Whatever the shape of a new children's department, it will continue to be the quality of relationships between front-line staff and children and young people which determines its success, Adam Doesburg writes.
I greatly appreciated Elspeth McLean's sage reflections on the changes facing New Zealand's children and young people's care and protection sector (ODT, 13.4.16).
Let us not kid ourselves; we are approaching a time of great turbulence. Having experienced central government restructures first hand, these are not phenomena conducive to best practice and revolutionary thinking. Rather they are times of friction, deep disillusionment, and even great sorrow.
Yes, the system needs improvement and the minister and her team can tinker, transform or otherwise contort the way desks are arranged, how funding is allocated and who reports to whom until breath fails them.
However, as a much-admired colleague of mine - engaged as an evaluative researcher on numerous developmental projects serving children and young people - continues to remind me, the one constant reported by her young participants and collaborators, is that it is the quality of the relationships they enjoy with their various helpers, supporters and advocates which defines their likelihood of success.
That is, it is the how that matters, not the what.
With this in mind, let us extend our compassion, gratitude and aroha to our social work brothers and sisters, and their education, clinical, and legal colleagues who work shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand with children and young people in times of daily challenge and in crises.
The months ahead of them will make even greater demands; some will, after much soul-searching, decide that their battle is fought, and walk away. For those who see it through, their teams will dissolve and they will lose colleagues.
They will be set new priorities by boardroom boffins, which will insult their expertise and threaten their sense of profession. But their work goes on and their fortitude, grace and humour will need to be superhuman.
We can only hope they will be open to the examples of courage and resilience set by the young people with whom they work.
Above all let us hold central to this effort the hearts and voices of the children and young people; may our deliberations, debate and decision-making happen with children and young people leading the way at every turn.
This project is itself an extraordinary opportunity for them to experience, given the chance, just what they are capable of as agents of change in their own lives, their communities and, it has to be said, the government services which for too long have spoken for them, instead of inviting them to speak for themselves.
For their sake, we must facilitate a process that seeks not only transformation, but reclamation by children and young people as the true clients and ultimate stakeholders of any business the State has in their positive development.
Practitioners and bureaucrats don't need have to have all the answers, nor should we assume they are ours to proclaim. Breaking negative cycles between children and the adults struggling to care for them begins with rethinking the way we see, talk about, and respond to children and young people.
We need only be prepared to listen, to enable, and to champion their ideas and aspirations to make some truly transformative leaps. Our first step might be to celebrate children and young people as ‘‘fully citizen'', individually and collectively due by right and by capability, the opportunity to contribute to issues in which they are supposedly, but in practice rarely, held central.
Established and emergent research alike makes the observation that genuine participation is among the greatest inoculations against risk which we can offer children and young people.
Make no mistake, whatever the final shape of a new children's department, it will continue to be the quality of relationships between front-line staff and our children and young people which determines the next incarnation's success.
This begins with genuine collaboration on both the grand design and the nitty gritty of their new department, not after. Anything less than that genuine collaboration will condemn us to repeat history.
●Adam Doesburg is a graduate student at the University of Otago Children's Issues Centre.
