Children must not be endangered by punishing parents

The Social Development Minister must take immediate steps to collect national records of abuse on children in CYFS care after revelations her Ministry keeps no central record of abuse on children in care.

Answers to oral and written questions by Green Party children's spokesperson Holly Walker have revealed 71 children were abused while in CYFS care, in just one year to June 2011.

"While that's horrifying enough, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has also confirmed that CYFS can't say how many other children in its care had been abused in other years because it doesn't collect records at a national level.

"For an agency that's in the business of child protection it is astonishing that it didn't see fit to collect national data on children in its own care who were subsequently abused in that care.

"You can't solve a problem till you know it exists.

"If they don't have a national picture of how many kids in CYFS care are being abused, how can they make policy and operational improvements to fix the problem?

"The safety of kids in care is fundamental to the work of CYFS. Yet it could only find out how many children were abused in its care in the year to June 2011, when a social worker spent seven weeks trawling through paper files at individual CYFS offices.

'The Minister told the house it would require a major IT overhaul to collect this data. Now she must make sure that happens as quickly as possible.

"At a time when the Government is talking tough on removing more kids from families, the lack of a national data on the abuse of kids in care raises serious questions about the vetting process for CYFS caregivers and the on-going safety of children," Ms Walker said.