Child abuse

New Zealand has a shocking child-abuse record but the social workers dealing with the heartache behind the headlines are a mystery to most people. Kim Dungey was given rare access to spend a day at Child, Youth and Family.

Mandatory reporting is not the magic answer to preventing child abuse, public law lawyer Mai Chen told a child welfare seminar in Dunedin yesterday.

New Zealand's child abuse statistics are an international disgrace. Government agency Child, Youth and Family confirmed 21,000 cases of abuse and neglect in 2009-10; 13,315 hospital admissions in 2008-09 were for children under 5 that could have been avoided.

There can be few people in New Zealand who are not aware of the problem of child abuse. The shocking headlines we regularly see chronicle the many serious or fatal injuries suffered by children.

It has been a tough year for our children, our tamariki, with several appalling cases of child abuse in the headlines.

The Race Relations Commissioner has supported a historian's objections to the phrase "Maori child abuse".

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett angrily dismissed suggestions she or Prime Minister John Key could have acted to halt horrific child abuse suffered by a 9-year-old Auckland girl whose mother was jailed yesterday.

Toys instead of wreaths were placed at the bottom of Dunedin's Cenotaph on Saturday, in memory of children who died in the worst imaginable circumstances.

An 0800 number to report child abuse should be considered by the Government, a coroner has recommended following an inquest into the horrific death of 3-year-old Nia Glassie.

A Hastings woman has been jailed for bashing her children and sticking a safety pin in her baby's groin.