum as falling into this category. And neither do the majority of parents.
I wish people wouldnt divert from the depths of the issue by bringing it back to paddles on the bum (no offence is genuinely meant to you George).
What I do know from experience that violence is not measured equally in statistics or the Courts. For example, children of more financially viable parents get lawyers, diversion, slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket, a chat with the Principal and so on. Therefore those stats don’t show.
perhaps things not considered wirthy of reporting in our day are now reported falsely indicating a rise in aprticular behaviours.
My brothers’ went to a high profile boys school. Corporal punishment was common, so was bullying and fighting and beating, and so on. So much of this was seen as character building. Most of those boys are now parents with a belief that it “didnt hurt them” but they forget how it felt at the time. I have reminded both my brothers, and when they look back some appalling stuff happened to them, their friends and classmates they would never wish on their own children. We tend to look back with very rose coloured glasses.
I suspect alcohol is a factor in alot of violence toward children. Sexual dominating of children is about power, the sense of having another under your control, your spell or whatever. Sexually overpowering someone has some sexual gratification for some. I know of men who have lain there crying as soon as they have “finished” over what they have done. Nonetheless they threaten to harm someone dear to the child, make the child think they will be breaking up the family if they tell, and return another night.
This is across socioeconomic divides. MOST of the sexual abuse of children I am aware of is by white middle class men.
Violence and sexual abuse is a male problem. It is visited on women and yes there are exceptions (and a growing trend of female violence to females and males). We need all men to impress on their children female and male their value. To not joke in sexist ways in front of young women and men. Young children dont “get” sarcasm, they take stuff literally and when they dont understand something give it an interpretation they can understand. It’s not about being PC or other throw away comments it’s about understanding how children view the world, how children hear and see, not how we as adults do.
We ALL learn from our parents, if we have bad parents we learn bad parenting. School teachers I know dispair at how some parents can undo in one night the work they have done in weeks.
Children are not adults, physically mentally and emotionally. Too many adults treat them as though they interact on the same level as adults. Children deserve to feel safe, nurtured, that the world revolves around them, and yes with limits.
Most of the parents I know have never hit their children, not even a paddle on the bum. The one parent I know who has hit their child, and harder than a paddle on the bum, was in Court of Monday with that child, now 18 on a charge of aggravated robbery. It’s only anecdotal but it’s my personal experiences and observations I share.
Tracey – my views come from my own experience, at the consumer end, if you like.
I went to school in the middle of a large council estate in the UK’s Midlands. In NZ terms probably a decile 2 or 3. Non selective, comprehensive (our county abolished selection in the 1950s).
Notwithstanding our lowly status our school had an enviable record of achievement and university entrance. A lot of it was down to strict discipline which kept us in order when we were going through those brain-fade years that many boys experience. I shudder to think of the amount of disruption to our own and other kids’ educations we would have caused if discipline had been the same as it is today.
For some of the things either I or my friends got caned for we could probably have been stood down or excluded these days. At huge cost to our whole lives. For acts of teenage stupidity. To my mind that really would have been child abuse.
In recent times discipline has fallen through the floor in the school and it has ended up in ‘special measures’, despite the fact that materially the area is far better of than when I was growing up there in the 60s.
I know it doesn’t fit in with the theory, but many kids from working class backgrounds like mine benefited enormously from being ruled with a rod of iron at school.
Thanks for that George. Nonetheless the debate is not about s59a it’s about child advocates being cut by a govt who claims to want to reduce abuse against children.